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DAY SEVEN : The next morning Don waylays a driver of one of the restored vintage tour buses that crisscross Glacier National Park . The red ignites the morning . He tells us that the director of the park came in with a handful of mountain ash berries and said , “ Paint the buses this color .”
We head up Going-to-the-Sun Road , stopping every few miles to contemplate a glacier-carved peak , the fall of light on a darkblue lake , the feel of the day .
We crest Logan Pass and see the interior of the Rockies in all its glory . The Garden Wall , a huge face of rock , curves to our right . Before us lay peaks with glacial cirques clawed in the flanks . The High way to the Sun traces a line down the Wall , beneath waterfalls . Mountain goats are stark white against the shadows . We descend , only to stop , turn around and repeat the experience . The namesake glaciers may be gone , the artists having signed their work have moved on . What ’ s left is silence and awe .
After so much beauty , Kalispell , the western portal to Glacier , strikes us as a grotesque collection of strip-mall franchise clutter . We ride south into smoke . Montana is on fire .
Lesson : If you peak first thing in the morning , don ’ t be surprised if it goes downhill from there .
WISDOM : At a coffee stop in Suly we meet a resident of Wisdom . He tells us the town has a population of 65 . About a third male . Three single women . Three restaurants . A gas station . A general store . It ’ s a great place to live , although he has to travel as far as 300 miles to find work .
Lewis and Clark passed this way , and after surviving a particularly hellish series of passes , decided to name three convergent rivers after the qualities of Thomas Jefferson , their sponsor . Of the three — Wisdom , Philosophy and Philanthropy — only Wisdom stuck .