“I would like to have seen Montana…”
These are the dying words of Captain Vasili Borodin, played by Sam Neill, in The Hunt for Red October, one of my absolute favorite movies. Like Borodin, I had not seen Montana before, either. But unlike Borodin, I wasn’t shot by a ship’s cook before I could see it, and I’m grateful because Montana is gorgeous.
In fact, I had never seen the Pacific Northwest before. Neither had “Montana” Will before January of 2022. Will’s story is stranger than fiction, with the highest of peaks and the lowest of valleys. Will has been a rodeo bull rider, incarcerated, run heavy construction machinery, homeless, ministered to inmates, hit by a car, and wowed employers with his grit and work ethic. The circumstances by which he ended up in Montana are too dark to describe here, but suffice it to say that a rated-R movie could be made about them.
Will’s best feature is his enormous heart. He would literally give you the shirt off his back, and help you in a pinch, whether it be building a porch at your house, fixing your car on the side of the road, etc. So when the opportunity came to go visit Will, (who moved to Montana by himself in his truck) a few of his friends sprang for the plane tickets and seized the opportunity.
Mitch poses for the camera before we pull out of Spokane, WA. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
On the road to Montana. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i
A logging yard by the road. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
To begin the journey, I flew up to Spokane with Mitch, a short Hawaiian man that I consider an adopted father, complete with corny jokes (not that I don’t make a few of those, myself). Shiela, a mutual friend of ours and Will’s, went up three days before we did, the idea being to overlap visits and provide him with friends for as long as possible. From Spokane, Mitch and I drove through Idaho into western Montana.
Never having seen the Northwest before, I couldn’t stop looking out the window at the mountains covered with pine trees. As a kid, I grew up reading Model Railroader and looking at toy trains in hobby shops, so seeing all the criss-crossing railroads carving the mountains was a joy. We passed a few logging yards along the way, timber being a part of the economic bedrock in this section of the country.
We arrived in Troy, Montana after a three-hour drive from Spokane. Cell service was spotty at best the whole trip, but between dropped calls we deduced that Will and Shiela could be found at the Silver Spur Saloon in Troy, the best place to eat in town. I spotted Will as soon as we entered the saloon as he perused the menu. I walked right up to him and punched him in the shoulder. He stood up and gave me one of the tightest hugs of my life.
“Montana” Will cleaning a stick for cooking s’mores. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
That night we camped at a campground nestled at the point where the Yaak River and Kootenai Rivers meet. It was a beautiful place to spend the night. I felt like I was in a scene from True Grit, the part where Mattie Ross goes to the river for water and meets the man who killed her father. Will had everything we needed to camp packed into his truck, minus the little bit of camping gear my friend Jordan lent me. Only a week before we arrived, Will lost his job with a wildfire-fighting company due to their government contract being terminated (there were no more wildfires for them to fight). So Will was essentially homeless in Montana.
I’ve been camping plenty with some of my friends over the past few years, but I’ve never camped with a homeless man before. Most of us who camp do it for the challenge of it; we do it for fun. Will camped for survival, and watching him set up his camp was a learning experience. He had two tents, a big one for the three guys and a small one for Shiela. We set up our tents, and then set about making a fire. We gathered up some deadfall from around the campground, and then Will approached the fire pit with a can of gasoline.
Mitch and I eyed the gas can with more than a healthy dose of skepticism. “What are you doing with that, Will?” I asked.
“I’m startin’ a fire.”
“You’re gonna blow yourself up!”
“No, I ain’t. You gotta let the vapor go away before you light it.”
I wasn’t convinced, so I watched from a safe distance as Will lit the fire. To his credit, he still had eyebrows and a shirt sleeve when he was done, so I guess his method works. But I probably won’t be employing his method on my campfires. Will emphasized the importance of being able to quickly make a fire when you’re homeless. In the winter, it can be the difference between life and death, he said. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to mess around, and start his fires with the quickest method he knows how.
The Yaak River. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Will and Shiela. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Will’s “efficient” method for starting fires. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Shiela gets ready for s’mores. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Mitch and Shiela pose with their marshmallows. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
We ate s’mores that night around the campfire, like good American campers. To avoid being too friendly with the grizzly bears, we stored our food in one of the bear-proof containers nearby. Then we got ready for bed. The whole day, it had been in the mid-70s outside and was really quite comfortable. I wore a plain white T-shirt with an unbuttoned collared shirt and jeans. When we laid down to sleep, the temperature had dropped to the 60s, but I wasn’t worried about being cold.
