To Kalispell

I've arrived in Kalispell. I left Karen, Steve and the little ones early this morning. Karen's mother Suzanne drove me to Portland airport whcih was lovely. She gave me a cucumber just picked from her garden and Karen sent me off with homemade musli in a tuperwear box. I'd got up early to savour the last morning under the fresh bit sky and some damn fine coffee. Some kind of bird of prey, eagle or vulture - they have both and I didn't see it long enough to I.D., caught it's epic wing span in the deep yellow golden sunlight like some bold mythical thing. A great send off. I was sorry to say goodbye to Rowan and Amelia but they'll be in the UK for Christmas. In the short week I've been there I've watched Amelia's face come into focus the way small babys do, like watching a photo develop.

The journey was via Seattle on a tiny, propeller driven place. I counted 9 or 10 rows. I sat by the window but the clouds were obscuring the views of the mountains. I'd already seen Mt Hood shrouded in haze from fires. Mt St Helen I'd seen previously as it's near the house, it looks like a Japanese wood block print. Traveling with the hat is a practice in it's own right. It was too large to go in the overhead locker so I had it on my lap and tried not to dent it with the huge edition of US Vogue I'd bought. There was a three hour lay over in Seattle, time for a big chowder lunch and lots of wondering around shops, then off on a marginally bigger plane to Kalispell.

We flew over the mountains east of Seattle then the rectangular crop fields of Idaho, then more mountains spotted with tourquoise lakes every now and then before the haze of smoke and Montana. They've had really bad fires, and the smoke has got particularly severe in the last few days according to Jim the taxi driver who collected me from the airport. A guy on the plane who looked like he knew a thing or two reckoned the fires wouldn't stop until the snows later in the year. He had a great shirt on covered with horses and and a face with lines that also spoke weather and horses. I got to the hotel, the Grand and noted it's very conveniently beside Western Outfitters. Bingo. Lets go shopping.