Tobacco Root Mountains, Montana
The colors of winter are a pallet all its own. Blues, yellows, whites, a Montana landscape untouched. As the world slows, I long to see the horizon fade into the gold sea of the plains. Every year I am brought to tears by this grandeur. Two mirroring poles of the earth, blue and yellow, colliding. Their severity tells of the winter to come. Those who brave it know this well.
Where the plains meet the mountain line is where I would run off to in my youth. Stare wildly as far as I could and sit silent. No faults or feelings of mine took shape beyond worry here. I would watch them pass down the slope and dissipate as they hit the prairie, knowing I or anyone would never fill it up.
As summer rounds itself, the first cool winds shoot up the valley and across all the rosy cheeks in town. It moves in haste, like a child hearing their mother calling. The rippling air greets the Great Plain that begins just east of town and seem to stretch on forever. Only during family trips would I see the way rivers meet the ocean like a homecoming. Creeks into rivers, and rivers into lakes. The air soaring off the plateau of the Rocky Mountain Front down into the unending expanse of plain is my ocean.
I grew up right at the edge of the tallest mountains in the state, a great lodgepole wilderness that keeps the snow in its peaks year round. Each summer, they would brim with soft greens and vibrant shoots of flowers. Cooing and trills sing in all directions from migrant birds thankful to share in the wealth. The streams roar down their drainages and flood out the roads. Living in the seasons is an art all its own. The magic at this time is unlike anything, a child’s mind can wander the ends of human thought, watching our mother earth wilt, molt, and grow again. Us kids sit out under the great willows and cottonwoods, watching the osprey flutter and dive, follow suit and take on the churning river with neighborhood friends. We would shiver and laugh out our jitters when making it to the other side. Life and death are close together out here.
And slowly, summer would taper itself and the great plain of green below the rocky mountain walls would follow the wind current, leaving a gold expanse in its wake. I long for this time, each year. The light stretches thinly over the world, and the skies appear themselves to have ice crystals forming. The forests that begin like hair at the base of the mountains darken. They amass a single deep blue color, so perfect in its compliment to the yellow you can’t help but pray. Brown animals move slowly out across the swath of land like ants. This landscape is abrupt and harrowing, it teaches me the depth and grit of our world. The birds who do brave the cold soar high, scanning the windswept grasses like an ocean.
I have always been a fan of contradiction, of containing the unalike and embracing the abyss between. Plain to the Ridge is representative of this chasm. Mountains leaving young me without words, standing as the face of God above. The softness and stillness of the plains brimming with bounty and life; how quiet and cold it turns in winter. Great torrents of clouds moving overhead like battleships or a circus brigade. The ridgeline and the expanding plain oppose each other, yet I am met with their equal and extreme severity, their mirroring beauty.
Traveling up the Rocky Mountain front is a great teacher. The contrast all consuming, like a glacier in the desert. You think they might swallow one another, but instead the greet in firm embrace. Climbing peaks to escape the monotonous plain and finding relief, seeing so far your eyes falsify an edge. The cathedral of trees and streams and craggy peaks overwhelms with its splendor and its cruelty. Then, upon returning to the flatland and feeling your heart release, we begin again. That is really all there is, this cycle painted so purely before me.
The great plain meeting the great ridge, and back again.
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