I left my house midday Sunday for this road trip and was not disappointed. More road. More wildlife. More relatives. More Montana.
Night one found me at Antelope Creek at my favorite cabin and spending most time outside. The insistent chirping of prairie dogs and Ve-es-Per-Spa-ar-Row-SayGoodnight-Turnoutthelight trill lulled me to sleep and woke me in the morning on Monday.
This place is magic. I love standing on the windswept plain forcing my backpacking stove to do double-duty in the gale as I scoop coffee grounds into my little travel press. Love the tidy bathhouse and the long evening of reading though I am in bed by 8:30. Love the drama of the morning, shattering oranges underlighting clouds beneath a slate sky as the day begins.
Somewhere between Zortman and Malta I killed a small bird that didn’t move off the pavement quickly enough. After that I zigged and zagged to avoid them, but morning birds are wild and rambunctious and I jittered through the remainder of that drive. At Poplar I spent several hours with both of my language partners there and we recorded and plotted and schemed about Nakoda and Dakota classes until it was time to go home for the day. Home for me that night was Culbertson, alongside a lovely field of wheat.1 I stayed in a hotel room with a kitchenette that lacked any sort of cookware or dishes. I suppose they intend for you to not only bring your groceries but also your pots and pans? Oddly, everyone2 in the grocery store as well as my hotel was a man looking like he just spent 48 hours on a tractor or with a surveyor’s crew. The only women I saw in that town were working behind a counter of some sort.
A couple of days later I embarked on the HiLine westward. Frazer…Nashua…Hinsdale. It hit 103º that day, hot even for the northern plains, and so very windy. I stopped in Saco for the famous bacon and had a little trouble opening my car door. The restroom door in the Pay N Save3 reads, in huge black Sharpie, WOMEN!!!! ONLY!!!! which begs for the story to be told.4
I detoured to St. Marie, which was born as a planned community to house the military families from the Glasgow Air Force base and once boasted a population of 7000. When the base was decommissioned in 1976, most people left overnight. Almost no one moved in. Half a century later, the extreme weather and endless winds of the prairie have stripped paint and shingles. Doors hang open, and you can see appliances and furniture left inside. A sign on a what might have been a coffee shop reads “Closed No Water.” It was the creepiest place I’ve ever seen, something straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie like I Am Legend. See below - there are blocks and blocks and blocks like this.
Malta…Dodson…Harlem. I stopped at Aaniiih Nakoda College to buy sweetgrass braids and talk to my language partner there about our plans for Aaniiih and Nakoda language5 resources. Also the bookstore keeper loves to chat and I found myself leaning on her counter far longer than I’d planned. Zurich…Chinook…Havre. Once upon a time I thought of Havre as a puny town with nowhere to eat. After days of truly scarce options, my perspective has evolved, shall we say? There’s an overpriced bougie place (where I always eat at least once), a very good bakery, several other options, and a couple of brewery type places too.
I spent my last full day with my language partner at Rocky Boy, working to improve the Cree language class I made three years ago. Returning to the start of a process to begin again, take detours and consider other options is nearly the best part of this work. But the absolute best part is connecting with relatives: the humans, the more-than-human, the land.
I used to think of only western Montana as home. But the more miles I unspool across the two-lane highways winding through this state, the more of their breathtaking skies I drink in, the more hearts I connect to, the more I understand: I’m home everywhere.
and ironically also center of a prepared food desert
everyone except me
where you buy the famous bacon
Especially since no such sign appeared on the men’s door. I checked.
the Nakoda at Ft Belknap and the Nakoda at Ft Peck are dialectically different and so require different language resource development
The connection you have with the land is beautiful.
Huh. Only got to Havre, eh?