Along The Streams of Life

"along the streams of life there are places to rest, and you stop and enjoy them".

So I sit early in the morning in a small coffee shop in Bozeman MT.   

This is the third and last blog from Yellowstone this year.

You can smell and see smoke haze from the fires down in the park still.  Young 20 somethings with one or two children surround me in the Rockford Coffee shop with a life and vibrancy i’ve not seen in some time. You see they are living in a small town doing what they love to do, and like the others they meet here and strike up smiling conversations with, you almost get a feeling that they know something you don’t.  Like, “it’s worth it to be here no matter the cost or lifestyle changes.  But hey, don’t tell anyone cause it’s still quaint and quasi quiet here”.

I spent  last night, with my old friend Mac in Bozeman. (In this picture here is Patty from Wisconsin with Mac setting camp at Carballa's along the Yellowstone.)  Mac if you remember last years blog (in the archives) , is from the Bitterroots and was to be a caster in “A River Runs Through It”,  He’s a fishing guide and owner of rental properties and seller of Phone Book advertising. He lives like a pauper and drinks like a fish. Sleeps with a bible on his chest in the great outdoors on a cot covered with a blue tarp. We’ll we spent the evening on the hills overlooking Bozeman and watchin the sun set over the MT ranges.  Yup, there's Mac sleeping outdoors under the tarp there in this picture and using the tree for his closet to hang his wet fishin gear.. 

After a beautiful sunset we spent the rest of the night in Ted Turners Grill talking life and faith and futures with "Alta" the bartender who remembered me when I sat down and said hello..

We had ribeyes and then walked the streets till midnight talking to others who were out there just “walking or biking” in the dark. 

Let me go back to earlier in the week..  People are what life is all about. I camped next to a Jewish man from L. Island who didn’t fish a lick,  but was there for a week straight. Camping and taking his 20yr old son anywhere to fly fish 12hrs a day all week. Just to be there for his son to explore it all  and see the joy in his face every day. Overweight and not in shape, this 60 something dad huffed it day and night to let his son “shine” and experience his dreams.  So glorious.. So beautiful. So unselfish... So... God!  

I saw at the camp fire each night a joy in that dad that could not have come from anything else he'd ever do in life... 

Then I ran into and gave my camp site away to a young married couple in the Air force.

He was a P.K. and had just finished F16 school. He was granted 9 days off before deployment to the Mideast. He wants to be a  missionary pilot someday.  And there they were, with a beer and wine telling me that neither of them could tell their parents that they swore, let a lone drank or saw movies.. Yet in all that strict dysfunction, they wanted to still be missionary pilots someday.. There is it. The Power of Christ overcoming our own limitations in raising children into wacky doctrines and fear based faith.  As they would intimate, “well, we live in a world around people who are very smart and ego driven as fighter pilots. Faith is not an equation for most of the men... only their wives really are open to it. So we listen, and don’t judge, and just be who we are” God does the changing in people not us”... Woo hooo. young people with their head on straight!  By the end of two days I had them thinking and realizing that their life is their ministry, not, some future “ministry within ministry”. You can move from fighter pilot to commercial pilot or trainer and prob. impact more lives there than in any bush pilot full time gig. Make sure you’re called into things before you just do them. Do a bunch of trips for missions people in your vacation time for a few years and see how it resonates before throwing away a military career or something similar.. Oh yea, and precious wife?  An RN. ready to serve. ANYWHERE.

Then there’s Al. Well, we met the day he came to camp. Half mountain man and half Willie Nelson, he just one more “one of a kind guys”.  62yr old Vietnam Vet  with heavy combat experience, Al’s been a fishing / hunting guide on the upper Wisconsin border for 30 years.  Hands like a lumberjack, all cracked and broken, Al is just one more person of faith who just struggles with church as we know it, but Jesus?, oh yea, can’t deny the faith in Him.  His wife works for a Catholic school and they just survive it all in upper WI. We had days of great talks around the fire at night as he sipped his "honey liquor" and spoke of great hunting and fishing stories.  In the morning over coffee he'd recant the animals he's spotted earlier that morning or late the night before. We even spent a day fishing and hiking the upper Sodabutte River together. He carried about a 12lb 44magnum  revolver with 4 loads and 2 empty chambers. (didn't want to blow his foot off by accident..).
This picture of Al was after our day on the river, lying on the bank with the hoppers jumping all around, as we  had a pop and talked about how great it is to just “be here” in Yellowstone and enjoy God in it all.

