A week ago my friend Connie and I set out on an 850-mile Montana road-trip, angling north, then a long way due east, and finally heading back down to Helena. Visiting Great Falls, Havre, Chinook, Malta, Glasgow, Fort Peck Dam, returning through the Little Rockies, Lewistown, Harlowton, Martinsdale, and Townsend—with a smattering of even smaller towns in between. In that parallelogram, we experienced only 90 miles of interstate four-lane.
I am left with much to consider, to remember.
First, I am deeper in love than ever. With Montana most of all. With the utter luxury of living among immeasurable distances that are still bound together by those largely empty travel corridors. Some of which hug the land rather than rising above it on modern Highway Department cut-and-fill. For living among a panoply of inland, island mountain ranges. For seeing the edge of the Missouri River here in Helena and then being able to trace its ponderous, dam-defined existence as it heads toward the Mississippi. For experiencing the immensity of open, limitless land and infinite sky with cloud-endowed dimensions. Once beyond that interstate, I felt more myself, more at peace even than here—where a burgeoning population triggers traffic jams in our once sensible little capital.
I am also mourning. The expanses that I loved are tied together by emptying towns with vacant storefronts and decomposing homes. By sheds that lean away from the wind and roofs with unintended skylights. By so many family farms and ranches that can no longer survive market vicissitudes and the pressure of billionaires buying up Last Best Place playgrounds. We saw deep rural poverty. And too many mobile homes showing the wind’s and winters’ brutality. Yes, I understand the dichotomy of my thinking: a love of breadth. . . and a grief for dreams and livelihoods lost to financial and technological pressures. I hold both in my heart.
Our trip was also validation and valedictory—of a lifetime devoted to historic preservation. Yes, here’s Fort Benton’s 1888 historic bridge, the first to cross Montana’s Missouri–that we walked across at sunset. Here’s the Fort Peck dam’s 1930’s orderly townsite—complete with baby theater and hotel—courtesy of the Corps of Engineers. Never mind the largest earthen dam ever built. Here are brick and stone corner banks built during the 1910’s homestead boom optimism—some abandoned, some repurposed. Here are small but stately courthouses–every one attended to with pride. And neighborhoods of historic homes with brightly painted trim. Carnegie libraries. Lovingly preserved first gas stations. Remnant railroad grades and early grain elevators. The sunny, sacred stillness of a small draw where a remnant of Nez Perce camped, just shy of their destination, the Canadian border. The Bear Paw Battlefield where Chief Joseph ultimately found he had no choice but to surrender to the U.S. military. The Hi-Line’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church—the Pink Church—the uneasy relic of Jesuit Catholicism on an Indian reservation. Recognized now as historic but firmly boarded up. Only its cemetery “alive.” Other metal truss bridges tucked away on rights-of-way no longer heavily used. A magnificent stone school turned art museum. In fact, where we traveled, stone—incorporated in houses and businesses and churches–spelled permanence and beauty.
For sure, I witnessed preservation made manifest. And I reveled in preservation sensibilities and commitments far beyond those that existed when I arrived in 1980. I also saw continued flippant disregard for a community’s grace and brief glory. After all, there were those garish, overbuilt new banks and unimaginative baby post offices. And plain negligence and neglect. Survival maybe trumping preservation. My colleagues still face much persuasion and hard work.
And then there were museums. Montana boasts more local history museums per capita than any other state. In a huge place with a very small population, communities thrive on celebrating their history—albeit a recent and romanticized one. Connie and I stopped only for the Valley County Pioneer Museum in Glasgow, one of more than a dozen we could have visited. Which encompasses a big main building devoted mostly to a research library and thematic exhibits: typewriters, phones, historic beauty shop equipment, railroading, mounted animal trophies, etc. A second building comprised of re-created storefronts based loosely on historic ones with a big open meeting space. A relocated second-generation farmhouse. And an outdoor expanse of historic machinery.
The museum reflects thousands of volunteer hours; many private and business donations and sponsorships; local political savvy; and an open-hearted willingness to accept most donations and find a home for them. Two volunteers greeted us more warmly than staff at any of our lodgings! And helped us make the best use of our time. I hovered over big pasteboard panels—displaying hundreds of photos of early county residents. A kaleidoscope of the dead who had come to Valley County for love and work and curiosity and duty.
Finally, my old friends–longing and wishing–spoke to me, especially in the breathtaking miles between the Little Rockies and the lush farmland around Lewistown. A twinge I’ve known ever since I moved to Montana. Unrealistic always. But still strong. What about finding a little cabin here? What about waking up to the light on those long bluffs of sage and pine? What about sitting in the doorway of that small house, there across that field, and tracking the last evening purple or the needed rain as it skirts the hills to my garden? What about. . . . What about . . . . Pipe dreams always. But now, of course, I am brought up short by the reality of my age. By my life gliding toward its own sunset. The door on dreams more securely closed.
Still and always, I return to joy and love. To knowing that I am beyond fortunate to have landed in Montana. On a lark, a defiance. To have had opportunities to celebrate her prehistory and her history. To do so with Dave. To have put my shoulder to the wheel of trying to save some of the survivors of her human years. To wake up to the Big Belts and the sky they frame. ©
I came home to read again this favorite William Stafford poem:
She’s a big country. Her undulations
roll and flow in the sun. Those flanks
quiver when the wind caresses the grass.
Who turns away when so generous a body
offers to play hide-and-seek all summer?
One shoulder leans bare all the way up
the mountains; limbs range and plunge
wildly into the river. We risk our eyes
every day; they celebrate; they dance
and flirt over this offered treasure.
“Be alive,” the land says. “Listen—
This is your time, your world, your pleasure.”
Godiva Country, Montana
