Cattle Royale
Great Falls, MT to Big Sandy, MT
2 days
89 miles or so
Many cows have died to help me on this ride. On a typical day, I eat about a pound of beef -- mostly in hamburger form (one for lunch, one for dinner, and then 3 or 4 ounces of jerkey in between). Every town's got its diner and every diner's got its burger: The Standard, The Cowboy, The Slinger, The Bareback ("Well done, please. Thank you."). Each menu proudly announces the local farm from which its beef is sourced. Everything else comes from either Heinz or Pepsico; the chicken comes from god only knows where. Here in the highlands of Montana, just beyond the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, we're in bovine country.
And here up north in Big Sandy (elev: 2700; downtown pop: about 250; home of the world's biggest tractor), it's the Red Angus -- more adaptable and stodgy than her Black cousin to the south, she can handle the freezing winters and scorching summers. Breeders raise the calves on open government land, on wild grasses that have thrived here for millenia, then sell them (for about $1500 per head) to the Feeders, who fatten the cows up for slaughter. Tonight's cow, dressed in feta and grilled peppercinis, was the best one yet.
Big Sandy hadn't been my intended destination for the night. At about 1 o'clock the southwestern sky started to look a bit wicked: not storm clouds so much as a dark gray blanket creeping its way toward me. I rolled into Big Sandy for my afternoon burger and was greeted by a chorus of residents telling me to "get some shelter right now." Bone-breaking hail and rogue tornadoes were expected within the hour. I wavered for a minute (I'd have a pretty bad ass tailwind with only 35 miles to go), but decided to play it safe. I checked in to the town's only motel, took a quick shower, and then walked over to Pep's Tavern to wait out the storm.
Other than sunburns, epidermal concerns rank pretty low on this trip: camping on the banks of the Missouri river last night, I found the swarm of blood-thirsty mosquitos damn near charming; I'm their guest, after all, and once I'm either riding or sleeping, the memory of their bites will disappear ("Feast on my oxygen-saturated blood, friends!"). My sense of body awareness has been sinking to muscular and skeletal concerns; I go days without seeing my reflection. But out here, skin (or hide) color makes a difference, particularly with the folks over 40, and having the skin of an Anglo male (which, I'm reminded, I do) makes fitting in a whole hell of a lot easier. If I eat and drink whatever's put down before me and meet the standard quota of hoots and hollers, then I'm instant family. Seems everyone in that bar bought me a beer.
The younger guys out here, stewards of this land's posterity, are in a class of their own. They shrug off the bar's obsessive chatter over some gay cousin, pithily point out the hypocrisy of calling Indians thieves, and deflect, with ninja-like agility, any conversation that veers too close to Hilary Clinton's emails. These young guys are out here, having returned from cities around the country, for the air, the land, the lifestyle. Josh, chef and owner of Pep's, is one such guy. A former Seattle restauranteur, he brought me food rich in flavor and heritage. Before digging in, I said my little prayer to the cow: "May the air bullet that killed you have been exquisitely blunt; there are certainly many places in this country where it's worse to be a cow. Amen."
