Driving down the Taylor Fork on a cold morning can be a rutted-road, chassis-twisting, teeth-jarring, worn-out denim, old-Montana type experience. Real cowboys with dented hats and dusty jeans will be moving horse herds up and down this dirt road to a nearby ranch soon enough. Serious cowgirls will whistle and shout sharp, staccato commands that steer the herd into a hard run that keeps pace with the fast-flowing, snow-fed Taylor Fork River. It’s a sight to behold. And it’s what I like best about Montana.

It was 36 degrees at the Albino Lake trailhead and the sun was busy trying to burn a hole through the thick fog that lays over the river. The lake sits about three miles up the trail. But on this particular Friday morning I decided to hike to the lake via the Marble Lake Loop. This is a little known ten mile loop that—in theory—will drop down onto Albino Lake from the backside of a mountain and Marble Lake, in approximately seven miles. Then you simply finish the last three miles as you normally would, by following the Meadow Creek down to the Taylor Fork River again. Easy. Well, maybe.

I crossed the Taylor Fork on the wooden bridge that lays hidden about a quarter of a mile downstream. About 75 yards later, instead of staying left up to Albino Lake, I turn right and jump across the churning Meadow Creek. I follow a faint pathway that zigs and zags straight up to the top from there. Climbing through the fog was both cold and ethereal. My teeth want to chatter. The thick, waist-high sagebrush is dripping with ice cold dew. Everything is wet; including me. The smell is intoxicating. After climbing about 1200’ straight up, you might hear a herd of galloping elk getting louder and louder. Don’t be alarmed. That’s only your heart trying to escape your chest. Up on the ridge the sun is winning and long wreaths of vaporous fog uncoil and drift apart. The view is, of course, spectacular. (It had better be, right?)

Snow covered mountains sit high and mighty on the far side of this emerald valley. Long horizontal shafts of yellow light now torch the winding dirt road and her sister, the river, far below. Both finally disappear into Montana’s very own indigo skies. It’s all so dreamlike. It’s all so beautiful. It’s all so perfect.

A ptarmigan suddenly flushes out at 8000’, startling me. Her baby chicks scurry haphazardly, in Keystone Cop fashion, beneath the sagebrush. I move up into a copse of trees where fresh bear activity becomes readily apparent. Fresh digs multiply with sagebrush being violently uprooted; and then, as expected, there is fresh scat. I stop and listen beneath the first treeline. I pull out a second can of bear spray and pop the safety off. I wait. [Note: I was charged by a grizzly last year, at dawn, on a hike not too far from here. Not an experience I ever want to repeat. You can read about that insane adrenaline-induced hike, online, in the September 2022 issue of Bozeman Magazine].

Two sandhill cranes begin to shout in a valley behind me. I turn. Their prehistoric cadence gets louder and louder. Then more shrill, more frantic. Finally their cries become completely unhinged. Just as suddenly, they completely stop. Nothing stirs. I wait. A massive grizzly comes out of the tree line. He quickly moves across an open field below me. He is far enough away to be both beautiful and graceful. Is this the same bear that was in front of me? Did he slip behind me that quickly? I don’t know. I watch as he disappears into another stretch of woods and shadow.

At about 2.5 miles in, the trail splits inside a large meadow full of elk. Flying blind without GPS, I turn northeast for half a mile. But I don’t feel that this is correct, as the trail starts to steeply drop-off. So I backtrack. I walk west until I come out on top of a high broken cliff. Now I’ve lost the trail completely. I turn north and start walking up and down steep ridges. No trail. I alternate direction for two or three or four miles. Trekking north. Then west. Then north again. My thinking is this: Eventually I will come across the trail. Or Canada. I am lost. But I am lost in Heaven.

After four hours of dead-reckoning I come out of the woods and into another large pristine meadow. The skeletal remains of a colossal ancient tree lies with broken arms twisting up into the sky. The skeletal remains of an elk also lie nearby. Vibrant colored wildflowers carpet the stage at my feet. Sagebrush the color of mint runs up and along yet another ridgeline. There is a mountain pond reflecting large billowing, impossibly white, clouds which are shuttling in from the west. The clouds look fake, like giant props in a grammar school play being slowly pulled across the set. But also, out there in the distance sits Albino Lake.

I breathe it all in. The blue sky. The yellow sun. The purity of the dancing clouds over a snowmelt-filled mountain lake. The whole scene is one gigantic Monet painting.

Then, inexplicably, there appears to be several vaguely recognizable shapes in this painted scene that I just can’t quite make out. They are like abstract jigsaw puzzle pieces waiting to be correctly arranged and then pressed firmly into place to complete the picture. I am tired. I should know where they go. But I don’t. Suddenly, three tawny colored bucks spring to life right in front of me and, in perfect unison, they high-step across the wildflowers and up onto the ridge. The spell is broken. They freeze-frame at the top and we study one another. No one wants to move first.   

I never did find Marble Lake. But I did—finally—find the trail. Albino Lake was so pretty and so still, I really just wanted to lie down and sleep beside her. Maybe I did.