Sunday, March 31, 2013

Family Outing

My dad graduated from high school in the little town of Ennis in southeastern Montana. When he was in college, his parents moved to Bozeman and remained there for the rest of their lives. Then my sister moved to the Gallatin Valley twenty years ago. Altogether, I've been going to Bozeman for visits and holidays my entire life.

This year we met my sister from Spokane here for Easter, and this morning we marked the occasion by going for a hike. Not just any hike, mind you. We trudged up the side of a mountain to the big white 'M' that honors Montana State University, because nothing says resurrection like nearly dying of a heart attack. 

Here's the view of the M from my sister's back yard, it's the white smudge right in the center of the picture: 


Doesn't look that high from the bottom. Whole different perspective looking down from the top, and your car is nothing but a speck in the parking lot. Or maybe that was just one of the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes from oxygen deprivation.


Once your vision clears, the view is its own reward. The highest peak in the distance is Lone Mountain, home of Big Sky Ski Resort. And down there on the right side of the photo is the campus of Montana State University. I think you can see why I was in no big rush to graduate. 


In case anyone doubted us...photographic proof that we didn't just send the camera up with one of the crazy people who actually jog laps on this trail. 


Happy Easter

*

Friday, March 22, 2013

Meadowlark

*

Back in the way back when I was younger and fairly new to the writing thing, I still took myself seriously as a human being and author. After a few years, I figured out trying to think deep thoughts is sort of painful, and it's a lot more fun to just laugh at yourself. Before that epiphany, I took a writing class at Blue Mountain Community College, and as an assignment I wrote a short story, which I later submitted to one of those obscure literary journals that sold about fifty copies of each edition, mostly to the contributing authors.

For the first time since then, I'm working on a piece of fiction that, like that story, is set on my home turf. Plus it won't be long now 'til we hear the first meadowlark trill, and they always have been my favorite, probably because they were the only stinking bird I ever got right on the nature walks in grade school. When my friend BA Tortuga asked me to do a guest spot on her blog, this old story came to mind.

So here you go. Probably the most sentimental thing I've ever written:  Meadowlark

Western Meadowlark singing

*

Monday, March 11, 2013

Wake Up Call


*

Sleep is a weird and wonderful thing. All these centuries of poking around in brains, human and otherwise, and no one really understands how it works, beginning with why we do it at all. Where’s the evolutionary advantage to dozing? If you’re a zebra trying to avoid becoming the evening entrĂ©e for a lion party of five, wouldn’t it make more sense to stay awake around the clock?

Could it just be that it feels good? Especially naps. The kind where you hunker under a warm, fuzzy blanket on cold gray day and drift off with a book propped open on your chest. Naps are a gift from the Almighty, and a large part of the reason I’ve been known to include ‘sleeping’ when asked to name my favorite forms of recreation.

All that aside, the need to sleep is mostly inconvenient, especially if you’re on the endangered species list. That ill-fated zebra, for example, or a college senior who put off starting a twenty-two page thesis proposal until nine o’clock the night before it’s due (not that I would know from personal experience).  Or a columnist who’s desperately plunking out words in the wee hours before a deadline (also not from personal experience, of course).

By the way, you can always pick these people out of a crowd. Look for the telltale checkerboard pattern on their forehead from passing out face down in the keyboard, which may or may not be why I’m sporting bangs these days.

Think about it, though. How strange is it that we crawl into bed at a specified time, close our eyes and expect our brains to shift into idle? How exactly does that work, anyway? Is it like a dimmer switch, turning down the voltage? Is the power we save while in sleep mode stored up in tiny little batteries in our neurons? Is that why we wake up feeling recharged?

Except when we really need to. That’s the trouble with sleep. You can’t count on it in a pinch. When your job is stressing you out and your brain is drained right down to the last quart, when what you need more than anything is a solid eight hours, sleep is that fickle friend who flounces off to hang out with people who aren’t so tense. Which leaves you even more tired, which makes you even more tense, and after three or four consecutive nights of chasing it around the bedroom while cursing its very existence, sleep won’t even make eye contact let alone snuggle with you.

As you can tell, I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating this subject lately, most of it between the hours of one and four a.m. This is not conductive to optimal performance on either a job or parental level. If you have any doubt, ask my kid, assuming I can remember where I put him. Which isn’t entirely my fault. Studies show sleep deprivation affects mental acuity more than alcohol. A week of short rest and there goes your memory, concentration and coordination. And other stuff, too, which I would explain except I’m really, really tired and my phone is ringing.

