263: RUNNING EAGLE FALLS PROVIDED MY FIRST TASTE OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

The sixth day of our trip began when my photographer’s alarm rang at 5:30am on Tuesday September 12, 2023. Even though it was still dark outside, I was anxious to hit the road and get my first glimpse of Big Sky Country. This was going to be my first-ever full day in the state of Montana, and I was excited. As my companions got ready to take on the day, I felt the anticipation rising inside my resin body. In my mind, I knew we would see some amazing scenery all the way to Glacier National Park, which was 500 miles away. Before we headed to the van, however, I heard Tom tell his wife our primary goal for the day was to get those hundreds of miles under our belts and make it to our hotel – which was the Glacier Peaks Hotel & Casino in Browning, Montana. My photographer also mentioned that once we had arrived in Browning, that hotel would be our base camp for the following two days at Glacier National Park. That news made Vicki happy because it meant we didn’t have to pack and unpack for two entire days.

Once my companions had refilled their grocery supplies at a Sidney, Montana grocery store, the three of us set out on our journey westward towards Browning. Since we had such an incredibly long drive ahead of us, Tom took his turn behind the wheel of our Pacifica for half the trip. Thankfully his Siri GPS app was working well because navigation has never been one of Vicki’s strong suits, which is the primary reason she’s usually the driver during our long trips together.

The first 35 miles out of Sidney got us to U.S. Route 2 at Culbertson, Montana, which was the moment I first became stunned at what I saw – or should I say, what I didn’t see. While I had envisioned the entire state of Montana to be mountainous with one breathtaking view after another, I couldn’t have been more wrong. For over 450 miles, all I saw as I gazed through the passenger-side window was low rolling hills of harvested fields of wheat and wild grasses. Very few trees; not many houses; some cattle; but definitely no mountains.

“On a long and lonesome highway, in eastern Montana. I listened to the engine moanin’ out its one-note song. And I thought about the mountains, I envisioned the night before. But soon my thoughts were wandering, when no mountains were in view. ‘Cuz when you’re riding endless hours, there’s not much else to do. And when you don’t feel much like riding, you just wish the drive was through. But there I was, on the road again. There I go, riding with Tom again. There I go, turn the page.”

The boredom of the long ride was broken when we traversed through the southern part of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and then the northern section of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. And although we didn’t stop in either of the reservations, I was able to make a startling revelation when we drove through one of the small towns. As we passed the middle school in Poplar, Montana, which was located on the eastern half of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, I noticed the school’s mascot, or nickname, was “Indians”. I was shocked when I saw the wording ‘Poplar Indians’ displayed in bold maroon and gold lettering on the school’s informational sign near the driveway entrance at Route 2. After all, aren’t we in the era when Cleveland’s major league baseball team was forced to change their name from ‘Indians’ to ‘Guardians’ and the Washington NFL team went from ‘Redskins’ to ‘Commanders’? Even a high school in Port Huron, Michigan, located just 12 miles north of where we live, recently changed their nickname from ‘Big Reds’ to ‘Red Hawks’. Then it dawned on me – maybe it wasn’t the proud Native Americans who insisted on the name changes; but instead, that impulsive woke movement came from the minds of fat, pencil-pushing Caucasians who don’t want to be labeled as the racists they are.

At roughly 3:15pm, the three of us finally arrived in the town of Browning, Montana, which was located in the heart of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. As we slowly made our way through the small town where a little over a thousand people call home, I was disheartened by what I saw. Not only did Browning seem old and worn, with its best days having passed long ago, but some of the streets were also overrun by a countless number of domestic dogs. Luckily for my companions and me, the Glacier Peaks Hotel, which was where we had reservations within a reservation, was the centerpiece of the small town. Our base camp for the next few days looked modern and well-kempt, which wasn’t a huge surprise as the hotel and connected casino were only a decade old.

I was with my photographer when he and Vicki went into the hotel’s lobby to register. Although they were informed their room wasn’t yet ready, the young woman at the reception desk mentioned a nearby place where we could go to kill some time. She flashed her beautiful smile and suggested the three of us head to the Two Medicine Entrance at Glacier National Park and make the short hike to see Running Eagle Falls. When Tom told the girl his “hiking days were over”, she laughed and said it was an easy walk along a flat trail. As a matter of fact, I laughed when I heard her tell my photographer the distance to the falls from the parking lot was about “the same distance from the hotel lobby to the front of the casino”, which was only about 100 yards.

Back in the van, the three of us headed west out of town and straight for the huge mountain range we could easily see on the distant horizon. It was the first moment on the trip where I saw mountains of any kind, and they looked majestically spectacular, even from 20 miles away. But with each passing mile, and the closer we got to Glacier National Park, the more my resin jaw opened in awe.

Shortly after we arrived at the Two Medicine Entrance to the park, Vicki drove the van west along 2 Medicine Road until we came to the parking area for the Running Eagle Falls trail. As Tom carefully placed me in the camera case for our short hike to the falls, I heard my photographer’s wife ask him: “Are you going to bring your hiking sticks? What about a bottle of water?” Tom looked at Vic and smiled: “This is just a walk in the park Kazansky. The girl at the hotel said the trail is flat and only a hundred yards long. I’ll be just fine.”

