> Climbing the "M"


Gorgeous Saturday during a Montana Grizzly football game (I understand they beat Cal Poly) I climbed the small mountain behind campus to the giant white "M" up there. It wasn't as hard as the Butte in the Mat Valley, with the gradual switchbacks. But I took the dog, who only has two speeds, standing still and full blast, and it was steep enough to make me not look down too much, except to take pictures.

Nice band music to climb to, with loud cheers. Funny thing happened with the dog, who is deathly afraid of thunderstorms. When the Griz score, they fire off some kind of a loud cannon. For the longest time heading down (after a number of touchdowns) I couldn't figure out why the dog would be pulling me along going south on the switchbacks, while I practically had to drag her going north. Then I realized, she was freaking out when we walked toward the stadium and the cannon, and racing to get away from the cannon, even if it meant traversing a cow trail across the face of the mountain. She had no sense that the stadium was up or down, she just wanted to get away from the thunderstorm and cower in her bathtub.