SEELEY LAKE - John Fraley is no stranger to the Seeley-Swan Valley audience and so his new edition of "A Woman's Way West" will appeal greatly to all our readers. It tells the story of Doris Huffine, into whose family he eventually marries, who became an early pioneer in these local valleys and who left her exquisite mark on what is homeland to us. Fraley will be reading from his book at the Open Book Club on Saturday, Feb. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Grizzly Claw Trading Company. The event is free and everyone is welcome.
Doris came to Montana in 1925 from Iowa to start a new life in Glacier National Park, leaving behind sadness at her first husband's death after a year of marriage and joining a summer-worker cousin in the journey to Glacier. She worked at the Glacier Park Hotel as a maid, eventually marrying Dan Huffine, a tourist bus driver in the Park. Dan had also arrived in 1925, went on to become a Ranger by 1926, meeting Doris, courting her and on a trip to Bozeman in October 1927 secretly marrying her. Thus began a life together.
Fraley, with access to all of Doris' and Dan's papers and diaries weaves a spellbinding story with many personal details from those papers and Forest Service data, which cannot fail to draw the reader into the history of the area and the years of work and adventures by Doris, Dan and many of the colorful people of the Flathead and Swan districts.
Beside her diaries Doris kept lots of animals including bears, beavers, goat and elk, usually orphaned or injured. She also had a B & B, a museum, a famous raspberry patch as well as hiked at every moment she could get. Any walkers out there will be interested in Doris as a walker, perhaps the first woman to conquer numerous peaks in the area – and at a real clip!
This is a great read – exciting at times when she and Dan travel on foot and skis for many miles in blinding weather and when one sees what life in that time exacted from a body in the outdoors – the real wild.
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