This
trip, the Trucker is deviating from what would be the sensible route
for his assigned load. We are jolting west on Route 200/287 in
Montana. Mile after mile of two lane road, which means a slower pace;
adopt the speed of whatever vehicle is in front of you and forget any
ideas of passing. It also means more time for the scenery. Photos
are not an option for two reasons: a windshield splattered with the
earthly remains of hapless insects, and the fact that no camera could
ever do this view justice. It is an ocular feast of the richest sort.
There
are no boundaries to this visual delight. We are steadily rising.
Each up is a bit more up. Each down is a bit less down. Small towns
and ranches happen sporadically. The area is dry, grasses and
shrubbery are yellowing, although streams are marked by small trees
and darker foliage.
Cattle
graze in small groups over the vast hills. The Trucker tells me they
graze freely until reaching a certain age and/or weight. Then the
cattle on a thousand hills become hills with a thousand cattle, as
they are rounded up and housed in feed lots to attain the desired
weight for their trip to the grocery store. It does seem that until
their stint in the feedlot, the meat would be quite lean, given the
mileage they put on while grazing this sparse country.
Apparently
haying time is just finished. Hay fields are shorn, leaving a color
contrast with the meadows and wheat. Fields are of every size and
shape, fitted neatly between hills, gullies, streams, rocks. Large,
round bales dot the land, some in regular pattern, some stacked, some
left just where the baler rolled them out. They are yellow/brown in
color. We assume the sun bleaches the outer layer, and there is
green in the center. Apparently a lot of this is shipped east,
especially the organically grown hay. Again, there are no words for
this sight. There is not much color variety, just multiple shades of
the same. Any activity is unseen from the road; the land is quiet.
One’s sense of awe is as much in the feeling given by this place as
the view. Everything is over sized: the sky, the land, the sense of
space and freedom.
Flatbed
trucks, most pulling tandem trailers behind, transport bales from the
fields. The trailers carry 25-30 (by my count) round bales, and
often that many again on a second trailer. For hours, we followed
two flatbed drivers heading for their next loads, listening to their
conversation on the CB radio. We learned they were transporting hay;
the wheat harvest would begin in two weeks. It seems the climate is
so dry that the only determining factor for scheduling harvest is the
maturity of the crop, unlike Lancaster County, where farmers
nervously scan the sky when cut hay is on the ground. The drivers’
speech was a calm, unhurried drawl. Were it not for the profanity
that decorated every sentence, the effect would have been quite
soothing. Meeting them in person at the truckstop later in the day
was interesting. But for the fact they rode steel horses, and wore
sunglasses and tattoos, by appearance they could have been
transplanted into the 1800’s with little taxing of the imagination.
The
temperature is a dry, windy 92 degrees.
The
richness of the view does seem to pull up short when leaving the
created world and encountering man’s alterations. Lifestyles here
are most certainly not Lancastrian, either. Here, the rancher’s
equipment is often larger than his residence. Houses seem after
thoughts, in a way. Definitely not the well-landscaped monstrosities
we are used to seeing. The exterior appearance doesn’t seem to
matter. Walls of straw bales around trailers are the best insulation
available, but make my east coast eyes wince. Barns and equipment
sheds do not happen either. Animals, when they are fenced in, have
sagging lean-tos for shelter, if anything. (Thousands of miles of
fencing run along the roads, but seem as much to keep the traveling
population out of the land as to keep the animal population out of
the road, or to divide properties.) Equipment is abandoned where its
usefulness ended, and lawn mowing, when it happens, circles neatly
around the parked “lawn ornaments.” But it works for them, so
what does it matter? We are just passing through, anyway. What
would Montana residents says about our values? We wonder.
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