Before I put Tricia back on the Empire Builder to Seattle for her required tour-guide training, we spend the night in Valier. Maybe, just maybe, the Stone School Inn can give Lucca’s Hotel La Luna and Padua’s Albergo al Fagiano a run for their charm. We’ve already been lucky. No death-defying icy roads or blizzards. She’s met my friends and sampled our wannabe-big-city cuisine. She’s tried on Red Ants Pants pants in White Sulphur; soaked at Chico; turtled in the snow at Mammoth on borrowed skis and slipped away from the big bison that didn’t intend to pose.
We drive up the Front from Helena, weather gods anchoring clouds to the peaks. At dusk, we ring the Inn’s doorbell and hear it echo—Addams Family spooky. And are ushered into five star elegance: suites created from the 1911 school’s big-windowed classrooms; the softly-lit wood-floored central hallway set for tea; a wall of pull-down maps to study over breakfast; monogramed linens; a trove of art and books.
But nothing matches dinner. Froggies, the Inn proprietor recommends, just down the street. We find it, parking lot full, “Hunters Welcome” Coors sign flapping hard in a north wind; dying Christmas lights. We’re shown past the regulars to a little backroom spot, crowded up next to clustered tables, set for 30.
We’ve stumbled into an extended family, double birthday celebration: grandpa in Filson vest at the end of the table; great aunties from the reservation in head scarves; young dads in the boots they’d worn all day; moms in their school-teaching skirts. Coats and Costco cakes piled up on the pool tables; two dozen children in and out of laps. We order onion rings and hamburgers; eat slabs of shyly-offered birthday cake; sing happy birthday; smile our deepest; say simple goodnights; and return silently to the old school.
More cultural alchemy in one evening than any tour company could conjure: tiny town set against the Rockies’ highest reefs; abandoned school reborn; dilapidated bar as community center; the gifts and penalties of alcohol; the taste of high-country grass captured in a burger; the imagery of a movie set; stories that we’ll never know but could still see dancing across the faces of two cultures; warm welcome; questions we cannot answer as the train pulls out of Shelby. ©
