There’s always a day in late summer when the weather turns and the days of blistering heat give way to a hint of fall. It usually comes sometime in August.
The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.
August is a contender in my least-favorite month contest. It’s usually hotter than I prefer, whether I’m roaming the Rockies on my summer break or back home, where the humidity makes me feel like I’m wrapped in a half-dozen damp wool blankets whenever I’m outside. At least there’s no humidity in the Rockies, and you can always go up into the mountains to get out of the heat and find a fishable trout stream.
Out on the Great Plains, there’s no such relief.
One additional complaint about August, and this will seem a whine, is that I return to work. I love teaching, and as far as jobs go, it’s one of the better ones. Still, August ends the footloose phase of my annual routine.
Hot temperatures are relative. Where I grew up in Southern California, we usually had a couple of months of triple-digit heat. Slide east to Arizona, and that’s more like half the year. Since I left SoCal, however, most of the places I’ve lived have shared similar four-season climates: cold, snowy winters; muddy, less-cold springs; hot, but not too-hot summers; and glorious falls when the weather cools and the world renews itself.
Oh, and hunting season arrives.
In less than a week, on Sept. 1, grouse and partridge seasons open in Montana. The same goes for grouse in Wyoming, but partridges are delayed until Sept. 15, though I never hunted them in Wyoming earlier than mid-October due to the prevalence of buzzworms on the Chukar Grounds.
Here at home, prairie grouse season also starts Sept. 1 (we have no mountain grouse). Fortunately, snakes aren’t much of an issue, but the wool-blanket effect of summer lingers into October, so I usually bide my time until quail season opens toward the end of that month.
When I was in Kalispell, however, my upland-bird season always began with chasing sharpies in the Sweetgrass Hills. Same goes for Idaho, where I hunted the Columbian sharptail subspecies to start the season.
I don’t hunt big game any longer, but if I did, the cooler weather might also signal the start of scouting season. The woods in fall are glorious.
Fall doesn’t mean the end of fly fishing, though the end does come sooner in Montana than other places. I never quite got my head around fall fishing in Montana for reasons that have nothing to do with fishing. When I was still in California, the fall season on the Eastern Sierra was one of the best. We used to drag Olive Matukas around Crowley Lake in September and October, targeting brown trout as they staged to run up the Owens River to spawn. Back then, streamer fishing seemed so civil compared to today’s Wild West.
Don’t get me wrong about summer. Montana summers, at least, are when there’s no better place to be than the northwest corner of the state. It’s warm and sometimes hot. But never too hot. Triple digits are rare, though getting less so. And if an afternoon thunderstorm rolls through, it washes the heat out of the day, leaving behind a pleasant evening that cools with the sunset. That sunset is, of course, unnaturally late due to northwest Montana’s latitude, its placement near the Mountain Time Zone’s western border and blessed daylight saving time. If you float until 9 p.m., you might have to load up in the dark, but that’s a small price to pay.
Most of those attributes are on the wane come August, and these days, the air is certainly filled with smoke. But fall is the season I live for more than any other, and you must get through August to get there.