Somewhere along late September I lost the Montana thread, so caught up in the splendor and hubbub of the fall that I couldn't go back. But as I look out at a fine sleety drizzle falling on gray twigs, I need a little sunshine, a little remembrance of Montana.
I need a Western White, bobbing in the warm mid-June breeze.
And a horned toad, delighting the kids with its existence, sending me into a reverie of the first one I ever found, in my uncle's hedge in Iowa. Such a dear little lizard.The weird and wonderful wildflowers that nodded in the breeze on this promontory confounded me.
This one I know: Gallardia, or something like it.
And scarlet globe mallow. I know you.
But oh, what we didn't know could fill volumes. Who made these rings of rock, and when? Plains Indians, weighing down their tipis with the rocks at hand, leaving them in perfect rings, undisturbed for centuries.
Left there, for children to wonder at.
We touch these rocks, that they touched so long ago. We imagine roasting bison over a campfire, vaulting on our paint ponies for another hunting expedition, flensing hides with flint and bone.
The clouds roll over us in an endless summer parade and we listen to what Bob knows.
And the rocks and the wildflowers are the same as they were then
But we are forever changed, having been here, having seen what they saw, having touched the rocks they gathered and used.
We will always long to return.
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