We are taking a brief respite from the wilderness--hence the Travel Log updates.  After a week in the eastern and northern sections of Glacier, we are in West Glacier and splurging at a commercial campground for a couple of nights.  The children have gone to the swimming pool (I'm hoping that they pass for 14 years old and don't get sent back to the rv!) and I'll join them in a few minutes.  Tomorrow we will move into the Fish Creek campground, on Lake McDonald inside the park--hooray for more evening ranger talks in the amphitheaters!  (Un-hooray for no hot water or electricity for awhile.)  We'll pull out the guitars and ukuleles and attempt to make some family music by the fireside. (Can anybody send a simple chord progression for "Be Wild, O My Soul"?)

Today we ventured into Polebridge, Montana, population about 25, I guess.  The "town" is very frontier-like.  Generator-only, a little Mercantile (where the Holy has sent some angel who bakes the most amazing pastries for the odd collection of hippies, backpackers, trout-fishers, and die-hard tourists like us.  Using a generator!), and the Northern Lights Saloon--where we were prepared to introduce our children to bar life if it meant we could get a cheeseburger.  Fortunately (I suppose) they don't open until June 30, so we made do with the pastries.  We did get occasional updates on the USA-Ghana soccer match, so I guess there was a satellite back in the wilds somewhere.  Of course, there was a guy wandering around Polebridge in a College of Charleston shirt.  It's a small world.

I've finished Kathleen Norris's book, "Dakota:  A Spiritual Geography," and having driven the breadth of South Dakota, I hear her.  She talks a great deal about the smallness of those Dakota towns, and compares them with the Benedictine monasteries that she loves, and her small Presbyterian church.  Her discussions of community have made me think very often of Glendale.  It's definitely worth the read, even if you haven't driven South Dakota from stem to stern.

On the whole we are well, though we had a pretty significant emotional setback this week.  Totally smitten with Waterton, Alberta, we were prepared to pack up from Many Glacier and return there for 3 or 4 days.  Just as I stepped into a restaurant to pick up a to-go order for our picnic supper on Wednesday, Park Services personnel "put down" an injured deer in the lakeside park just across the street.  Without warning.  So hearing the blast, I came out onto the sidewalk to see David and the children standing horror-stricken, along with dozens of other tourists and residents.  Nice folk whom we'd met on the boat or on a trail came over to the bench where I sat trying to console Mia, explaining that the deer's leg was broken, and it would have suffered, etc.  It wasn't the time or place to attempt to explain that the combination of a loud noise, blood, and a dead deer were going to require post-traumatic-stress interventions for our family.  So we left lovely Waterton pretty quickly and won't return there on this trip.  Everybody is a little strung-out, but I think settling back down somewhat.  Several days of swimming in Lake McDonald should chill us out pretty thoroughly, I'm hoping.

I'm thinking very often of the group that left for Baptist Youth Camp this morning, and those who finished up a week of Bible School yesterday, and the movies on the hill, and the heat of the Nashville summer.  We will leave here on Wednesday and head directly for Yellowstone--but if there's a wifi hot spot between here and there, we'll send you our reflections from Fish Creek.  Prayers and love from all of us.  ~A