Sunday, August 13, 2006
Montana: The High Line
So, some housekeeping:
Back to the journey. Here's a picture of downtown Wolf Point that I take in the morning when I can see what it looks like.
The map shows me that Wolf Point sits more or less on the Missouri River, and since this might be my only chance, I drive a few miles south on State Route 13 to get a look at it. It's placid and cold here; I stick my toes in and take some uninspiring pictures of the uninspiring old and new highway bridges that cross it. Then I drive across it. It's an accident of historical exploration, isn't it, that the Missouri rates as mere tributary to the Mississippi, while the river I followed north a couple of weeks ago gets all the press? The Missouri deserves better. Or am I just trying to rationalize not having driven a few miles further north in Minnesota to Lake Itasca?
I cross to the south side of the Missouri and follow a gravel road across ranch country. You know it's ranch country because you cross a cattle guard, and then you see this:
and a signpost points you in the direction of all the other ranches you might want to head toward.
The little road I'm on bumps along for 20 miles or so, along the southern banks of the Missouri. At one point I come to an intersection of my gravel road and an even more desperate dirt road, and I see a sign that informs me I'm on "Highway" 528. It's empty and arid here, the way it's been all across the last 400 miles or so. I meet a couple of men driving pickup trucks along the road, and they seem pleased and amused to see me taking pictures of cows, as if they were the unusual fauna of the region.
Then I see some elk, I think, bouncing across the plains. Or maybe these are the famous antelope at play. What I don't see, haven't seen at all, are buffalo. I suppose this is not surprising in any way, and yet I somehow have had in my head the idea that there must be some part of the United States out here where there's still a herd of buffalo roaming around at will, and not just penned up
in the relatively small confines of Yellowstone National Park. This notion seems the more ridiculous the more I think about it (or about exposing it to the world), and yet it's especially disappointing to discover it's not true. The whole world is fenced in. An acquaintance once observed that only in the last 100 years - maybe less - has it not been possible for a person who was through with society to simply go out and find some unclaimed land to call his home.
Finally I return to pavement, and head vaguely north and west back to the High Line. That's the term they use for US 2, and for the railroad - originally Mr. Hill's Great Northern Railroad - that runs alongside. They're the northernmost routes going west, and although they don't feel all that northern in early August, you do have the sense that you're near the outer edge.
I pull into Glasgow. Gas again, at an unmanned gas station, and lunch at the Johnnie Cafe, which is the only place I can find in town that's open - but, realistically, probably what I would choose. I sit at the counter with the Sunday paper from Great Falls and eat meat and potatoes. I look around the room. It's Sunday afternoon, about 1, what ought to be a moderately busy hour at the only place in town. There are about fifteen customers in the place. A party of four in the corner. A couple over by the window. And eight or nine men sitting by themselves. A couple of them are reading the paper like me; a guy at the end of the counter is telling the waitress about how he drove to Canada for a couple hours, just to go driving, and the US Customs folks regarded him suspiciously on his return. The rest are staring at the four walls.
The guy at the end of the counter is going on about his life, working for the BNSF, and the demographics of the room become a little clearer to me. There are two or three lines of business here: ranching, the railroad, mining maybe. None of them professions that have historically employed a lot of women; nor, I suspect, today. There's nothing in the landscape here to attract someone who didn't want to ranch or mine or railroad or just be left alone.
Two older men - in their 70s, I'm guessing - enter and sit in a small booth directly behind me. They talk about anything; I'm not really paying attention until I hear the one on my left side ask the other if he's seen the posters about crystal meth that are all over the place. It catches my attention because they really are all over the place; every little town you drive through is plastered with homemade signs saying "Not Even Once" and depicting various grisly effects of drug use.
"What about 'em" asks the other guy.
- For those of you who haven't heard yet, I'm back in New York. Nevertheless, my blog, which is still in Montana, will continue its journey west, and hopes you'll come along. My apologies if the pace of posting slows down further still.
- The obsessively observant among you will notice that I've figured out a couple of things about how to run a blog. One is that I've finally got around to changing the links that used to say "Edit me" to actual links. WikiTravel is a website that I've discovered since arriving home, and that would have been endlessly useful on the road, had I been the sort of person who actually researches destinations on or before arriving at them. Check it out, especially if you're travelling to the more obscure places that may not be covered in your bookstore or library's travel guide section.
