Montana Road
Since the beginning of quarantine, our house has gone through phase after phase in the kitchen, the first phase being the infamous frite phase. After travelling the world for 10 months and spending most of the end of the trip in Southeast Asia, Tom was ready for some good ol’ American French fries (we can argue about who did it first, but there’s no question who does them best). We got on a kick of frying potatoes -- in beef tallow, no less -- at least five or six times a week for the first couple of weeks he was home. Of course the natural next phase was the smash burger phase, which overlapped with the frites phase for a few meals. After consuming so much beef fat for days on end, and feeling quite good about it, Tom decided to read some dumb book telling us animal protein wasn’t good for us. We spent the next month or so eating plant based, and since I was too crippled to cook, I couldn’t really complain about it.
I’m not here to tell you salad isn’t delicious. It is. Beets and cucumbers and carrots -- all that rabbit food is perfectly wonderful and will always have a place on my plate. That said, when my birthday rolled around in June and Tommy plopped a big, juicy steak on my plate, I didn’t even bother to ask where the greens were.
If you have any interest in this conversation about animal protein, you should check out The China Study. I left Tom to do the research, and since he’s a physician assistant, I have no doubt about the findings of the book: The long term effects of animal protein on the body are not ideal -- especially for people who already experience heart-related issues. But I’m not sure how to pair this with the fact that I own five egg-laying chickens, kill at least one deer a year on average, and love the taste of cheeseburgers and chicken fried steak (not to mention a medium-rare ribeye, but that’s a given). As with anything, I think it boils down to moderation (except meth and heroin -- any amount is too much). I respect anyone who can commit themselves to the vegan life, but I’m just not ready to trade cheese and bacon for one or two more years on Earth -- especially given how this most-recent year has gone.
We’ve hit a few other phases in the quarantine kitchen, notably the perfect breakfast taco, homemade pasta, and beet mint ice cream to name a few. The latest on our list has been a perfectly charred steak on our portable grill. Tommy, Amanda, and I started the trend on our western road trip, and it has continued to be a mainstay on the menu. Our first two nights in Colorado we grilled steak and corn, tossed a salad together, and enjoyed a bottle of red wine around a tiny table within our tiny home airbnb. After three nights in Wyoming, we met up with close friends in Montana and cooked our best version of the road trip steak dinner as the sky turned to shades of orange and pink in Paradise Valley.
There’s nothing like that country up there and the golden hills, filled with elk and grizzly bears, where the Yellowstone River runs. We unloaded our picnic on lush grass outside our friend’s cabin and went to work prepping a salad, wrapping corn in foil, and torching our coals for yet another hot cook fire. The air was just cool enough to make Texans bristle, and we huddled around the little grill comfortably rather than trying to escape the heat like we do back home. The corn takes the longest to cook, but is the easiest to prepare. We wrapped bare ears in foil, threw them on the grill, and then went about the business of preparing a salad, setting the table, and mixing together our essential sauce for every steak night. This dipping sauce, like a lot of things in the kitchen, is something I picked up from Tom and probably won’t ever let go of. It’s simple -- consisting of fresh-squeezed lime juice, salt, freshly ground black pepper, and an optional heat factor like chili flakes or sliced jalapenos. I still prefer to salt my steak generously before cooking, but with this dipping sauce, it really isn’t necessary. It’s not the same classic experience you’ll get of eating fatty, buttery meat at your favorite steak house, but this method also reduces your potential for error. Instead of worrying about how much salt to rub your steak with, you just need to focus on doneness (which is arguably harder to nail, but still). Trust me: Once you try it, you’ll never go back.
The steaks finished cooking right as the sun fell behind the mountains, and we were left in dull, gray light for our evening dinner. It wasn’t great photography lighting, but it was just the quiet evening our traveling bodies needed, with plenty of wine and a few grilled peaches and vanilla ice cream for dessert.
After a few days of enjoying the beautiful views of the valley, Tom and I set out to pass through the land on the river that carved it. We had been itching to throw flies with our new rods, bought specifically for this trip, in the hopes of catching some trout for the first time. In retrospect, this seems like a very arrogant, Texan thing to do, comparable to buying your first rifle for an African safari. But I like to think Tom and I entered into this with a certain amount of humility, knowing we were clueless and happy to be so. Wally, our guide, made us feel like old friends from the start, and never seemed the least bit annoyed that we drove all the way from Texas to stir up his home waters (Montana-1, Colorado-0). We met up in a grocery store parking lot and followed him to the takeout to drop our car where we loaded into his Tacoma. The inside of his truck was covered in hand-tied flies he had crafted over his winters in Montana, and we’d soon find out his tackle box was overflowing with abundance as well -- his truck was like a fly shop in itself. We drove ten miles upriver to the put in, backed the little drift boat into the water, and were on our way.
