A river runs through it
Part One of my trip north to Montana twines the movie, relationships and time
A place on the Gallatin River south of Bozeman, I discovered, where some of the fishing scenes were filmed.
HELENA, MONT.—To call it a sentimental journey would be an overstatement; in only one case have I come to say goodbye to someone, a task that still remains. And yet by the midway point this morning, the touch points of the trip—beyond the sheer beauty of the four-state drive—have been tinted with emotion: a trio of friends I’ve reconnected with in the twilights of our lives.
That, of course, and the side trip of finding spots where scenes from one of my favorite movies, A River Runs Through It, were filmed in Montana.
At dinner Monday night, I ask my friend Brent Northup—we worked together at The Journal-American in Bellevue in the 1980s—for the details of his wife Sue’s passing nearly six years ago. At Helena’s On Broadway restaurant, amid a delightfully upbeat crowd, the story begins midway through our main courses and is still unfinished after the check arrives.
Hey, I’d asked, right?
The Journal-American’s long-ago dynamic duo at dinner in Helena’s On Broadway restaurant.
I didn’t begrudge him a single detail of their 50th wedding anniversary trip to find Sue’s Scandinavian roots. A 72-year-old music teacher, she had originally wondered if the trip was wise; in February 2018, shortly after I’d visited the couple while in town to help with a book by a former combat nurse in Vietnam, Sue learned her cancer was back.
The three of us when I visited Helena in February 2018 for work on Healing Wounds, a book project not related to them. Sue would die seven months later.
Her instincts were to play it safe and not go, Brent’s just the opposite. Sue’s doctor broke the tie.
“Go, go, go now,” she said. “You probably won’t have another chance.”