In April 2009 my father, a world-respected freshwater biologist and longtime resident of Montana, brought me up the North Fork of the Flathead, which forms the western border of Glacier National Park, for some early springtime roughin' it.
This photo was taken near Polebridge, looking north.
More beneath the fold.
Gorgeous day in the Big Sky Country.
Side note: We found a wolf print in the park that day on Bowman Lake Road. My Dad was one of the first, after a routine trip to sample the water quality of Kintla Lake near the border in the park, to report the natural return of the gray wolf to Montana, when their howling broke the silence one moonlit night.
Anyway, on this particular trip I asked Dad to see the Canadian border at the north end of the North Fork road.
They've literally shaved a line through the forest to mark the 49th parallel. I don't know why. All I know is that it must have cost A LOT.
At the side of the gravel road there's a stern little sign:
But as you can see, the border isn't exactly secure.
As we wandered around the abandoned border patrol buildings, Dad suggested it might be funny to dress some people in sinister-looking Al Qaeda garb and photograph them running freely across the border brandishing Russian assault rifles into Montana.
Maybe you had to be there, but I laughed until I cried at the thought of Glenn Beck or Bill-O breaking the story of President Obama leaving our borders heinously (intentionally?) unguarded, the story broken thanks to an intrepid teabagger "journalist" and his camera who happened to be at the right place at the right time.
One last thing about this particular river valley: the upper reaches of the North Fork drain out of Canadian territory. Canadian mining interests have for years been champing at the bit to begin whacking off mountaintops so they can access an ocean of coal. My father, his friend Sen. Max Baucus and others, especially those who love Glacier National Park and Western Montana---you see, the Flathead river is a huge river that drains into Flathead Lake, and ultimately, the Columbia River---these folks have fought tirelessly to mobilize Canadians and in particular First Peoples to stop the rape of the mountains and the almost certain destruction of entire drainages, at least one of which drains deep into the United States.