Fiery Festival

Mom and Dad Dodge Red Eagle Fire, Return Home Safe From Babbfest

By Kate Downen, 8-02-06

Babb, Montana is about nine miles from St. Mary, Montana, on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park.

Every year the tiny town holds its 'Babbfest,' an outdoor music shindig boasting as much PBR, hemp t-shirts, Indian tacos and gourmet tequila shooters as any 20- or 30-something could possibly desire. Bands play all day long, local wares are sold in booths, and everyone generally has a jolly old time. Babbfesters camp at the festival, which makes sense: this year tickets were $40, and admission meant an all-you-can-drink party that reached its pinnacle of fun around 1 A.M. when the headlining band, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band out of New Orleans, began playing.

My parents love Babbfest. I've never been, so I tune in with a keen ear to their stories. They're fond of saying things like 'We were looking to win the award for the oldest people there' when they talk about it. I don't know why; they're fun. Not, you know, mosh pit fun, but they're fun.

So fun, apparently, that they kept driving east on Going to the Sun Road last Saturday when smoke from the Red Eagle Fire choked the valley at St. Mary.

Chewing Blackbones, the campsite scheduled as this year's Babbfest venue, may as well have been Smoking Blackbones, as the festival got pre-empted by the smoke jumpers and fire crews who did some staging there themselves. Charlie's roadhouse (in Babb proper) became the last-minute, makeshift host as hundreds of eclectic music-lovers descended, dance moves (and PBRs) in tow. Even dedicated dancers kept an eye over one shoulder as the flames from Red Eagle began shifting toward Babb.

Fire, my mom told me, was burning eight miles an hour. Blackfeet Tribal Law closed Highway 89 from Babb to St. Mary and south, leaving two ways out. A traveler could:

1. Go cross-country back toward Browning (but the fire was moving that way too).
2. Go up to Canada and circle back around...if, according to the lawmen, you had a passport or other 'suitable' ID and could get out of Chief Mountain and back in somewhere.

It is my estimate that right around that time on Saturday, I, their only daughter, was on the western shore of Flathead Lake. Someone mentioned 'the fire at St. Mary.' There were a few comments from other sun-baskers. I put on some more sunblock, jumped back in the water.

The little lodge where my parents were staying was evacuated around 8 P.M. after daytime winds of 40 miles per hour and heat pushed the fire north. Later, it would be 'unevacuated.'

They saw the flames (the newsies said '200 feet high') coming across the ridges and dropping to the valley. They packed their bags. Their friends bailed at around 10:30 when 'the going [was] still good,' and bombed through heavy smoke to Great Falls.

Mom slept with one eye open. Dad got his sleep so he could get in line for corn pancakes in the morning. I answered the phone Sunday afternoon to my mom's '...just wanted you to know that we're all right.'

That morning I'd seen smoke in the Glacier mountains. I remembered that there was a fire near where my parents probably were. I knew they were all right.

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