Me Monitoring the Firewood at Fourth of July in the Little Belts – 1960’s
Your View in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala – 27 April 2016
Hill off Highway 89 – Montana :: Image – Into the Little Belts
I didn’t get to experience and feel most of the places you lived in for months or weeks at a time, or just passed through, during your gap year and during college traveling the world over five years — like the deep orange-red soil of the Moroccan deserts and nearby Atlas Mountains, the complicated narratives in the Sistine Chapel floating overhead, volatile volcanoes near the western highland city of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, spring break in China, Sarajevo, or the Sarajevo Roses.
Even if I visit those places, I won’t feel what you felt, or see it the way you did, and that saddens me because even with the engaging way you tell your stories, it’s part of you I’ll never know. I understand that having the same experience is impossible and that we all experience everything independently and differently, but I still wish that every so often I could see those places and people through your eyes, like in some of those scenes from the movie Being John Malkovich. Then I would feel even closer as you grow out further into the world. I wish there were places from my past I could show you too, and talk about how they influenced everything, why they still feel magic and how they unknowingly prepared me to be your dad.
Some of those places I didn’t interact with directly, but only imagined what it would be like and how they would feel. Places adjacent to Highway 89 that weaves up to and through the Little Belt Mountains in Central Montana. The drive from Great Falls transitions from prairie and wheat fields to bluffs, canyons, and valleys before climbing higher into the mountains. When descending the dramatic backside of the pass south of the ski hill, it enters the Smith River Valley and passes through White Sulphur Springs. If you continue even further south, you’ll enter the Shields Valley nestled between the Bridger Range and Crazy Mountains passing small towns like Ringling and Wilsall.
This land is one of my favorite places. The Little Belts were my first mountain experience as a very young boy during family gatherings on the Fourth of July. Later, during my teen years while driving to the ski hill or hiking with friends in Dinosaur Valley and Hughesville, I passed one of my favorite hills. It was covered with short grass prairie, a couple of visible coulees, and hay fields at its base. Most of the winter, it was covered with snow except for occasional patchy windswept areas. The coulees collected deep snow and created enormous drifts. There was always enough so that I could have easily skied from the top all day, over and over with only the grass poking through to change the sound my skis would make. That hill and the longing to ski it always filled me up. I never imagined being with anybody else. I was always alone, even when I had dreams about it. Now I feel different. After hiking up and eating our lunch, I can imagine skiing it with you.
Songs :: In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, Here by David Byrne, Goin’ Back by the Byrds, Children by David Darling, and Once In a Lifetime by Talking Heads
© C. Davidson