Two Montana newspaper veterans team up for an ode to Flathead Lake

Wayne Schile and Steve Smith come from opposite shores of Flathead Lake and opposite shores of the newsroom.

But the two Montana newspaper veterans have collaborated on Montana’s newest book about Flathead Lake.

“Flathead Lake on My Mind” combines anecdotes, history and tales about life on Flathead Lake, from Native American history to cherry farming, and most everything in between. Schile and Smith have long ties to the lake, with Schile’s father operating a former marina on King’s Point, and Smith inhabiting a rustic cabin on Finley Point.

Schile and Smith long ago retired from the news business, but they couldn’t get the ink out of their blood. Three years ago Schile approached Smith about having him write a book about Flathead Lake. Smith said he was done with books. Schile asked again the following summer, to no avail. Finally last summer, sitting with Schile around a fire, smoking cigars and looking out over Flathead Lake, Smith agreed. He seems pleased with the results.

What makes “Flathead Lake on My Mind” enjoyable to read are the photos, of course, elicit sighs and reverie, but also reading stories from people who have lived on the lake. One such story is by Brian di Salvatore, who interviewed Barbara Lathrop, a parks ranger, about watching eagles learn to fly on Wild Horse Island.

“Sometimes they stand on the lip of the nest forever, shaking and ugly and scared,” Lathrop says in the book. “”Sometimes they get shoved or bumped off by a brother or sister; sometimes they just lose their balance.”

Another story in the book talks about the Flathead’s first inhabitants, including Louise Finley, and Chief Charlot, once a leader of the Salish who were forced to move from the Bitterroot Valley to the Mission Valley.

“I will go — and my children,” Charlot told U.S. president James Garfield, in Paul Fugleberg’s story “An Unhappy Beginning.”

Charlot continues, “My young men are becoming bad, they have no place to hunt. My women are hungry. For their sake, I will go. I do not want the land you promise. I do not believe your promises. All I want is enough ground for my grave. We will go over there to the reservation.”

There are other stories that tell of the people who helped build cabins, homes and highways along the lake. Jake was charged with helping blast away the bedrock to build the highway along the west shore of Flathead Lake.

 “Under his hard hat, Jake wore a faded purple bandanna knotted at the corners. A makeshift skullcap, the bandanna was pulled down snugly over this smooth dome to absorb sweat and prevent it trickling down his forehead into his eyes. Eyes? They were mere squints, capped with scruffy brows turned gray from age and years of blasting powder.”

 “Groveling in the dust at the orifice of each blast hole, Jake would carefully supervise the loading. With a pearl-handle pocket knife, he would deftly punch a hole in each end of a cardboard tube of ammonium nitrate.

“Get another one in here, another one in here,” he would bark, and one of his young helpers would come huffing and puffing with a sack of prill.”

Schile and Smith were classmates at Missoula County High School in the 1950s. They went on to careers in newspapers. Schile is a former vice president of Lee Enterprises and publisher of the Billings Gazette, and Smith is former city editor of the Missoulian. True to their callings of their former careers, Smith and Schile seem to have approached this book as a work of journalism, and that’s what makes the book such a compelling read.

At once powerful and serene, the lake seems to affect people in a profound way. Yes, there are features and fluff in Flathead Lake on My Mind, as there should be, but like Flathead Lake itself, the book comes with an edge. 

“This book is more of a love story than anything else,” Schile said. “Once you touch it, feel it, read it, it will have a lot more meaning. It’s certainly not a chamber of commerce book.”

Smith first saw Flathead Lake as a young boy looking out the back window of his father’s Chevrolet as it ground over the hill dropping into Polson. Smith had been diagnosed with polio in the early 1950s, and doctors recommended exercise as an antidote. Flathead Lake was the perfect place for the young man to stretch his legs. 

“I was stupefied by that scene,” Smith said.

His family rented a small cabin on Finley point.

“It all took off from there,” he said.

When Smith talks about his “lake place,” people tend to get the wrong idea. When a friend of his was touring his new “cabin,” the friend asked Smith, “Where’s the kitchen?

“Over there,” Smith replied, pointing toward my fire ring some twenty-five feet away. 

“Where’s the bathroom?” the friend asked. “I pointed towards the woods,” Smith said.

Schile and Smith stood on a dock in Woods Bay recently, while waves of Flathead Lake pounded at their feet. The two men who collaborated on Flathead Lake on My Mind talked proudly about their effort. “We’re different, but we made a pretty good team,” Schile said.

For information on the book, log on to flatheadlakeonmymind.com.