But come 3 o’clock the next morning, I woke up with my exposed face uncomfortably cold. I made a lot of noise scrounging around in the dark, pulling the long underwear out of my duffel bag and putting them on in the dark. When we got up a few hours later in the gray foggy dawn by the river, I was bundle up in my coat and beanie. Meanwhile, Will peeled potatoes for our breakfast by the fire barefoot in a flannel shirt. He took one look at Mitch and I in our winter coats and muttered, “City slickers.”
A barefooted Will peels potatoes for our breakfast. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
The author bundled up on a “warm” Montana morning. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Morning on the Yaak River. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
We ate breakfast and broke camp to get ready for the next leg of our journey to Kalispell, just outside Glacier National Park. We packed up our tents and put the extra food back in the cooler, while Shiela scrubbed out the breakfast pot with a rock and a bar of hand soap. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The drive from Troy to Kalispell was beautiful, naturally. Montana doesn’t have a bad side.
A lake along the road to Kalispell. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
A picturesque Montana farmhouse. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Kalispell is a decently-sized city for Montana, with a population of around 24,000 people. We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast called Lonesome Dove Ranch, where we would sleep in a pair of cavalry tents with wood plank floors furnished with beds.
We dropped our stuff off at Lonesome Dove, and then headed into Glacier National Park. The week we were there was the last week of the season for the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a feat of engineering building in the early 1900s that meandered up a beautiful gorge in the West Rocky Mountains.
I have never seen mountains that tall. I grew up in East Tennessee, where the Great Smokey Mountains were the tallest things for hundreds and hundreds of miles. But the Rockies dwarf the Smokies. I couldn’t stop gawking at the majesty of the massive formations looming over me. I felt like an insect by comparison.
Going-to-the-Sun Road was challenging for me. Mitch drove us in our rented Toyota 4Runner. The road was a narrow two-lane road the clung to the edge of the mountains, with a precipitous drop on one side. Going up the mountain, there were times I couldn’t even see the guardrail out of the car window, only my impending death as I imagined our car tumbling over the edge. I shut my eyes sometimes and pretended we were on a boring interstate instead. Mitch grew up on Maui, where scary narrow roads on mountainsides were part of everyday life, so he was used to such drives. I was simultaneously grateful for his experience behind the wheel and annoyed that he was enjoying himself instead of white-knuckling it all the way up. The driver can’t enjoy himself at a time like this, right? Our lives are at stake!
Mitch skips a rock on McDonald Lake. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Shiela walks on a pebbly beach at McDonald Lake. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Mountains loom above the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. Taken on Canon AE-1 with Ilford Delta 100.
Going-to-the-Sun Road. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
The valley stretches out below us on the way to Logan Pass. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
The view from Logan Pass. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Mitch drives untroubled by the sheer drop just a few feet away. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Weary from the drive and the emotional high of seeing God’s glory manifested in geological wonders, we trudged into camp and got some showers. Tuesday night would be the last time I showered for the rest of the trip. It sounds gross, but that will be important later.
We roasted hotdogs, and then turned in for the night. That night was the coldest night of the whole trip, and honestly I was miserable. The bed-and-breakfast provided some propane heaters that only lasted about four hours into the night. The beds had plenty of thick covers on them, but they just weren’t enough for me. A friend back home had given me some Hot-Hands to take with us on the trip and told me to place them under my kidneys if I got cold. They helped, but I was still cold. I slept in my winter coat under the covers that night.
Morning was a mercy. It meant no more pretending to sleep, and that I could get up and move around to get warm. It made everything feel new again, even if I was exhausted from sleep deprivation. We had breakfast at Lonesome Dove’s dining room. The coffee, which I was definitely looking forward to, was basically hot water. According to Will, that’s just how they make coffee in Montana. Both Will and I prefer stand-up-and-bark coffee. After breakfast, we snuck back to his truck and made our own on his tailgate. And it definitely barked.
Will records a message for his church family back home in Tennessee, telling them how much he loves Montana. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Breakfast at Lonesome Dove. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Shiela’s flight home was that Wednesday afternoon. Will took her to the airport in Kalispell for an emotional goodbye. Their relationship is a special one that has seen him through the darkest days of his life. Needless to say, watching her get out of his truck and head into the air terminal was hard. He caught back up with Mitch and me at Chic-Fil-A for a bite to eat, and he was unusually quiet, with a far-away look in his misty eye.
He cheered up a little when we went back into Glacier, where we set up camp for the night and killed time before church in Kalispell.
