It’s a Magical World

A longtime friendship takes on a new dimension.

Trees drop their leaves. Farmers harvest. Hunters stalk the hills. As a symbol of mortality, fall can be a downer. But it’s my favorite season. It reminds me of vibrant “Calvin and Hobbes” Sunday strips, of thoughtful conversations in watercolor woods. My imaginary friend is named Josh. He’s not technically imaginary—he’s just not here. I moved to Montana alone, and I left my best friend behind.

Arriving in Bozeman was to two-step outside time. At Music on Main the traffic lights changed color, but no cars came through. In the crowded street the girls wore sundresses and knee-high boots while fellers twirled them to flatbed fiddle music. Stetson hats were worn with less affect than I’d imagined, and I regarded the strange notion of a “Last Best Place” as quaint. It might be hard to find authenticity today, but in Montana, tradition still holds out long enough to yield culture.

A decade passed and Josh never visited. No one did, except Mom one time. Solitude is the price I pay for perspective. Because you can’t really know yourself until you’ve been alone so long that you prefer it that way. But I needed conversation, which is why after so many years of missing my friend I began talking to him as though he were sitting right beside me in my 4x4 as I drove into the mountains.

If Josh is the size of Hobbes, I’m the size of Calvin. He has what he calls old-man strength.

We parked at the Sourdough trailhead, unloaded bikes and fly rods. “Do you want the Rambo knife or the bear spray?” I asked. Josh picked the bear spray, which would have been the correct choice had it not expired years ago. “These are the Gallatins.” I pointed out the obvious. “Bozeman’s back yard. You can traverse them to Yellowstone Park.”

“Have you?”

“No.”

If Josh is the size of Hobbes, I’m the size of Calvin. He has what he calls old-man strength. Our backyard football games made me strong, too. Even today, under his shiny head and shady brow, his eyes are child’s eyes. And like Hobbes, he’s sage. His perspective is refreshing, and it shows in those who surround him. They are many. He keeps darkness, too—was medicated as a child.

We granny-geared all the way to Mystic Lake, Josh overweighting my spare bike and sweating too much. But we made the ten-mile ride without much rest.

“I thought Montana had dry air,” he said.

“You are making the humidity yourself.”

We placed our bikes at the foot of a grassy slope. Looking back as we climbed over a ridge, they looked to me like clues in a search-and-rescue operation. We dropped off the ridge into close-set pine strung with lichen.

The lake’s fluorite hue impressed him. “Our water supply,” I said. “No water tower.” He said aspen groves reminded him of birch—the way their leaves shudder. The change of season is more noticeable at altitude, and like the yellowing aspens, brook trout also dress for fall. While fishing we stowed our packs on a rock outcrop above a cove. I turned and spooked a coyote that nearly made off with our lunches. We’d barely begun to fish when Josh’s line tangled and I told him to pack it up. Mystic Lake is ten miles into the backcountry, but it wasn’t our destination.

“A phantom lake,” I said. “There’s no trail and it doesn’t have a name.” As kids we never stayed on hiking trails. Though it was trespassing, we hiked everywhere.

“Interesting,” Josh said. “Suppose we gave it a name?”

“We’d ruin it,” I said.

My calf muscles inflated as we pushed our bikes above Mystic Lake. Apparently over the hump, Josh began to breathe as though the air held insight, which it does.

“Why would we leave fish to find fish?” he asked.

“Not pristine enough,” I said.

We placed our bikes at the foot of a grassy slope. Looking back as we climbed over a ridge, they looked to me like clues in a search-and-rescue operation. We dropped off the ridge into close-set pine strung with lichen. “It’s just a bushwhack from here,” I said. But at once we both stopped dead. The sound of heavy breath and stamping forelimbs pulled us back ten thousand years in time, placing us both on the food chain. I thought Josh would be more alarmed than me, but he and his dad used to hunt. Now Josh hunts mushrooms with his son in the Adirondacks. Anyway, it was only an elk. We crossed a trickling stream by log to the phantom lake—really a woodsy pond. There, native cutthroat sipped the soupy film, spreading circles. I lifted my first catch, holding it to the light. Josh and I grew up casting worms in the muddy Erie Canal, competing to catch the biggest carp or catfish. But that day when Josh wanted to know what fly they were biting on, I just took his rod and gave him mine. We fished and caught and for a while time stopped, which is the magic of fishing. But when a castle of ruffled cloud rolled over the sun, the shadow activated my fear of being way too deep in the backcountry. It’s kind of a suffocating feeling. We collapsed our rods. That’s how it goes when the days grow short—they all feel like Sunday.

I’d forgotten: alcohol sometimes turns him weird. It scared me that he hadn’t grown out of it. Perhaps it had gotten worse.

We dismounted at Mystic Dam to fuel up before the miles-long coast to the car. We ate the sandwiches, spiting the coyote, and we sipped green cans of IPA well worth the extra poundage. Josh leaned over the spillway looking down Bozeman Creek and across the valley, his childlike eyes creased at the edge by fatherhood. “You’ve really found something for yourself out here,” he said.

“If you ever need to bug out—”

“I know, man.”

Citrine-bottomed clouds accelerated the darkness.

“We’ll take a different trail down,” I said. “It’s faster.” I didn’t tell Josh the trail’s name: the Wall of Death. We used to ride Huffies around our local gravel pit. Our moms made us wear helmets which we ditched when out of sight. The Wall of Death is singletrack cut into a steep ravine—fall off and die. Maybe I wanted to show Josh how much I’d grown. Or maybe I wanted to show him that, where you have a big enough playground, childhood adventures don’t have to end. Maybe I wanted to scare him. As we stamped our cans underfoot, thunder boomed above with such percussion that I imagined one concentric circle upsetting the whole lake. “It won’t last,” I said, knowing that in Montana, meteorology means wait five minutes. Rain fell until a bar of golden sun shone through the matte clouds. Not everyone who tours Montana gets to see that sunset. The best skies come in the off-season. But that’s the magic of Josh. The good stuff in life just happens for him. He always caught the biggest fish.

Speeding down the trail, I skirched around chunks of tire-popping quartz. Branches with stale leaves whipped my forearms. When Josh fell behind, I waited. “It gets easier,” I called up trail. I think that was the wrong thing to say.

“Just go,” he said.

“After you.”

I’d forgotten: alcohol sometimes turns him weird. It scared me that he hadn’t grown out of it. Perhaps it had gotten worse. One time we got drunk and swam across a pond called a kettle pot. “I’m tangled!” he yelled from the middle. I’d reached the other shore, standing knee deep in sludge and fearing snappers.

Last fall I met Josh and his family at the Bozeman airport. We hadn’t really spoken in years, but he still flew out to be the best man at my wedding.

“I’m coming!”

“Don’t risk it,” he warned, but I swam out and pulled him back anyway. Kettle pots can be hundreds of feet deep. There were never any weeds out there.

Josh took the lead. I followed him too close and he pedaled harder. But we were approaching an outcrop—a hairpin turn.

“Yo! Slow down!” I yelled.

Josh rode around the bend and out of sight. But no matter how hard I pedaled, I knew I’d never catch up.

Last fall I met Josh and his family at the Bozeman airport. We hadn’t really spoken in years, but he still flew out to be the best man at my wedding.

Hobbes wasn’t just friend to Calvin, he was a stand-in for Watterson, the author himself. Through the wise Hobbes, Watterson placed himself at the center of the cosmos of his own comic world. It’s the same idea as the universe watching itself through the vessel of humanity. There’s something fatherly in that philosophy.

Though our childhood adventure may be ended, back east somewhere near the Adirondacks, Josh and his little boy are on a bigger one.