OnlyinMontana moments on journey

In the Rattlesnake Mountains of Montana, there’s a canyon called Hell’s Gate. You ask the locals and you’ll get a dozen different stories. The guy who gave us a lift from the car rental told us that there, at a bend of the Clark Fork River, the Blackfoot and the Sioux tribes fought the Salish, also called the Flatheads. The Salish must have won because they named the town Nmesuletkw, place of frozen water. The French trappers who settled in later mispronounced that town as Missoula, and the college students who came a century later further mispronounced it as Zoo Town.

Montana, land of ranches, gold mines and the Ghost Town Hall of Fame, is the fourth largest state in the union in terms of land mass, but its population (roughly 1 million) is only a little bigger than that of San Francisco (estimated at 884,363). It is estimated that 0.43% of the population is black, or about 4,094 — until last month, when my son Zane moved in, pushing the total to 4,095. (Yes, our Texas days are behind us, and even though it’s still a thousand miles away, it feels like progress.)

Up until last month, of the entirety of the FisherPaulson family only one of us had ever spent so much as 45 minutes in Big Sky Country. In 1999, on my mission to visit all 50 states before I turned 50, I hit the southern edge on my way from Idaho to Wyoming.

But my husband Brian, my son Aidan and I all wanted to make sure that Zane was all right, so we went to visit him in Montana.

Driving to Zane’s school, we had an “Only in Missoula” moment: Right after a sign for Butte, there was a billboard that read, “The Rocky Creek Lodge Testicle Festival” (Testyfest for short). I figured they served nuts, but really, it’s all about eating Rocky Mountain Prairie Oysters, or beef testicles, breaded and deep fried.

Aidan’s comment: “Is that where we get meatballs from?”

Brian’s comment: “I wonder if there’s a Miss Testicle? Or an allyoucaneat testicles contest?”

We looked it up online only to discover that the Feast of Cowboy Caviar had been canceled. I wondered for a moment if there was a testosterone drought, but maybe enlightened minds had given up the shark fin soup of the plains.

A mile further down the road, we lost cell phone reception (which I secretly liked) as we drove past the slate-blue hills, under that big broad blue firmament, sprinkled lightly with cirrus clouds. After the exit, we turned onto a dirt road, which wound past deer and horses and cattle. Brian asked, “Is it me, or do the bulls look nervous?”

We parked and walked across the creek, and there was Zane, impossibly tall, with that smile that people say he gets from me. There’s nothing better than hugging a son you haven’t seen in three months.

He introduced us to his cohort. A few said that they waited each week for Zane’s letter that had the column in it. One young man, let’s call him “L,” said, “You wrote a few weeks ago that Zane was on a quest, that he needed to be the hero of his own journey, and I realized that was true for every one of us in this group.”

It was a quiet weekend. We spent most of the time on campus, but on Sunday morning, the four of us walked around Beavertail Pond. Montana is also called the Treasure State, because it is rich in sapphire agates, copper, topaz and silver, but Zane and Aidan knew nothing of this. They only knew the rocks they discovered were flat and perfectly suited to skip across the tarn. (For the record, Aidan won with five bounces. I handed Aidan a pyrite to serve as trophy, and we both knew it was fool’s gold, but still he packed it in his suitcase, to remember those few minutes together on a lake.)

Time with my son is never enough. We left on Monday, but on those long nights that I miss him, I take comfort that he is in a ponderosa pine forest in the Sapphire Mountains, sitting in a circle with eight other young men who are each on their own quest. They are also a fellowship, standing together at Hell’s Gate, working their way toward heaven. I picture them laughing as Zane opens an envelope, and they read about the latest pilgrimage of the family in the blue bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.

It’s then I think, maybe I should have skipped the part about the Testicle Festival.

There was Zane, impossibly tall, with that smile that people say he gets from me. There’s nothing better than hugging a son you haven’t seen in three months.