Why protect rivers when we have bottled water?

Conspiracy theorists take note.
I recently heard a radio talk show host advising holiday shoppers to stay hydrated.
More needless advice dispensed by another celebrity know-it-all, was my first thought.
Then I recalled the television commercials for a pill that promises men the ability to take longer drives with fewer pit stops all the while throwing back bottled water like guys used to drink beer.
As if the growing oil crisis isn’t scary enough, now I hear a shortage of clean water looms on the horizon.
Well, no kidding.
We’re told to drink more water all the time and warned to take it with us everywhere we go. Sales of hydration systems – Camel-Baks and the like – are booming.
Admittedly, I’ve joined the trend. I carry water with me while hunting and always keep a bottle or two in the truck and boat.
I never used to. There was a time when I took great pride in my ability to go without.
And I never carried water in the backcountry. Giardia be damned. I’ve quenched my thirst from tea-colored pools while horn hunting in the spring, drank from the Yellowstone River in the summer and sucked water from holes through the ice on late fall hunts.
Not anymore. Now I drink spring water from somewhere else out of a petroleum-based plastic bottle. I’m beginning to suspect the same folks who brought us $3-a-gallon gasoline are behind this water shortage.
Until recently we would have balked at buying water by the bottle. It flowed from the tap relatively cheaply.
Now we hear tap water’s not good to drink.
Bottled water is a hot commodity in the little northern Montana prairie town where I live now, but I suspect it’s even more popular in trendy Bozeman where gin-clear mountain streams feed into the city’s water supply.
Apparently though, no one there really cares if that water remains clean enough to drink since nearly everybody in Bozeman is quenching their thirst out of a bottle. An effort under way to make the Gallatin River the best-protected waterway in Montana outside a national park or wilderness area keeps meeting with more opposition than support. Wealthy landowners, developers and realtors are fighting the effort to protect the Gallatin.
From my point of view, seated comfortably on the grassy knoll, I suspect more than a few of those folks just might own stock in Exxon-Mobile.
In the meantime I’m making a switch to water flavored with hops and barley. I hear it even comes in a can.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

End of hunting season a bit melancholy

I approached the opening of the general big game hunting season with a bit of melancholy. It seems the start of this -- the most anticipated of seasons -- only heralds the end.
Antelope hunting will be over for the year in a couple of weeks and I’ve yet to fill my tag. Not that the opportunities haven’t been there. The big bucks, however, have stayed out of my range, which I find keeps getting shorter with each passing season. Come Nov. 5, I may regret passing up the lesser-horned speed goats that filled my scope, but the 15-incher I shot last fall keeps my expectations high.
Sage grouse hunting closes Nov. 1 and while I found Montana’s oldest native game birds to be plentiful this fall, I’ve yet to take advantage of the state’s new 4-bird daily limit. I keep getting distracted by antelope.
The rifle season for deer and elk in Montana, while more liberal and less restrictive here than in any other western state, lasts a mere five weeks. No wonder archery hunting, which opened in early September, is becoming so popular. It more than doubles the amount of time hunters can pursue whitetails, muleys and wapiti.
And while my walls are covered with elk horns, I’ve run out of elk steaks in the freezer, so any legal cow or bull will prompt me to pull the trigger.
I’m a bit more particular when it comes to deer. The muley I passed up on the final day of season last year stayed in my thoughts for the past 11 months. He was in the rut and oblivious to my presence, his focus entirely on the doe he was chasing. Not quite good enough last year, I’m sure he will be this season. I just hope to see him again somewhere other than in my dreams.
If not, I might quit the breaks into which he disappeared before the season ends and spend the Sunday after Thanksgiving in the aspen woods where I hunt whitetail. The deer there aren’t as big, but it’s picture-postcard pretty and I seldom see another hunter.
It’s the same place I hunt on the last day of the mountain grouse season Dec. 15. Seldom as plentiful as they were in September, the birds are in the same cover nonetheless and the dogs always put up one or two for me to try to shoot. By then, that’s plenty.
The season for pheasant, sharptail and Hungarian partridge closes Jan. 1 and I usually chase them to the bitter cold end.
Then, other than maybe a frozen trip or two for ducks and geese, I’ll spend the ensuing eight months in anticipation of September when it all starts over again.
For now though the end is just around the corner and I’ve still got tags to fill.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Living the high life on the Hi-Line

MALTA -- Go ahead. Call me a romantic.
For our 10th anniversary, my wife, Barb, and I traveled to a foreign land, enjoyed some exotic cuisine and shared a little time in Climax.
Then we returned to the states for a lunch in Harlem.
How hot is that?
Not as hot as you might think.
Considering that the foreign land was Canada, the exotic food Cheezies, and Climax is a small village in Saskatchewan.
And we didn’t dine on soul food in Harlem.
No, we both ordered the special, which at Deb’s Diner on that Wednesday happened to be Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Such is the high life on the Hi-Line where Canada is but a stone’s throw away and the towns bear the names of more exotic locales: Zurich and Glasgow among them.
Cool, eh?
Now even you can be cool. In Balance magazine, this issue only, I’ll tell you how.
First, sell your home in the Gallatin Valley and move north. Way north. Don’t be fooled by the scenic beauty of quaint Lewistown nestled at the foot of the Judith Mountains. It’s already been discovered.
Keep going all the way up U.S. 191 to Highway 2, the northernmost paved arterial in Montana.
Buy a home there. Maybe in Dodson or Saco where the real estate boom has yet to arrive.
Don’t look for work. There isn’t any. But who wants a job when you’re living the high life with your sweetie on the Hi-Line?
Then get a passport. It’s required to enter Canada. Homeland security, you know?
When you find the time, on your anniversary perhaps, point yourself north and throw caution to the wind. Val Marie, hometown of NHL star Bryan Trottier, is just 20 kilometers north of the border. Val Marie is also home to the Whitemud Grocery where you can score some Cheezies.
A made-in-Canada snack treat, (the bag is even decorated with a maple leaf) Cheezies are the far-north version of Cheetos.
With Cheezies in hand, (they’re not as messy as Cheetos) get back in your rig, wave goodbye to the good folk of Val Marie and drive west through Orkney and Braken to Climax where there is a long-closed Chinese restaurant.
Like most small towns in southern Saskatchewan, in Climax all the restaurants are closed. So are the gas stations. But another small grocery here does offer Cheezies.
By now, however, you’re hankering for something a bit more substantial. It’s time to head south. At the border crossing you get a blank look when you tell the officer you’re only bringing back a couple bags of Cheezies.
Following a brisk body cavity search you’re on your way again. Next stop: Deb’s Diner in Harlem, Mt. where your wife, with a dab of gravy on her chin, tells you she’s sure glad you married her.
So there. Now you, too, can live the high life.
On the Hi-Line.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net