The nice thing about having a blog that three people read, is that when I’m five months late on posting an installment, only three people notice. However, I just noticed that I never posted about the leg of the Hundred Highways Tour to the legendary Pine Creek Lodge.
Pine Creek is the first place I performed when first moving to Montana. I was asked to open for the band The Fossils, for which I wrote the poem “Fossils.” That began a great stretch of readings and performances, including the premiere of Remington Streamliner, the defunct poetry band that lasted about as long as poetry bands do.

More importantly, Pine Creek has a place in history as being home base, for a time, of the Montana Gang, a loose group of writers, musicians and actors that included Richard Brautigan, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Gatz Hjortsberg, Jeff Bridges, Jimmy Buffett and Guy de la Valdene.

I once spent the night in Cabin 2, where Brautigan lived while writing The Hawkline Monster. Sadly, those cabins are gone, destroyed by the person who owned this magical place between the great days of Ned and Dan and these new days of Chip and Jen. It’s fantastic that the new owners are doing much to make Pine Creek my favorite venue again.

The reading for Vagabond Song was great fun, great crowd and I had the best mac & cheese of my life. Really. Plus this happened: