The Missouri Breaks

Nature Note – There were only a few Wild Rose bushes and blossoms in the area, but there were rose hips everywhere. Perhaps it’s the time of year, but I found there were fewer wildflowers that I expected.

The night before, we’d decided to work toward being on the water by about 9:30. This was a 35-ish KM paddle section from Fort Benton downstream to a river campsite called Wood Bottom. Everyone was up early and, with some good coordination, we were on the water by 9am.

The weather today was ideal! Only light winds rippled the water, and the wind was generally coming from behind us. It made for a pleasant paddle.

This is a meandering section of the river and reminded me of so many prairie paddle trips we’ve done as a group – Red River, Assiniboine River etc. The difference with the Missouri River is that the banks in this section are so much higher and much more dramatic. In several places we simply let the boat drift to take in the scenery of low rolling hills on one side and steep carved and eroded cliffs on the other.

The current was moving well as we paddled past cliffs where even the tiniest overhang was filled with mud-made swallow nests. In a few places, as we passed, a cloud of swallows dropped from their nests to sweep out over the river looking for a snack of mosquitoes. Pleasantly, I have to say that there were very few mosquitoes on this trip!

The 4-hour paddled meant that we averaged 8-9 km/hr. In a few places, where the river narrowed and we followed the current-line closely, we got up to about 15km/hr – not bad for these big canoes! That said, we did run into a few places where the water was so shallow that we scraped the bottom.

Green is dominant on this Montana landscape right now – very unexpected. There has been so much rain that virtually every quarter of the hillsides and meadows are lush. I think all of us expected the place to be the distinct yellow-brown of most prairie settings by this time of year.

That’s another image that remains powerful in this trip – the sheer amount of sky! It is everywhere and reminds me of that W. O. Mitchell quote: ‘…the skeleton requirements, simply, of land and sky…’ from his book, Who Has Seen The Wind. And, of course, the wind here is as constant as Mitchell was recalling in Saskatchewan.

The day ended for us at Wood Bottom where we were met by Richard driving Val’s big van with all our supplies. This is simply a big gravel open piece of ground and oddly unlike the more welcoming settings we’ve seen so far. Still, we’d covered the miles in good time and without incident – both harbingers of things to come I hope.