On a day of incomparable gleaming airy early-spring loveliness, Harlowton said goodbye to Gene Leary.* He was one of central Montana’s especially kind, thoughtful, contributing native sons: a service station owner, a community leader, a dad, a grandfather, a husband, a man whose smile and chuckle offered each of us peace, acceptance.
But really, Gene had become a rancher. In their 40s, Gene and his wife Evy did the impossible. They took on a small spread up Findon Lane, in the lee of the Little Belts with shimmering views to the Crazies, along with a family of sheep, horses, ducks, chickens, a goat or two. And a remnant herd of buffalo who’d once been trained to do tricks for a dude ranch. Complete with the heart-breaking, back-breaking labor and worry that went into such stewardship. In fact, Gene and Evy shared that land with the spirits of struggling homesteaders and prehistoric peoples who’d moved through that landscape across times past.
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church was standing room only to a crowd of friends, many of them older than Gene, in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, new haircuts, hearing aids. Hearts laid out for the family and still beating toward their own services in that stark room. The memorial offered Catholicism’s reassurances; a friend offered the family’s powerful, understated tribute; the day’s bright sun and breeze offered that ethereal hope: the possibility of a next better place for Gene.
Photo by Rick and Susie Graetz
Spring, in fact, was brand new. The day would have felt wintery without the sun’s power. So Highway 12’s narrow shoulders were covered with gold-brown, slicked-down, fresh-from-a-snow-bank grass. And ribs. . . and skulls . . . and hanks of fur cleaned by beaks and claws. And tanned by the wind and snow. Heading home, pensive, from Harlo west toward Checkerboard and then White Sulphur, I saw the remains of dozens of God’s creatures. Who, like Gene, would not live another spring.
We know and then forget that in our hurry to get across Montana we mow down, decimate, maim thousands of deer and porcupine; coyote and fox; raccoon and delicate exotic antelope; ordinary, annoying gophers. In the United States, we kill over a million vertebrates every day; one every 11 ½ seconds. In the time you spend reading this paragraph, we—our cars—our errands—our hurry—will take another life. We choose to reach our destinations on time at the price of creatures whose last moments, trapped between barb wire and pavement, ended in terror.
Gene was gently clear-eyed about the ranch’s realities, about the brutality of birth and death and crippled life in their livestock, about the fact that everything’s spell on this glorious planet, in the dazzling high plateaus of Montana, is short. He knew that nothing guarantees an easy arrival or a sweet departure from this life. But he and Evy had and have an abiding thankfulness for life. They did not run from the pain that comes to most creatures—or from the circumstances that set that pain in motion—pure biology, the need for cash crops, carelessness, predation. They understood which critters, in their farmyard, bullied others. They agonized over what a wolf did to a pen of bum lambs. They were conscientious to a fault about being home to feed on time.
So here’s what I considered, as I drove away from Gene‘s service through that corridor of bones. The Learys honored life, knew it for the priceless gift it is–for themselves and for the beings with whom they shared their Lazy Daisy ranch and their lives. They worried over dollars and consequences. Their days were long and complicated. Their ranching dream one of Montana’s chanciest. But they invested their time and hearts in loving all existence, all beings, honestly—our arrivals, our departures, and all the messy life in between.
Now when I see a fan of burnished fur, delicate legs bones skewed and quiet, heart-less ribcages, I try simply for “I’m sorry.” And then, even more important, for “thank you” and “goodbye.” ©
*Gene died in March 2013.
