Noted in Montana 23 years ago.
A 24-year-old notebook recently surfaced—I’ve been clearing some shelves in my writing room—and it contained notes from a Montana hiking/climbing trip my wife and I made in August 2003. In the spirit of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, I’ve pulled out some bits that I can copy here and pretend it’s writing.
Bumper sticker on truck in a Walmart parking lot: LET EVERYTHING THAT DRAWS BREATH PRAISE THE LORD. Two spaces down, bumper sticker on a car: GOD IS COMING, AND IS SHE PISSED.
Carefully descending a mountain road above Big Sky ski resort, I glance in my rearview mirror, then glance again just to be sure. Yeah, the vehicle coming down behind me is a guy on a unicycle.
In Bozeman, wake up to smoke in the air and ash on the car. The breakfast cook says, “Might as well be in Minnesota.” Not sure what to make of that.
One way you know you’re in Montana: Two blocks out of Bozeman, on a two-lane road, the speed limit is 70.
Indication of what winter must be like: ranches putting up a mammoth amount of hay.
In an Ennis restaurant, the worst short ribs I have ever been served. Cold bottled sauce poured over a half-slab. I motion to the waitress and say, “The ribs are barely warm and the sauce is refrigerator cold.” She replies, “Yeah, that’s how she serves them.” Glad we cleared that up.
We attend a ranch rodeo, which is less about stunt riding and hanging on to an enraged animal and more about demonstrating skill at practical ranching skills. For a ranch horse competition that involves maneuvering a horse to corral a steer, “Steer #2” trots out, looks confused and distracted, then falls down. Announcer: “That’d be a government steer.”
In a Pine Creek cafe, we order fried lobster sandwiches. The waitress, a Texan who winters in Brazil and Costa Rica, advises, “They’re not local lobsters.”
The hotel night clerk, a lanky austere woman with stringy hair and tattoos sleeving her arms, reports that when it is really hot outside, prairie dogs come to the glass door and put their paws on it, begging to come inside for the air conditioning.
In the airport, waiting for our flight home, I spot a girl wearing a T-shirt that says, I KISSED THE LEAD SINGER.
The Joggled Mind is free to read but not free to produce. Our voluntary paid Jogglers defray the expenses and bolster the author’s sense of literary legitimacy. As ever, thank you for reading.
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