Oops. Is it that time already? Guess I lost track. I suppose that’s the school calling again, wondering if I plan to leave the kid overnight. Well, they’ll have to hang on a few minutes longer. First I need to find my keys. Then I have to remember where I parked my car.

Or maybe I’ll just take a nap.  

*

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Collage of the Forgotten

*

I periodically borrow my mother's camera because it's a lot better than mine. Then, unless I'm working on something specific, I promptly forget that I borrowed my mother's camera and never go back and retrieve the pictures. So the other day I took some pictures and in the process of fishing them off the SD card, I found a whole bunch of others. Some of them are pretty good, so today, you get a collage of forgotten images.

Sunset painting the clouds gold east of Cut Bank.


Add a liberal sprinkling of cows


Fog bank rolling in.


Fog in the foothills


Apparently, the pot of gold is buried in our indoor arena. 


Still trying to find a use for all these damn rocks. 


And the best of the works, fall swans near Duck Lake, 
with the entrance to the Many Glacier valley in the background. 


*

Monday, March 04, 2013

Take Shelter

*
After my last post on how the winter has been too warm, it was pretty much inevitable that the weather would turn. And I'm sure some of you are sitting there in front of your computer saying, "Yep, she asked for it." 

It turned out to be a blizzard packing sixty mile an hour wind gusts. If you've never seen one, the video below is a prime example of a white out. Only fifty yards beyond those pickups there is a big red barn. Somewhere. I did manage to find my way up there, and it was better inside, assuming you don't mind listening to the wind try to dismantle the roof. 

The storm died off around eleven last night and we woke up to a foot of snow and, if you listen closely there at the end, birds singing. Welcome to what passes for spring up here on the northern Rocky Mountain front.


As soon as it got daylight we headed out to check the cows in the pasture. With storm warnings all over the news, the guys bedded down the shelters with straw yesterday morning and fed the cows hay right next to them, in hopes of keeping them from moving with the wind. We found them all right where they left them, a little snow-caked but none the worse for wear.


Nope, that shelter doesn't look like much, but stroll around the front and peek inside....


Yep, everybody's warm and reasonably dry! The boards make it so only the young 'uns can get under the roof and nobody gets trampled in the storm. Add some fresh, dry straw this morning, and the kids were doing just fine, thanks. 


So all in all, yeah, this storm was just what we asked for, because what you're looking at in this picture? That's summer hay and grass in the crystalline form. 


*

Saturday, March 02, 2013

The Truth

*

It smells like spring today.

I know, for most of you that's not news, but fifty-two degrees on the second of March is a tad bit warmer than normal here. Not unheard of, mind you. When a Chinook wind rolls down out of the mountains, it can easily hit sixty in January. What's odd is the number of days we've had above freezing. Enough that the ground is beginning to thaw and emit the aroma of rich, damp earth. Spring.

Not that I'm complaining...exactly.

This weather is wonderful for calving. I wouldn't trade these balmy temperatures for the twenty-seven below zero we had at this time a couple of years ago, but...well, it's just not right. As much as I enjoy being able to take a deep breath without the snot crystallizing in my nostrils, it leaves me with a sense of unease. Impending doom, almost.

People will tell you farmers and ranchers are never satisfied. It's either too wet, too dry, too hot or too cold. And if it's none of the above, well, it will be, just you wait. Personally, I would say we are frequently satisfied, but never complacent. When your well-being is tied so closely to the land and weather, you learn its rhythms, and you feel it in your gut when something is out of balance. As much as you might enjoy it now, you know Mother Nature rarely gives a gift without extracting payback at some future date.

This is our second unusually warm winter in a row, and it is reflected in the size and number of the wildlife. The land is teeming. Where once seeing a coyote was a treat, you can now barely step outside the yard without spotting a sleek brown shadow skulking nearby. You assume every move you make, including your evening walk, is witnessed by at least one pair of canine eyes. You know if a cow dies the carcass will be stripped to the bones in a day.

The crows are rampant, and huge. So big I've mistaken them for eagles several times in the past year. Hawks, badgers, deer, foxes, even bald and golden eagles are multiplying like crazy. The animals are everywhere, fat and happy. It's wonderful...and it's frightening.

Because this weather won't last. That next bitter, killing winter will come, ruthlessly paring the population down to only the hardiest. Like Rome in its final days, this orgy of life teeters on the edge of an inevitable fall.   No one expresses this sense of foreboding better than Corb Lund, in a song called The Truth Comes Out.

The music video is wonderful, and features the landscape just north of here, in Alberta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EljkIvHAfWc

However, I recommend also checking out this live version, because the bass solo at the beginning is amazing:



*