8.10.2014...

Sitting next to West Red Lodge Creek, just inside the Custer National Forest, right up next to the Beartooth Wilderness, John was by my side, the beer was very cold, the creek very clear and it was welcome to be still after a demanding drive. I don’t know what gave the Beartooth Highway its name, but my teeth were clenched as we switched back and forth up more than 5,000 feet. I had to remind myself out loud to breath as the car pointed again and again into the void.  Spectacular views were sometimes second to spectacular fear until we reached the top and walked through delicate tundra staying clear of knee buckling edges. Later we discovered the Chief Joseph Highway to be fairly tame with shoulders rolling rather than dropping off. Still spectacular rock faces thrust out of the earth reminding me more introspectively of the volatile nature of the planet. The ground we walk on has not always been as it is and it will not always remain so.

8.07.2014...

Last night I slept alone in the schoolhouse for the last time this year. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I stepped outside to see the stars. I could hear the river from across the field as it can be heard only at night. It anchored me to this very specific location. The Milky Way arched protectively over the house securing our galaxy within the vastness of space. The Milky Way is so immense we can both see it and be in it.  It is a unique position, observation and experience at once. I am sixty-one years old today here not far from the Musselshell River in central Montana on planet earth, circling our star within the Milky Way galaxy which swirls beautifully in the universe.

8.06.2014...

When I ambled about the house in the night, stars filled every window and this morning the sun broke over the horizon without hindrance. It lightened my mood after yesterday’s gloom. I am so dependent on my environment for wellbeing. After wiping dew from the lawn chair, I sat in front o f the schoolhouse listening to birds, some morning traffic on the highway, and the faint churn of new wind machines on John Whelan’s ranch. The wind farm is part of the landscape now and not unwelcome. Wind power is progress, though yet to be fully determined if it is a real solution. Things begin as progress, but sometimes don’t prove to be progressive; that is if the idea of progress is to advance the well being of the planet.

8.05.2014...

It felt like I was in the house all day, though I really wasn’t. Perhaps it is because I have been stuck inside myself. I raised my hand in greeting three times today when cars passed the schoolhouse. Jerry passed by first on his mid-afternoon rounds, then the Wheatland County Sheriff who has recently been circling the town almost daily, and finally a stranger in a blue sedan.  These were my contacts and I was counting them! It rained most of last night and morning. The distance remained hazy all day. I felt hemmed in even in my beloved Montana landscape. I can recall winter days when I longed for a stretch of time alone, but I don’t feel that now. Even so… I choose here and the simple clean shock of time with myself. 

8.04.2014...

The sun crossed the horizon this morning at 6:10. It hugs the edge of the first window now, just as I am beginning to hug the edge of summer. The meadowlarks are gone, but Sandhill cranes continue to call from the river, and flickers checkout the cottonwood tree and the flagpole in the yard. When I am alone like this I both revel in my surroundings and wonder why I am here on my own. It puts me in mind of so many before me who have spent time alone with their surroundings in Montana. Hollywood nearly wiped out the loneliness of that venture, but I suspect it was real.

8.03.2014...

I know the West is changing. I know there are many who mourn the losses and I don’t deny that there are losses: billboards obscuring mountain views, ranches parceled into suburbs, fences stopping short any free-range, chemically dead fields. These things and many more are distressing, but they are not the whole story. The West has always been subject to romanticism and then nostalgia. Neither one is particularly true. It is Montana’s current reality that I am interested in, a reality that is built on the past and looks toward the future, but lives in today. What is here to be appreciated? What is problematic? What can be created?

8.2.2014...

Last night I talked with Karen Land about story and story telling, about the potential difference between fact and truth, and about the expectation for well told stories here in rural Montana. Mary Clearman Blew refers to the idea of a “Western” story when she recounts an often-told tale of a historic encounter between two locals. She suspects the story has been embroidered. I can only think that means it is stitched with care.