Well I packed camp and moved up river and out of the park along the yellowstone to a town called “Pray” and a campsite along the river called “Paradise”. Those folks at least no how to call something properly:) 

Unlike an intersection in old Bozeman i drove by called Church and Fridley.. For those who don’t know I live in a city called Fridley.. . That was pretty funny.

Alone at Paradise, in the town of Pray on the Yellowstone I was wet fishing the banks of and getting a few Cutthroats on Royal Coachman and coachman streamers.  I got back as it was getting dark and there was a young couple. Bo and Tiffany settin up camp.

Both 28 and sleeping in  a 1972 little trailer they had purchased and rebuilt.  They looked like a country song sittin in that trailer talkin with their feet up and a cold beer.  Bo is a Personal Trainer and Physical Therapist and Tiffany, she is a business owner with an Mba in Business.  She's bought and sold 3 businesses since she was 21. Divorced and with a beautiful 4yr old boy, she's a Montana force to be dealt with. 200 years ago she would have probably owned a saloon and hoocheecoo.  What a night we had cooking and sharing stories together. Bo looks like Joe Mauer but with muscles and Tiffany looks like a 28yr old Linda Evans from Dynasty but as a champion swimsuit body building model.(for real).  This photo was literally 5min after they got up and walked out of their trailer at 7AM.  I just love when people  don't say "Well I've not done my hair and makeup.. no pictures till I'm all cleaned up".. We stayed up late and they cooked black and blue ribeyes and I cooked freeze dried soup and rice.. and hops and box cab.   We talked life and faith  for hours. Bo cringed each time faith was even mentioned in the conversations. Telling me  of wacko churches in the valley that somehow believe God will turn your teeth to gold and your fillings. Crazies as he would call them. Bo has a beautiful brother with C.P. and somehow i think down deep that’s a part of why he is going through that season of turning down the volume on God,  or at least his ability to discuss it with someone else...  The next morning Bo and I drove up into Livingston to their home

 and he got a couple sets of golf clubs and we went to the Livingston G.Club to play 9 holes along the banks of the Yellowstone River.  Such a great time with a fine young man looking to make a difference in life.  I look forward to years of online conversations with him in the future. I left he and Tiffany two cans of my MSR dual fuel and a can of pepper spray. I swore Bo thought it was Christmas early.

So I wrapped up another week of wilderness along the beautiful streams of MT/WY. from Bozeman through Paradise Valley to Gardiner and then over to the Lamar Valley.

 This year was different. Fishing was harder. Weather was from the 90's to the teens.  People seemed to be friendly,  but ready to break from the last few years of a downed economy and all the depression we've been feeling as a nation. I  also saw more Europeans and Asians than Americans this year in the park.

The wildlife? Well they are the constant residents along with the Rock walls and River swells. The tree's.. ? Well they come and go in wildfires but will be here long after I'm gone. The famous petrified tree photo I took here is one example that God has been around the planet a long long time and He aint really into carbon dating.

So below here as I drove off out of the park, the sun broke through the clouds and into rainbow colors hitting the ground as if to say. "hey look over here Craig, this would be a nice place to live".


And so I dream of gin colored streams and the smell of fresh Rosemary after the rain.  I'll remember the tug of the line and the rise on the water and all the beautiful trout that came to dance.

And in the end, along those streams in God's country i leave a apart of my heart till next year. Hoping i will find it re-connecting to this ole body once again. To perhaps re-fill it with the sounds,sights and smells of a lost paradise....  on a yellow stone.

....see you in my dreams...