Now That’s Romance
(a cranky view of the new Montana)
“There’s a hole in his head you could throw a dead cat through.” -Thomas McGuane in his screenplay for Rancho Deluxe
by Bill Morris
June 12, 1993, Chico Hot Springs, Paradise Valley, Montana-The 19th century lodge here at Chico was featured this year in a Washington Post story entitled, “The 20 Most Romantic Places In America.” At the time, I thought, “There goes good old Chico. You’ll never get me in there again.” But at the time, I didn’t know that my wife and daughter would be joining me in Montana after I spent my usual week fishing and camping with the boys. We headed for the lodge right after their plane landed in Bozeman.
Chico wasn’t so romantic the first time my fishing buddies and I came here six or seven years ago. We were trying to escape the blowing dust that was threatening to bury our campsite on the banks of the Yellowstone River. Our plan was to have a little swim and pass the heat of the day, then get back to the river and do some serious fishing in the evening. We hadn’t factored in the cocktail waitress who merrily delivered us drinks as we soaked in the hot springs, and by nightfall I was fixated on holding the pool table in the bar. We won a few games of eight ball, too, owing mainly to the fact that it was Friday night and most of the cowboys were even drunker than we were. I distinctly remember a very indistinct game against a young mixed-doubles team: She drove a truck in a gold mine and he was a wrangler and a bull rider in the rodeo. He straddled a corner of the pool table and demonstrated the proper way to ride a bull… “You just keep your breastbone out over his shoulders,” the wrangler said, before he began to wobble then fell on the floor.
Quite a few changes have been required to give Chico its Washington Post-approved air of romance. For one thing, I haven’t seen any dogs sitting at the bar. In years past, I’ve seen as many as three mutts occupying stools and chewing beef jerky sticks provided by the bartender. One notably poignant only-at-Chico scene burned into my memory is the sight of a big golden retriever sitting at the bar and keeping a wary eye out for any harm heading his master’s way. The cowboy on the next stool had his head down on the plank, fast asleep under his black Resistol hat.
The management has splashed quite a bit of paint around, too, and hung up a lot of new signs featuring the Old West-kitsch, fractured wagon wheel logo. I noticed that the sign that used to hang at the end of the pool table has been replaced. The old one had several bullet holes in it. I guess I should get used to the changes, though. I’m a family man this year, and these improvements are supposed to be for my benefit.
Located 30 miles north of Yellowstone Park, Chico makes a good base camp for the kind of sight-seeing adventures my family has in mind. Yesterday we drove close to 200 miles through the Paradise Valley and inside the park, doing the touron thing up right. (Touron is a Montana expression combining tourist and moron.)
Yellowstone is recovering very slowly from the fires that burned 989,000 acres in 1988. On the road from Mammoth to Norris, you are never out of sight of burnt trees, and the area around Old Faithful and the Fire hole River is one big tree cemetery. With the canopy gone, the slopes are covered in bright green undergrowth and it’s been a good year for wild flowers. The Park Service is promoting this as a “very exciting” time to visit Yellowstone and see nature taking its course. Montanans think that’s a crock of swill brewed up for the tourons.
They’re still angry over the way the government’s “let it burn” policy resulted in a firestorm that burned right up into their back yards, forcing the evacuation of Cooke City and Silver Gate and threatening to turn the town of West Yellowstone into a pile of melted graphite fly rods and singed duck ‘ decoys.
The locals, especially the ranchers, think the people who manage the park are a bunch of kneejerk tree huggers. The latest controversy is over the proposed re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone. Livestock men aren’t too crazy about the idea since wolves are notorious for roving far and wide, where they could easily substitute a sheep or steer for their Park Service-approved entree of deer or elk. The only way the people of Montana and Wyoming will sit still for the re-introduction is if there’s an open season on wolves when they stray outside the park. This policy would cancel the wolves’ protection under the Endangered Species Act, so now you have the unlikely scenario of the Sierra Club filing suit to prevent the Park Service from moving wolves into Yellowstone. Who are the good guys, anyway?
It reminds me of the ’70s cult film Rancho Deluxe, in which Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston play modern-day rustlers who shoot cattle with a .50 caliber Hawken rifle then field dress the animals using a chain saw. In a scene filmed right here at Chico Hot Springs, the rustlers confess to the sup posed good guys, played by Harry Dean Stanton and the late Warren Oates, and then the four sit in the steaming water with their cowboy hats on and conspire to rustle all of the big rancher’s cattle. In the movie, Jimmy Buffett’s band is playing in the bar where the dogs get the best stools and a young and horny Elizabeth Ashley puts her hands on her hips and says to the boys, “Come on! How about a little of that Gothic ranch action?”
Now that was romance.
—Bill Morris
