I came west to escape the heat

Years ago I came west to escape the heat.

Either that or I was headin’ down the highway lookin’ for adventure.

Whatever the reason, I found both cooler weather and excitement in Montana.

I got a job in Cooke City working for an outfitter. Riding and packing horses in the Beartooth Mountains provided plenty of adventure, and the high–elevation climate of Cooke was a delight. It seldom topped 80 degrees.

I’d grown up in southern Indiana where the summer nights were sweltering, and we didn’t have air-conditioning until I was in junior high.

The chilly nights and cool summer days in the mountains were a relief from the heat and humidity I’d left behind. A few years later I moved from Cooke to Livingston where the climate isn’t quite so rare, but still beat the hot, muggy Midwest all to heck.

It would get hot there, but not for long. My old friend Tanner Ellis used to tell me it would heat up for a few weeks in late July or early August, but that was about it. The rest of the time is was quite tolerable.

And it was.

Until recently.

How recently, I can’t really say. But sometime between then and now things changed. It’s been years since we had a cool, wet, June or an August that turned to fall before I was ready to let go of summer.

People used to make jokes about summer in Montana, about how short and quickly fleeting it was.

Now it’s simply too hot for too long.

And while this most recent spate of torrid weather might be blamed on a unique set of meteorological circumstances, it was more than 100 degrees in much of the state weeks ago.

It’s been so hot for so long that the climate change naysayers have even shut up.

I know I’d never seen 106 degrees in June before.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has imposed angling restrictions on a number of rivers across the state where high temperatures and low stream flows are stressing fish. Sections of the Shields River and the Upper Big Hole are already completely closed to fishing.

Maybe it’s time for a return to Cooke City where the forecast for the next week calls for highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s. Apparently you can still escape the heat somewhere in Montana.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]