So a few months ago a colleague asked if I’d ever been to Mettler Coulee. I mean it sounds cool and seems like a place I should have gone to, but the answer was no.

A coulee is supposed to be a ravine that’s usually dry. But when the dog and I hiked to it this weekend, it was neither.

It had a nice little stream running down the middle of it and didn’t look like much of a ravine at all. Certainly not coulee worthy.

The stream that drains Mettler Coulee in the Badger Two Medicine runs into the South Fork of the Two Medicine, which does have a steep bank and cool geographic features. Now that should be a called a coulee.

The hills above Mettler Coulee looked far more interesting, so after setting up camp and making a quick meal we headed up there. The hills are close to the border of the Helena Lewis and Clark Forest and the Blackfeet Reservation. While we hiked in, a trip that only took a little more than two hours, someone on the res could almost drive to the same spot and have a 15 minute walk. (Though a friend says the Blackfeet gate the roads during hunting season because FWP loosened the elk regs and the Tribe wasn’t a big fan of that.)

Speaking of elk, we saw one cow while poking around up there. It had a radio collar on.

The hike up into the hills was straightforward and the map said there was even a trail up there, which, once we got closer to the top, became self-evident. In fact, there are a lot of trails up there, made mainly by wayward horses and game.

We followed them this way and that. The map also indicated there should be a couple of ponds up there and that was true as well. I fully expected them to be dry, considering how brutal July was, but they still held a fair amount of water and the furry dog was happy to get a drink and go for a swim. She is not much for hot weather.

We wandered up there until just before dark and then headed back to camp. It actually clouded up and I felt a couple drops of rain.

The poor hillsides are cooked at the moment, though there were big flocks of songbirds and the place still feel like the sort of place that if everything on Earth goes to pot, life will still persist here.

That night a squirrel called in the inky dark, I suspected an owl was after it, as I heard no footsteps of other creatures. You almost never hear a squirrel calling in the dark.

Squirrel aside, I slept hard and woke up to a smoky morning. You could barely see the hills across the coulee.

Still, the walk out was pleasant enough as the red globe of a sun rose through the smoke. We crossed several small streams including Hall Creek, where oilman Sidney Longwell battled the feds and the tribe and conservationsist for decades over his oil lease there.

Hall Creek is a rolling glade of pocket meadows and aspen and lodgepole stands. Old Longwell would have loved to punch a road or two or four up there and paw around for oil.

Solonex, Longwell’s company, was paid $2.6 million to relinquish the lease back in 2023.

It was the last lease in the area to be expunged. The rest were given up voluntarily.

Now the worry is if the Roadless Rule is voided it could reopen the door to motorized use of the Badger Two Medicine, unraveling 40-plus years of conservation.

That seems untenable to me. What do you think?