High on Big Sky

Big Sky, they call it.

It is America’s answer to Switzerland - mighty snow-capped mountain ranges and valleys of rushing rivers. Resorts for skiing and snowboarding in the winter and for action sports like mountain biking, hiking, and zip-lining in the summer.

It is the most sensational landscape up there with those wild, primitive, towering, snow-streaked peaks. It is very high country.

I’m not good with altitude. I’m the one who did not get beyond the luggage collection in LaPaz, Bolivia and had to be carried to a hotel bed unable literally to lift a finger until some lovely doctor came and injected me with magic and told me henceforth to drink lots of mate de coca for the altitude.

Big Sky is not as high as La Paz. It is only 7,600ft while LaPaz is 13,000. Nonetheless, the air is noticeably thin up there and even Bruce noticed how easily he puffed out on fairly ordinary exertion. I find it enervating. Blech. My vim vanishes.

I am piqued to find that I’m not at my peak in this peak of mountain beauty.

And, I have so much to puzzle about.

How many cow hides are in the hotel decor?

Wow, this wild mountain man hunter decor is the last word in macho kitsch.

It is heavily toned in browns overwhelmingly leather and wood dominant with lots of iron and bronze . In one foyer is the biggest (and best) bronze bear sculpture you ever saw. If there are not enough antlers

on the poor stuffed creatures on the wall, there are hundreds more incorporated in chandeliers and light fittings throughout the property.

Then there are the cow hides. It’s cow hide city.

Of course we have our own cow hide affixed to the wall in our room. And massive leather armchair and deep leather sofa. The walls all dark brown. Wood, wood, wood. Including the bed. It just looks like wooden panels until you pulled it down for sleep. Yes, a drop-down bed! With a stone fireplace at one end, he room is long and thin and dark and brown and…just

like a bear’s cave!

Saving grace is the view from the little window. Ye gods, That huge mountain peak is so close! It is almost in the room. It is intensely huge.

After complaining vigorously about the insanity of a drop-down queen bed, I drag the giant armchair to the window and slump into it, gasping not only for oxygen in the thin air but for the sheer glorious wonderment of the mountain.

I am to make that chair and that view the centre of the universe for the next two days.

Bruce takes the ski lifts up to the top of two mountains and is utterly exhilarated by the scale of the landscape and its mighty beauty. He would like me to join him.

But I have always said that I like to look up at mountains and not down from them. I just make a cup of green tea and take it to my chair by the window to gaze upon that grand rocky face.

As the day wanes, the colours melt around it into softest pinks and caramels and then, as light fades, it becomes a dramatic silhouette against the night sky.

Then comes the morning. Oh, what a sight to meet the eye as the first rays of sun beam on the top of it. Bright orange. It turns bright orange.

And one is seeing this from bed! Albeit a dropdown bed with no side tables. That mighty mountain makes one forgive all else.

Lone Peak is its name.

There are several restaurants and a wee skiers' shopping mall with lots of eclectic legging apparatus and puffy jackets. Not a shopping paradise for me, much to Bruce’s delight. We do a lot of people watching on our evening perambulations.

We can’t resist snooping on a wedding. Blow me down if the groom and his seven grey-suited groomsmen don’t whoosh down from the mountain on mountain bikes. Then the bridal party descend the slope via ski lift to the sound of bagpipes.

Leaving Big Sky is even lovelier than arriving. I think it is because we are going in the same direction as the Gallatin River which rushes through the valley on its rocky bed. We take time to watch the white water rafters this time, and also the fly fishermen. We look at some of the Montana mountain riverside real estate. A cool couple of million and you, too, can have a log cabin.