Barb wasn't going to ride tandem

While visiting with an old friend recently I happened to mention my snowmobiles.

He took a step back, a shocked look on his face.

“You have a snowmobile?” he asked.

“Two, in fact,” I told him.

His surprise was understandable. When I lived in the mountains I was a cross-country skier, not a ‘biler, although the choice was more economical at the time than aesthetic. All I could afford were skis.

And I was once even censured by the paper I worked for after writing a column criticizing an effort to increase the number of snowmobiles allowed into Yellowstone National Park each winter.

Apparently I also made a few disparaging remarks in that column concerning the lovely little village of West Yellowstone.

But that’s water under the bridge.

A few years ago, after getting snowed in at our cabin on Fort Peck, I suggested to Barb that we buy a snowmobile. She said get two. She wasn’t about to ride tandem although she had another word for it.

We used them that first winter while ice fishing on the lake, but they’ve seen little use since. Last winter there was no snow up here and this winter’s shaping up in similar fashion.

Like the old expression “All dressed up and nowhere to go,” we’re completely outfitted for winter travel while we sit here and watch the prairie around us turn to desert.

I also mentioned to my old friend that we had an ATV, another conveyance I’ve never written about kindly.

He just blinked his eyes.

I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe what little wild, roadless country remains should stay that way. I never bought into the argument that the old and infirm should have the same access to those places as the young and fit, even though I now find myself fitting in more comfortably with the former group than the latter.

There are far too few wild places left. We don’t need to visit them on snowmobiles or side by sides or dirt bikes. There is a whole world of places where we can turn the key and drive.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]