Day 17

Today is Daddy’s birthday. He should be celebrating his 73rd birthday with my mom. They should be spending the day at the beach and then going to one of their favorite restaurants for dinner. I wish things had happened differently. I wish I could call him now to wish him a happy birthday.

Our plans this morning have been derailed. We wanted to drive north and camp for a night or two in the National Forest. But the campgrounds posted warnings about the air quality. Nothing like planning a trip to get my kid out into the mountains and having to switch gears because the air is not clean. Damn wildfires.

After the crowds in Yellowstone we wanted to avoid another popular National Park on the weekend. But the poor air quality where we intended to spend the next two days pushed us further north into Glacier National Park. We couldn’t get into the campground we wanted, but we did get into a campground on the eastern end of the park. Daddy must have been looking out for us. He didn’t want us to be anxiety ridden on his birthday. The site is small and there are many sites crowded together but the landscape is gorgeous — tall jagged mountains towering over a cool clear lake.

By the time we set up camp we were all hungry. The closest town was on the Blackfeet Reservation so we drove there for tacos. Seeing the reservation made me sad. True we didn’t explore all of it, but what we saw was run down. There certainly wasn’t a fair amount of money flowing through the area. We stopped in a trading post and were depressed to see that much of what they sold catered to an interest in cowboys and cowboy culture. It’s one thing to read about how poorly the United States treated the Native Americans but seeing it really allowed me to better understand how guilty our nation is. And by attempting to bury our guilt, by not teaching the entire truth in our schools we continue to exacerbate the cruelty of our forefathers.

I absolutely LOVE Glacier National Park. It is beautiful. Dad would have loved it too. It is one of the most — if not the most beautiful National Park I’ve ever been to — and so far we’ve only explored a tiny bit of it.

G3 and I took a short hike to Aster Waterfall. Once there we took off our boots and socks to wade into the water. The water was extremely cold, colder than Lake Superior in May.

I have been doing the “Empty Bench” series for over a year now but this particular bench really makes me miss Dad. He loved the water as much as I do. He would have liked to sit here with Mom. They would have enjoyed this park. His future should have been so different. He was robbed of so much.

We had just finished eating dinner at our campsite (peanut butter and jelly which G3 rejected because it wasn’t tasty enough) when I noticed a ranger program beginning one site over from us. Of course we went. We learned about how Glacier National Park was formed and why it is important for so many water systems in the United States. Once upon a time there were over a hundred glaciers in the park, now there are only twenty. And due to global warming, even they may be gone in ten years.

Sorry for the late posting. I had absolutely no service in the park last night.