Outdoors overload on an indoor afternoon

September is usually the finest month of the year in Montana, and Saturday was a nearly perfect September day — blue, cloudless skies, a slight breeze and temperatures in the low to mid-70s.

That’s why I joined several thousand other outdoor lovers and spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon indoors — on opening day of the new Scheels, the retail behemoth, Montana’s latest temple of excess, the store that is not merely a store but a shopping experience.

Nobody seemed to mind the irony of being indoors at an outdoor store on such a beautiful day. I have to say the overwhelming emotion I saw there was pure joy, the joy of a kid in a candy shop, or of a grown man in 220,000-square-foot store selling every conceivable piece of clothing, gear and gimcrack for every conceivable sport.

Though come to think of it, I didn’t see any bocce balls for sale. But I’d be shocked if they weren’t there somewhere.

Among the things I did see were a camo fat-tire bike with a camo compound bow and rack, a Cajun injector electric smoker, a propane turkey fryer, an outhouse-size gun safe going for $3,999.99, a semi-automatic .68 caliber paintball rifle, Samurai swords and camo stadium chairs (including extra-wide versions).

I saw what seemed like hundreds of mounted animals from around the world. Dozens of them bestrode a towering diorama while others stared down from walls, shelves, display cases and countertops.

I saw an animatronic life-size version of Abraham Lincoln reading the “Gettysburg Address” and another one of Thomas Jefferson reciting something or other. This Jefferson, to be honest, was a bit of a mumbler.

I saw a lady carrying two large boxes turn to her friend and say, in an exasperated voice, “I feel like we should be able to get out of here.”

It was a bit confusing, I will say in the lady’s defense, but she could have asked any of the innumerable Scheels employees on hand, all of them displaying that hyper-perkiness which is the new retail standard.

I don’t want to date myself, but I grew up in an era when shopping was rather a different experience. It wasn’t exactly like the old Soviet Union, where you stood in line for three hours to buy a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, but it was nothing like the new Scheels, either. Disneyland long ago turned into Disneyworld, and stores now look like Disneyland did when I was young.

The history of the United States in my lifetime is the history of an ever more closely calibrated consumerism. We are approaching a society in which advertising, entertainment, commerce, technology and the diffusion of what passes for information form a seamless whole.

The new Scheels has something — or countless somethings — for everyone, all packaged and displayed to make them seem irresistible, from shelves jammed with ammunition to a dizzying array, in the ground-floor restaurant, of 40 kinds of fudge, including red, white & boom, Big Sky berry and keylime “sherbert.”

I knew the place was going to be big, but I didn’t really understand how much floorspace would be dedicated to entertainment, to features that would keep people coming back for more. You could bowl, indulge in simulated football, golf and hockey, shoot arrows, get comfy inside a $2,400 safari outfitter tent, ride the Ferris wheel and shoot toy guns in a kind of carnival target range.

I knew there would be a 16,000-gallon saltwater aquarium, but I didn’t know a fellow with a wetsuit and breathing apparatus would be jammed inside it, high-fiving passing kids through the glass and otherwise hamming it up.

Also popular, in this selfie-saturated society of ours, were little displays where you could have your picture taken with stuffed bears, skunks, cougars and other critters. It seemed an ignoble fate for creatures as grand as a grizzly bear, but there is no turning back progress I suppose.

I hope I don’t sound too negative, but I don’t suppose it matters. The world will little note, nor long remember what I say here (if I may paraphrase animatronic Abraham), and I have a feeling that Americans will not stop shopping until someone pries the credit card from their cold fingers.

And I should admit that along with feeling overwhelmed, sometimes even dizzy, I did occasionally find myself nearly overcome with lust for this or that item of outdoor gear or apparel during my 2½-hour visit to Scheels yesterday.

I managed to hang onto my wallet, but as far as I could tell most everybody else was holding up their end of the shopping-entertainment bargain. People were mobbing the cash registers with the same zeal they lavished on the sport simulators and buckets of fudge.

It was fun, but when I’d had enough, I can’t tell you how good it felt to walk outside.

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