In which Moominmama sees the landscape that inspired author Ivan Doig and lands a campsite in Glacier National Park…

A great many years ago, Moominmama first read “This House of Sky” by Montana author Ivan Doig. Visiting the state that factors into so many of his books was long a dream. Among his fictional creations is a town called Gros Ventre, inspired by a real town called Dupuyer.

So after leaving eastern Montana, Moominmama pointed the Moominhouse west toward Dupuyer and stopped in at Buffalo Joe’s Eatery and Saloon for dinner, where she ordered pan-fried trout. Fresh-caught trout was a favorite meal of many of Doig’s characters — and for good reason.

It was while inquiring about a memorial to Doig that Moominmama met Vicki Beck, who was Doig’s high school girlfriend. She grew up in this very establishment, owned by her parents, when Doig moved in as a boarder next door to attend high school in nearby Valier. She showed me a photo of him as part of the cast of the high school play.

Vicki says Doig told her she was the first girl he’d ever asked out to the movies. She also said his love for writing was apparent in high school, and one of his teachers urged him to apply to college. Beck said he sent her maybe a 100 to 150 letters from Northwestern University, where he got a full scholarship. He must have really missed you, I said. No, she said, he just loved to write.

Several years later when she was married to someone else, her mother asked her what to do with the letters, and she told her to toss them out. I think she regrets that now! But she did give me directions to the memorial erected in Doig’s honor a few years after he died in 2015. It is a sheepherder’s monument, namely a stack of stones that a sheepherder might have erected to mark a location of importance in the mountains.

Many of Doig’s stories feature the Scottish settlers who came to this part of the country and saw its potential for grazing and raising sheep in the generous pastures of what is now the southeastern end of Glacier National Park.

The green grass is striking coming from the dry and bleached landscape of eastern Montana. By the time you get to Dupuyer, the hills are gentle and rolling — like the way a clean sheet billows out when you shake it. The Rockies are dark shadows in the distant haze, as if hidden behind a fabric scrim. This is perhaps due to wildfire smoke, something that Doig also wrote about.

Moominmama highly recommends not only “This House of Sky” by Doig, a work of nonfiction, but also “English Creek” a work of fiction still very much anchored in Montana history. In both cases, the land and weather play leading roles — as much as any of the characters.

Doig writes about “Two Medicine” country, which is why Moominmama had her heart set on camping by Two Medicine Lake. It’s a first-come-first-serve campground, no reservations, in a summer that has seen record turnout at national parks. After spending the night in Dupuyer, Moominmama got up early and set out on a Sunday morning for Two Medicine Campground.

I made it just after 9 a.m., pulled into the first campsite I saw and paid the $20/night fee for a week’s stay. The campground was full in no time. Walking around after, I discovered I’d actually scored a great campsite with a mix of sun (for my solar panels) and shade, and plenty of privacy.

The mountains here are immense, and I spent hours walking around with my jaw dropped. I am only just getting acquainted with Rising Wolf Mountain which dominates Pray Lake, a little bowl of a lake that is fed by Two Medicine Lake.

The campground circles this smaller water body, which is clear and cold with a shore of rounded pebbles. Waking up here each morning, I can understand how getting to know a mountain is a bit like getting to know a person.

Rising Wolf runs along the long side of Two Medicine and Pray lakes, an edifice more than a single peak. The top of the mountain was shoved up by a collision of the earth’s plates, bringing rocks from the bottom of what had been an ocean to face the sky. The haze in this photo makes it hard to see the details captured by the eye.

It is a bumpy, jagged set of peaks that climb up to a dark red butte. There are gullies along its flanks and white quartzite contributes an uneven horizontal stripe. The red rock borders on purple -- a mark of the iron content -- which sets off the dark green of the pine trees and the lighter green of moss and grass

The mountain has many different facets, with avalanche gullies and scree and little cliffs. It’s a mountain that seems to hold in its embrace many smaller mountains. The light and the angles change over the course of the day, making the mountainside endlessly fascinating.

What can I say? It has presence. But so do Sinopah at the far end of the lake and Lone Walker standing guard over Upper Medicine Lake, and the many other mountains whose names I am only just learning. No wonder the Blackfeet consider this land sacred. Cathedrals were built to mimic this feeling.

As awe-inspiring as this country can be, it also has a feeling of kindness. Waterfalls are everywhere.

Maybe it’s different in winter, but right now, the mist off the falls is blissful on a hot day, and trails are a berry buffet with huckleberries, thimble berries and moose berries. I ate my way to Upper Medicine Lake and back on my first major hike!

Huckleberries are like wild blueberries, and thimble berries, pictured here, are fragile but flavorful cousins of the raspberry. I’m not sure what moose berries are related to, but they are small, sweet and thirst-quenching.

I said “how you doing?” to a stranger on my way back, and he said: “Living the dream!” 

My goodness. Yes, indeed, we are.