Tom’s hiking days went from being over to back on again as we headed along the well-manicured trail. But five or six minutes later, I realized two things – the trail became more unstable, and Running Eagle Falls was a lot further away than my photographer was led to believe. I also think that was the moment when Tom realized his chapped and freshly powdered nether region hadn’t fully recovered from the previous day’s hike as well.

Several hundred yards into our walk in the park, we arrived at a clearing where we got our first glimpse of Running Eagle Falls. Then, just as my two companions attempted to get closer to Two Rivers Creek and its beautiful waterfall, an inconsiderate “dickwad” (Vicki’s word) from a busload of German tourists decided to set off his anti-bear airhorn, which startled my photographer’s wife half to death. I heard Tom shout to the guy, “Set that airhorn off again and you’ll get it rammed up your foreign ass”, but the oblivious moron either didn’t understand English or his ears were ringing too much to hear my photographer’s threat. Either way, we didn’t hear a peep from Ol’ Lugwig von Dickwad’s airhorn again.

The soothing sound of the water rushing over the Running Eagle Falls was definitely the highlight of the day thus far, even though the amount of water traversing the falls was low compared to the flow in the springtime. But as beautiful and tranquil as the falls were, it was the Native American history of the area that made the visit special.

Running Eagle, who was born Pi’tamaka, arrived at an area high above the same falls in front of me for a four-day fast to suffer, dream, pray, and find her medicine. When her vision was successful, she became the first female warrior of the Blackfoot Tribe. She was an amazing leader for her tribe and led many successful battles. But sometime after 1878, Running Eagle was killed by Flathead warriors during a raid on their territory, which was located on the other side of the Continental Divide. Running Eagle was brought back to the Upper Two Medicine Lake area by her tribe where her body was buried in a mountain tree overlooking the same falls that now bear her name.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, please enjoy the images taken by my photographer during our late afternoon excursion to Glacier National Park’s beautiful Running Eagle Falls.

Running Eagle Falls was as magnificent as the hotel clerk had said, even though the hike to get to the falls was a lot further and more difficult than she had described. I laughed at one point during our visit when my photographer threw caution to the wind and slowly traversed his fat carcass down a steep slope to the creek’s edge to get a photo of the waterfall. Had Tom’s wife not let him use her hiking sticks, which was the only way he was able to get up the slope, he might have been forced to spend the night there – and that wouldn’t have been good for either of us. In my mind, we were in prime Sasquatch and black bear country.

For the return trip back to Browning and our hotel, Tom decided to take a slightly different route, which offered us a different view of the park. When I saw what looked like a possible glacier on one of the mountainsides, tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough. This was nature at its finest and I couldn’t wait to see what she had in store for us. The mountains; the lakes; the glaciers; the wild animals; and maybe even a Sasquatch; were all in our crosshairs for the following morning.

We arrived back at Glacier Peaks Hotel at roughly 5:30pm and our room was waiting for us. Once Tom had all of our gear safely brought to our room, the three of us headed for dinner at the Jackpot Restaurant, located inside the casino. As my photographer carried me through the busy casino, I heard Tom tell his wife he was in search of a KISS slot machine, similar to the Hollywood Casino machine in Kansas City where he won $176 in 2016. Unfortunately for Tom, but luckily for Vicki and me, none of the thousand or so slot machines we saw in the casino featured the “Hottest Band in the World”. Instead, the three of us headed to the restaurant where I watched my photographer put shrimp on the endangered species list.

Back in our room after dinner, I stood on my perch next to the TV set while Tom wrote and sent out his NASCAR report to his fantasy league. When that was finished, my exhausted two-consecutive-day hiker turned out the lights at nine o’clock and he was fast asleep shortly after.

Throughout the night, as I stood alone in the darkness, I had hoped to think about the scenery we were about to see on Wednesday. But I couldn’t. Instead, I thought about the two Indian reservations we drove through and the one we were lodging in. While it’s a fact that roughly one-third of all Native Americans live on reservations today, none of those areas of land we saw could be considered prime real estate. It saddens me to no end when I think about the way the Native people were treated throughout our nation’s history, beginning on May 28, 1830 when President Andrew Jerkson signed the Indian Removal Act that led to the infamous Trail of Tears. European settlers who transformed into Americans forced people from their homes and land in the East and made them relocate to some of the most inhabitable land in the West. Once the surviving natives were relocated, the new Americans tried to force the Native Americans to change their cultural way of life – including which god they worshipped.

Today, most Americans believe the atrocities that are ongoing in Ukraine with Russia’s unwarranted invasion and genocide of Ukrainian people has been deplorable. But the same thing happened in our country in the 1800s, and not many Americans blink an eye to the genocide that occurred within our own borders. The treatment of the native people in the current United States is the Holocaust nobody talks about. It’s America’s “Dirty Little Secret”.

Well, the secret is out, and I hope at some point during our trip I’ll have an opportunity to pay tribute to the Native Americans whose rich culture and ancestral beliefs should be embraced and not swept under the rug of history.

** This post is dedicated to the memory of Running Eagle, first female warrior of the Blackfoot tribe **