Delivering mail to the remote North Fork area challenging

The Toyota pickup truck with a yellow light on top is a familiar and comforting sight for residents in the North Fork - the outside world is on its way.

At the wheel is Becky Hardey, a U.S. Postal Service contract carrier who has been delivering mail to this wild and remote corner of Montana for the last 23 years.

It is a route that runs over a road that can dwindle to a single-lane snow tunnel in the winter or a kidney-rattling washboard ride in the spring. The mail route winds its way from Columbia Falls more than 50 miles north along the western flank of Glacier National Park, nearly to the Canadian border.

With her English setter, Hooker, at her side, Hardey drives part of the route five days a week and the full distance twice a week.

"I know this road like the back of my hand," Hardey says.

A Texas native, Hardey moved to the Flathead in 1976 after attending college in Colorado. She worked for the Burlington Northern Railroad for three years until she was laid off. Her neighbor, Ben Ringo, ran the North Fork mail route and asked her to be his substitute driver.

He eventually asked her to take over the route and she did in 1982. She's been driving it ever since.

What sets the route apart from others, besides the postcard scenery, is the nature of North Forkers she delivers mail to.

With no power or telephones north of Polebridge, the area's sparse population is made up of rugged individualists who have a strong sense of community. Being neighborly and friendly is the norm.

"I frequently have someone waiting for me here," Hardey says as she pulls up to a row of mailboxes at Trail Creek, just a few miles south of the Canadian border. "Folks usually want a road report or a weather report, or sometimes they just want to talk."

Indeed, there is a man on a four-wheeler waiting for his mail drop and a few words. Like most others along the route, the man wants to hear about road conditions down south.

Hardey shares a story she picked up along the way about a local who stopped his truck to help a neighbor whose vehicle was stuck on an icy hill. While he was out of the vehicle, his truck started sliding and ended up rolling off the road. Hardey tells the story several times during the day.

"She's a big part of this whole area," North Fork resident Tom Sluiter said. "When you think of the North Fork, you think of Becky because she's the means for reaching the outside world every Tuesday and Friday."

"Becky's the only twice-a-week reliable contact with the outside world," said Lee Seacrest, another resident along Hardey's route.

While there are a handful of radio phones and a couple of satellite Internet connections in the upper North Fork, residents are mostly isolated, particularly during the winter.

"My mail volume at least doubles during the summer," she said, noting how many residents stay away during the winter. There are only about 23 stops during the snowy months when the road can get hazardous.

"This time of year is great, because I have the road all to myself," she says. "People say, 'It must be horrible up there in the winter,' but winter is the best time."

Spring is when the dirt road gets riddled with potholes and washboard ridges.

"Spring is just atrocious," she said. "I get home in the afternoon and it feels like someone just beat me up."

The North Fork Road winds through one of the wildest ecosystems in the country; a valley of rolling timber, rushing water against a majestic backdrop of Glacier National Park's powerful peaks. It is the only place in the United States that is home to the complete array of predators and prey that existed before settlement. Grizzly bears, lynx, wolves and mountain lions criss-cross the valley floor, along with moose, elk and deer.

Hardey has seen those species and more at one time or another.

"I came across a female wolf that had a collar on, with three of her yearling pups crossing the road right in front of me," Hardey said. "That was the best sighting I ever had."

She once spotted a mountain lion that provided her with a prolonged, broadside view near Polebridge. She has seen many moose in the Trail Creek area. She has seen only a few grizzly bears along her route, but she has heard countless stories about them from North Fork residents.

"The residents are the ones who see them," she said, because the bears tend to avoid the main road but are known to roam close to cabins off the road.

Hardey is rarely unable to deliver the mail. Her truck has been stuck twice; one time she had to hike six miles for help. Hardey carries snowshoes, heavy winter clothes and two spare tires in her truck because the North Fork Road has been known to cause more than one flat in a single day.

Hardey's deliveries were shut down by large forest fires in 1988, 2001 and 2003. But those were because of short closures when the fires were closing in on the North Fork Road. In the weeks that followed, Hardey drove through smoke and blackened terrain while the fires remained active.

"I do my darnedest to get up there," she said. "I figure that anybody who gets mail just twice a week deserves good service."

She recalls Tom Reynolds, an eccentric Englishman who lived out his days in a home near the Canadian border.

"He was kind of a hermit," Hardey says. "He was at first kind of shy toward me, but then we sort of developed a friendship."

Reynolds was in his 90s and he looked forward to meeting Hardey at the mailbox nearly every delivery day.

"I knew Tom would be walking down to the mailbox and he would be waiting for me," Hardey says. "I would calculate my speed to make sure I got there at the same time every day so I wouldn't leave him sitting there waiting for me for a long time."

When he was 96, Reynolds got sick. Hardey strapped on her snowshoes and walked the mail to his house to spare Reynolds the walk to the mailbox.

As she approached his house one day, she notice there was no smoke coming out of the chimney, "and it was really cold."

She walked into the house, and saw Reynolds lying in his bed and reaching for a clock. His breathing was labored.

"He was looking to see what time it was. I really think he was waiting for me," she said. "I sat on the side of the bed and kind of held him, and he died in my arms within 20 minutes."

Hardey describes it as one of the most powerful moments of her life.

"All of my family is in Texas, so this is kind of my second family," she said of her friends in the North Fork. "Because of that, I get invited to a lot of stuff up here, dinners and social events."

Although the contract pay has required her to work second jobs for many years, Hardey says the job has been rewarding in many ways.

"I like the people, I like not working in an office and I like that I'm my own boss," she said. "It's unique, special job in a unique, special area and I am always grateful for that."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com