- I've also discovered RSS feeds, using the term "discovered" here in the "Columbus discovered America" sense. If you yourself have also discovered RSS and its cousins, you can copy the link location and add it to your RSS reader, enabling you to get an alert when I actually do get around to posting something new, and thus saving you the trouble of pointing your browser to my blog and the disappointment of finding nothing new there. If you haven't yet met RSS, you can try Tristana, which is what I'm using. I don't really know whether it's any good or not.
Back to the journey. Here's a picture of downtown Wolf Point that I take in the morning when I can see what it looks like.The map shows me that Wolf Point sits more or less on the Missouri River, and since this might be my only chance, I drive a few miles south on State Route 13 to get a look at it. It's placid and cold here; I stick my toes in and take some uninspiring pictures of the uninspiring old and new highway bridges that cross it. Then I drive across it. It's an accident of historical exploration, isn't it, that the Missouri rates as mere tributary to the Mississippi, while the river I followed north a couple of weeks ago gets all the press? The Missouri deserves better. Or am I just trying to rationalize not having driven a few miles further north in Minnesota to Lake Itasca?
I cross to the south side of the Missouri and follow a gravel road across ranch country. You know it's ranch country because you cross a cattle guard, and then you see this:
and a signpost points you in the direction of all the other ranches you might want to head toward.
The little road I'm on bumps along for 20 miles or so, along the southern banks of the Missouri. At one point I come to an intersection of my gravel road and an even more desperate dirt road, and I see a sign that informs me I'm on "Highway" 528. It's empty and arid here, the way it's been all across the last 400 miles or so. I meet a couple of men driving pickup trucks along the road, and they seem pleased and amused to see me taking pictures of cows, as if they were the unusual fauna of the region.Then I see some elk, I think, bouncing across the plains. Or maybe these are the famous antelope at play. What I don't see, haven't seen at all, are buffalo. I suppose this is not surprising in any way, and yet I somehow have had in my head the idea that there must be some part of the United States out here where there's still a herd of buffalo roaming around at will, and not just penned up
in the relatively small confines of Yellowstone National Park. This notion seems the more ridiculous the more I think about it (or about exposing it to the world), and yet it's especially disappointing to discover it's not true. The whole world is fenced in. An acquaintance once observed that only in the last 100 years - maybe less - has it not been possible for a person who was through with society to simply go out and find some unclaimed land to call his home.Finally I return to pavement, and head vaguely north and west back to the High Line. That's the term they use for US 2, and for the railroad - originally Mr. Hill's Great Northern Railroad - that runs alongside. They're the northernmost routes going west, and although they don't feel all that northern in early August, you do have the sense that you're near the outer edge.
I pull into Glasgow. Gas again, at an unmanned gas station, and lunch at the Johnnie Cafe, which is the only place I can find in town that's open - but, realistically, probably what I would choose. I sit at the counter with the Sunday paper from Great Falls and eat meat and potatoes. I look around the room. It's Sunday afternoon, about 1, what ought to be a moderately busy hour at the only place in town. There are about fifteen customers in the place. A party of four in the corner. A couple over by the window. And eight or nine men sitting by themselves. A couple of them are reading the paper like me; a guy at the end of the counter is telling the waitress about how he drove to Canada for a couple hours, just to go driving, and the US Customs folks regarded him suspiciously on his return. The rest are staring at the four walls.
The guy at the end of the counter is going on about his life, working for the BNSF, and the demographics of the room become a little clearer to me. There are two or three lines of business here: ranching, the railroad, mining maybe. None of them professions that have historically employed a lot of women; nor, I suspect, today. There's nothing in the landscape here to attract someone who didn't want to ranch or mine or railroad or just be left alone.Two older men - in their 70s, I'm guessing - enter and sit in a small booth directly behind me. They talk about anything; I'm not really paying attention until I hear the one on my left side ask the other if he's seen the posters about crystal meth that are all over the place. It catches my attention because they really are all over the place; every little town you drive through is plastered with homemade signs saying "Not Even Once" and depicting various grisly effects of drug use.
"What about 'em" asks the other guy.
"My grandson won the contest for the best poster in the county," says the guy to my left. "Won $3,000." This seems like a considerable amount for a poster contest, but whatever. Better than paying some marketing genius to come up with an anti-meth rap. Although they probably did that. The other guy is impressed enough; says the grandson could use the money to buy a car. Lefty tells him no, he's going to use it for college; says it like he thinks the other guy is a damn fool for suggesting he might blow his windfall on a car.
There's a decent pause in the conversation. Folks around here are - I think the word that's used is "laconic."
Finally the guy to my right says, "I tried that a couple of times. That meth."
Lefty doesn't miss a beat; says, "That's why you don't have any teeth." I manage not to fall off my stool.