Given Will’s past, he knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of “church hurt.” Religious meanness rears its ugly head when people learn of Will’s story. Or sometimes it rears its ugly head just because. Visiting a church while living in Troy, Will got the feeling he was unwanted there, and sought out a new group of Christians to plug into.
We went with him that night to the church in Kalispell, where they held their mid-week Bible study. Mitch actually ran into some people he knew from his time preaching in Georgia, and was able to explain Will’s situation to them in order to get him a job and a place to live there in Kalispell. It definitely felt like a '“God thing.” As of writing this, Will now has a job and a place to live thanks to the Christians there that night.
Mitch sits on the water at McDonald Lake. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Avalanche Creek. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
The trail to Avalanche Lake. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Mitch leads the way. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
Avalanche Lake. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
We spent a very wet Thursday hiking up to Avalanche Lake, a five-mile round-trip through scenic vistas, climbing through different parts of the same gorge we drove up the day before. The views were breathtaking. It drizzled on our way in, then cleared up as we approached the trail’s end. Avalanche Lake is fed by the Sperry Glacier, which sits at the top of a high ridge above the trail.
It’s amazing to think of the Salish and Kootenai tribes that lived here hundreds of years ago, and the explorers who carved the trails leading to these beautiful places. But I also got the feeling that, as beautiful as this place was, it was a hard country to live in. Winter was right around the corner, and that version of Montana threatened a harsher existence than the pleasant one I got to see.
By the time we got back to the car, it was raining outright. We were cold and wet, and ready to get back to camp. When we did, we found that our hopes of being dry were dashed due to the leak Will’s tent had developed, soaking the bottoms of our sleeping pads and mummy bags. As the rain cleared, we built a fire to dry out our gear.
Will and I talked by the fire that night. After a week of camping together, we began to see each other’s idiosyncrasies. I had grown somewhat irritable not having any time to myself, and gone off by McDonald Lake earlier that day to re-center.
“Thank y’all so much for coming’” he said as we watched the fire burn. “I know I ain’t always the easiest to deal with.”
A pang of guilt came over me. I have a selfish streak a mile wide, and it had shown itself on a few occasions during the trip. “It’s good to be here with you,” I said. “You may have noticed it by now, but I can be pretty ornery, too.”
“I know you can,” he replied candidly.
Sitting by the fire, I conducted an informal interview with “Montana” Will. I asked him about his relationship with his mom and dad. I asked him how he left his home state of Florida. I asked him about his wife cheating on him, and he was gracious enough to answer my questions and tell his story. I shared a few things of my own with him, like how my father had been sick for several years, that I was close to him, and that I lost him when I was 21 years old. That night was special. We were both willing to lower our defenses and learn about each other. There’s just something about a campfire that makes people want to open up.
Friday morning, our last morning, we broke camp and drove back to Kalispell to drop Will off at his truck. He gave us both big hugs and thanked us for coming to see him. Mitch prayed. Then we hopped in the 4Runner and made the trek back to Spokane.
Swapping gear in a parking lot in Kalispell. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.
The trip was eye-opening in a few different ways. First, I got to see a new part of the country that I had never seen before.
Second, I got to spend quality time with someone who’s lived a much different life than me, with different goals and aspirations. We look at Will’s living situation and think, “Oh, that’s terrible! To be homeless like Will…” But Will is happy. I can’t tell you the number of times he tried to convince us to move up there with him to Montana. He’s completely fallen in love with the place. Sure, he doesn’t always have four walls and a roof over his head. But he’s satisfied, and I learned that I need to be happy for him.
Lastly, in one tiny glimpse, I had an idea of what it was like to be homeless, though I wouldn’t be so bold as to say I’ve come anywhere near truly experiencing it. Watching how Will survived over the years without a permanent dwelling place, cooking food, making fires, surviving…it was sobering. After three days of not showering, I became painfully aware of my own body odor and how greasy my hair looked. Going through security at the Spokane airport, I kept the hat on my head until the last possible second so that no one would see my hair. I changed out of my grimy clothes in a stall in the men’s room. I rolled on another layer of deodorant to cover up my stink. I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to go through life being self-conscious of yourself in public, begging for a shred of dignity.
I pulled into my driveway at 3 o’clock Saturday morning after our connecting flight out of Denver was delayed due to weather. As tired as I was, I showered before I got into bed. I felt brand new after that…you know, except for being deliriously tired.
Our week with “Montana” Will was the trip of a lifetime. Hopefully, I’ll see him up there again before too long.
“Montana” Will. Taken on Canon Rebel T7i.