Pack it up, Pack it in.
,
After cold beers, a round of horseshoes, and a stellar pork tenderloin served streamside, I’d decided that Moonlight on the Madison was pretty sweet. Here we were, just a few miles from Ennis, in a completely remote and rustic setting, staring alternately at sleek rainbow trout rising just a few yards from our lawn chairs, the snow-capped Madison Range in the distance, and towering cottonwoods all around. Pretty hard to beat.
But it wasn’t until a post-dinner conversation with Moonlight Basin’s Alan Poole that I became fully proselytized. “This place is a completely broken down each fall,” he explained. What? I tried to imagine what it would take to haul out the cook tent, lavatory trailer, piles of equipment, and all the wooden furniture—not to mention four wood cabins—every fall. “We pack it all up, Alan continued, “and we don’t leave a trace.” There’s the road in, of course, which doesn’t disappear, and the parking lot—but I could see what he meant. Grass grows quickly in this lush river bottom, and in the winter the entire floodplain is beset with ice. After the spring thaw, it’s a whole new world.
The thought that our indulgent invasion upon this beautiful country was only temporary—the Haute-couture equivalent of camping in a wilderness area—made that pork tenderloin sit in my stomach all the better. For more information visit moonlightbasin.com.
But it wasn’t until a post-dinner conversation with Moonlight Basin’s Alan Poole that I became fully proselytized. “This place is a completely broken down each fall,” he explained. What? I tried to imagine what it would take to haul out the cook tent, lavatory trailer, piles of equipment, and all the wooden furniture—not to mention four wood cabins—every fall. “We pack it all up, Alan continued, “and we don’t leave a trace.” There’s the road in, of course, which doesn’t disappear, and the parking lot—but I could see what he meant. Grass grows quickly in this lush river bottom, and in the winter the entire floodplain is beset with ice. After the spring thaw, it’s a whole new world.
The thought that our indulgent invasion upon this beautiful country was only temporary—the Haute-couture equivalent of camping in a wilderness area—made that pork tenderloin sit in my stomach all the better. For more information visit moonlightbasin.com.