It must have been my second or third cast, the truck still in view, that I felt the first big tug on my line. I set the hook well but fumbled to get the line under control for the first time, everything different with a fly rod. Then we watched as the colorful fish darted through the clear waters, ripping line from my reel. Wally got excited and was saying “big fish, big fish,” and that only added to the oncoming disappointment. Being the gumbies that we are, I didn’t know how and where to steer the fish, and Tommy didn’t know to pull his line away from where the fish was headed. We got tangled, and the line went slack. Damn Texans.
I think I was so bewildered by the first two or three minutes of the float that I didn’t realize how magical that first bite was. I’ve been hunting and fishing on and off my whole life, so I know that when something comes easy, it just doesn’t feel as special or rewarding as the animal you’ve worked hard to find. It’s why the ten-point buck I killed two years ago after one sit in the stand will simply never mean as much as the smaller deer I hunted all season for. I think catching that first fish might have ruined our expectations for the rest of our ten-mile float, leaving us to be constantly wondering why the rest of the fish weren’t so eager to jump on our hooks. Instead we were left with the understanding that these fish were not so easy to come by -- that we would have to work to put dinner on the table that evening.
Quickly after this encounter, the fish indeed kept biting. We found some small rainbows, so light that my hook set pulled one right out of the water and into my lap. More often we caught mountain white fish which were extremely fun to catch, but still not exactly what we had come for. When I finally hooked up with a decent rainbow, I could tell Wally was determined to land this one in the boat. He coached me like a pro, always instilling confidence and instructing me on how to handle the rod and the fish. After a few minutes of fighting and watching the fish pass back and forth around the boat, Wally steered us toward shallow water, and in one motion dropped anchor and leapt out of the side of the boat, net in hand to finish the job. We told Wally we wanted to keep some fish to cook if possible, and being a gracious guide, he was more than happy to share the resources of his home waters with a couple of Texans, loud talkers or otherwise (Tommy being the otherwise). He killed the fish for us, placed it in a baggie, and in the cooler it went.
After landing my second rainbow of the day for the cooler, it was Tom’s turn to cast from the front of the boat. Being up front gives you first crack at any fish that are feeding in the current of the river. We fished hard, drank some beer, and absorbed the Montana sunshine until time for lunch with only a few more mountain white fish to show for our efforts. Wally pulled the boat into the shade and dropped anchor, and we sat for half an hour to take in the rolling golden hills of Paradise Valley. An hour or so later Tommy set the hook on a big fish, and the fight was on. He steered it back and forth as Wally fought the current of the river looking for shallow water, but ultimately we had to ride with the fish down a rapid. After losing a handful of good fish, Tom and I were sure we’d never see this one in the boat. “You got two cranks on the reel if you want ‘em, Tommy.” A second later and Wally was diving, net in hand, over the edge of the drift boat to scoop our biggest rainbow of the day.
It’s really hard to beat new experiences like these. There’s a level of excitement in the freshness of it all that can’t really be replicated. And to have this sort of encounter in the wide-open Montana mountains on the cool running Yellowstone adds to this immediate feeling of something akin to nostalgia—nostalgia for a memory not yet fully formed. We settled into lawn chairs back at our cabin upriver, cracked open cold beers, and went to work gutting the three rainbows and one mountain white fish we had brought back. Each fish was seasoned with salt and pepper, stuffed with onions, garlic, and sliced lemons, and then wrapped individually in foil for the grill. We poured wine for our friends and had them put together a salad while we lit the grill one last time. Dinner was served as the dying sunlight lay golden on distant hills, igniting the surface of the water, and there could have been no better setting for our first bite of trout than along the river they came from. These moments sort of slap you in the face -- a sudden realization that right now you’re creating a memory you’ll always look back on with a comfortable fondness -- your day with your buddy and the river guide, catching fish to feed your friends.
Montana road is over, and all our Spotify playlists are worn out and tired. We’ve settled in back home to dream up something new, and while the little grill might need a fresh coat of paint, it’s itching to get back on the road again. With deer season fast approaching, and Tommy hell bent on harvesting his first doe, I think we’ll have plenty of reasons to light it up in the coming months. For now at least, we’ll keep eating meat.
Pro tip for all you trout eaters: Keep some nước mắm handy. If it seems like we’re getting repetitive with the fish sauce, it’s because the applications are endless. And special shoutout to all the awesome people we shared a meal with on this trip: Amanda, Jenna, Taylor, Katie, Ben, Sandy, Wally, and everyone’s favorite — Birdie.