Day 24: Jackson to Dillon, Montana

I started the morning with another dip in the hot springs before returning to the road beneath gathering clouds. There was wind, but like a lifer with no hope of parole, I had begun to grow resigned to my sentence. I was more concerned with the darkening sky, which looked like another day of rain. Jackson was too small a place for me to want to spend the day, and it had been too soon since my last rest day, but those clouds gave me pause. I would've been wise to spend the day at the springs. Before the day was out, I would climb through two mountain passes, struggle against 60mph winds, flee from a lightning storm, and be pelted by pebble sized hail.

The two mountain passes, Big Hole and Badger, looked simple on paper - each was under a thousand feet - but the Lost Trail had finally taught me never to underestimate the difficulty of a pass.

The first pass, Big Hole, assailed me with 60mph winds. The previous winds I'd encountered were nothing to it. I'd been tinkering with the setting of my fairing to bring it higher and closer to my body; now I stopped and brought it in as close and as high as possible, to give me the maximum screen. Most of Big Hole's elevation gain occurs in one curved ramp, a mile and a half long, that ends where the sky begins. I walked up it, bent into the wind, for an hour, before rolling down to the next valley.


Big Hole Pass, elevation 7,360 feet

Once upon a time I had imagined that each day on the road would become easier, as I grow lean and hardened. Instead, it seems that each day becomes more difficult, as I am continually tested with new and harsher conditions. And yet, I feel blessed to witness the magnificent beauty of this land. The harder each climb, the more glorious each descent, as beyond each hardship lies a new and wider land, bigger than anything in my imagination. I feel tiny, and the world enormous, and it's the greatest reward I can imagine. I was dwelling on these thoughts when the first tines of lightning flashed far away to my right.



Black clouds slid across the valley, and I watched uneasily as the distant lightning increased in frequency. I was twenty five miles between towns, and I mentally prepared myself for being caught in the open among the flickering tongues. I contemplated passing ranches while counting the seconds from lightning to thunder. Twenty four seconds.


Let's just take a closer look at that

The road curved away to the left, away from the storm, and I prayed fervently that I might outrun the storm. A double strike, 14 and 13 seconds. The road turned toward an incline, the foothills of the next pass. A flicker of light directly ahead and no seconds at all before a crack that split the world asunder, and in that second, before I had finished sounding out the syllables in my mind, "one chimpanzee", I was stung by hail like frozen bees.

I laughed. The world was too big, too impersonal to persecute me. Laughing and swearing, my ears stung by hail, I leapt off my bike and ran with it up a gravel road to the Holland Ranch. I splashed through rivulets formed by freezing rain, ran to a sealed barn, threw open a barn door, pushed the bike inside.


Sanctuary

I found myself inside a narrow storage room packed with dusty ATVs and curing animal hides. I followed a narrow passage to the main part of the barn, flung open the main door from the inside, back out into the rain, and brought my bike around into the barn proper. The barn was empty, but filled with the comforting smell of horses. I peeked outside as thunder rolled across the barn's metal roof. There were houses on the ranch as well. I stayed put, hoping no one would mind my trespass.


The view from the barn

I explored the barn. Downstairs, empty horse stalls, covered with a thick coat of dust. Upstairs was a cavernous loft as big as a basketball court, and in fact, a deflated basketball lay on the floor.


The storm abates

I had my lunch, scrubbed clean a wooden chair with a horse brush, sat and nodded as the storm quieted. I could still hear distant thunder, moving away. The sounds of birds and insects returned, and a flock of barn swallows emerged, swooping and pecking against the metal roof.


My savior

And so, I returned to the road, where Badger Pass waited.


Back on the road

I walked up another mile long ramp to the sky, beyond which, the storm had settled into the bowl of the next valley. Now I was chasing the storm. I hoped that it would stay far ahead.



I cried and laughed with joy and relief and not a little hysteria as I slid down that long ramp into the next valley, its distant rim a chiaroscuro of daylight and cloud shadow.



The town coming up was Dillon; 30 miles beyond that, Twin Bridges. I had hoped to reach Twin Bridges, but I was wrung empty.



Clouds still hung heavy as I rolled into Dillon, found a motel. I went to see a movie, Pineapple Express, which was perhaps the worst movie ever made, but sitting there in the dark theater, I began to feel human again. It rained that night, and the roads were still wet when I ventured out into Dillon on Sunday morning for a day of rest


Dillon, Montana