The September of 1986 my David and I decided to stay in Montana instead of coming back to Arizona. That began a five year stretch of time spent in the frozen north, as far as I was concerned. Goodness, my feet were never warm. Hubby would smile and say, “But we live in the banana belt of Montana Honey! This is mild weather!” Those were some frozen bananas let me tell you!

One of the best places we lived was in St. Ignatius, Montana. It’s about halfway between Kalispell and Missoula. Just twenty minutes up the road is Ronan, Montana. The Bison Range sits across the street from St. Ignatius. There was a city block, a hospital, a church, and a school. The rest of the terrain was farmland. It’s the only reservation I know of where the Anglos pay the Indians for the water and game rights. That is the only way it should be, anyway, though no one asked for my opinion.

One of the first things that happened when we moved was a protest concerning that very issue. All the farmers and ranchers got into their big trucks r combines and drove up and down the two lane highway from Ronan to St. Ignatius and back again. Quite a sight, though it didn’t do the Anglos any good. One of the best treaties written and probably one of the few that was kept to the letter was rightfully in the keeping of the Flathead Indians of Northwest Montana.

Other than that silent though colorful protest, that was the only time I saw, heard, felt any difference of opinion between us as humans. St. Ignatius is unique because of the geographical location. There is a huge mountain range,(The Misssion Mountias)  and an irrigation canal at the base of the mountain range, the valley where the town and farmland is situated then a two lane highway then the Bison Range. St. Ignatius has no growing room at all. It is just a stretch of land between a mountain and a buffalo; so to speak.

I didn’t have trouble getting work as an RN. I was still young enough that I didn’t even think about it, I just walked into the rural hospital and went to work the next day, as usual. But this was in the middle 1980’s and after the closing of Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee, Arizona just the year before you’d have thought I would have at least been a bit fearful, but no, not even an inkling.

In the mid 1980’s the corporations that owned hospitals in larger towns set their sights fifty to a hundred miles out and bought up the little rural hospitals. I still don’t know why. They would buy them, tell the employees everything would be fine, then in less than six months they would close the hospitals down. I think the corporations went into too large of a debt, then couldn’t make payroll, but I am only an egg, slightly cracked. Also in the mid 1980’s most rural hospitals had the same floor plan. They were shaped like a “T” and had everything you have in a big city hospital, on a smaller scale. The nurses were more flexible as well as more skilled, because we had to know how to perform every role of every part of the hospital. Especially on night shift. Night shift for nurses is and always has been the youngest nurse’s domain. Sort of like trial by fire. So ther you are, less than a decade of nursing under your belt and you are on shift in a rural hospital with three other nurses, all RN’s as well, twenty five bed med surg floor, twelve geriactric beds, room for one mom and one baby, one OR, Lab, X-Ray, and Emergency Room. One RN would take the Geriatric beds for a week at a time, then we would switch. Two RN’s on the floor at all times and one to float between all areas but mainly for the Emergency Room.

If it was a bad night, then only one RN would stay on the floor and there would be two for the Emergency Room. Being on a reservation, on a state highway, fifty miles from a large city guaranteed that your Emergency Room would be put to good use. You really had no way of knowing what was going to come through your doors, most of the time the ambulance would call and tell you some history, give you time to call the physician to come in but a lot of times the back door would just open and someone would stumble in, hurt. One horrific night the work, we did as a team was used as a disaster drill for the year by the Director of Nurses. We were a team though, and that made all the difference. It didn’t matter what needed to be done, we could handle it.

We went in with little to no idea how or what to do, when it was slow we would teach each other how to take an EKG, how to autoclave a surgical pack, we would pack and repack surgical kits, break down the emergency code kit and drill one another on different surgical tools. We always had to clean anyway, so we would familiarize ourselves with the different things in our little hospital. I was still a new nurse, relatively speaking; my experience was significantly increased by the rural hospitals in which I worked.

Life in Montana was different from life in the desert; we saw a more varied fauna in Montana, for sure. One of the saddest things was the bear cub stuck on the telephone pole. He must have followed his Mother bear down to the valley in the night, perhaps got spooked by a truck or a car, because the cub was on top of the pole that was right on the highway. We were renting a little ranch house close to the highway and when we woke up, we could see the cub immediately. Worse though were the cub’s cries. That really bothered the kids, you knew that cub was calling for its mother and of course, she was hiding or perhaps, already back up the mountain. We never knew. The Fish and Game Warden came, the Fire Men and the Ranchers all did their best, but by nightfall, the cub was exhausted and they were no closer to getting it down off the pole. I was dismayed to realize what they intended to do and very glad the kids had long grown bored with the proceedings.

A rancher we knew must have seen by the look on my face what I was going through, as well as being known for a tenderfoot, because he just started talking to me. He told me that if they left the cub up the pole, the Mother may or may not come back down the mountain to get it, if she couldn’t get it to come down again, this time she may stay in town, may cause trouble with the people and the animals. He also pointed out that since it is a small town and there are kids as well as older folks that the risk of having the cub shot by poachers was a risk they didn’t want to take. I looked puzzled at that, I knew we ate a lot of untagged game in May, after all. The rancher said, poaching wouldn’t be so bad unless one of the ranchers or someone decided to capture the poacher while they were doing it, then I might find my work night a bit more hectic than usual at the hospital. Good point!

The best part of St. Ignatius to us was the people. That little community accepted us as if we were long lost relatives! They made us feel right at home. We didn’t have to worry about a place to live, the hospital paid for us to stay in the motel up the road between Ronan and St. Ignatius for less than a week, and then they got us a ranch house to rent. That summer I stayed in town and David went up the road to The post at Glacier National Park. I met a woman, Sharon Six Feathers, who stayed with us all that summer and she took care of the kids so I could sleep in the daytime. She took them with her to all the rendezvous that summer. I couldn’t have had a better friend than Sharon, nor a better caregiver for the kids, we missed her when she moved to Ronan!

We Miss her, still. We love you, Sharon! Stay well.