To drive next to a train and think about when its tracks were first layed, the families that had traveled out west by wagon train looking out their windows at the steam in the distance. I don’t know why just looking at the train and its tracks make me think of this, but they do.
I think about old western films while we’re driving through the canyons, films like Butch Cassidy.
Then while driving by the rivers I think about A River Runs Through It. Waiting to see a glimpse of a river like the one in that movie.
The mountains start rising up even higher and now I know that we are west. Closer to home. Pine trees started appearing a couple hundred miles ago and I’ve been waiting for the mountains that accompany them.
Along the way we’ve passed some old buses that have been painted and abandoned in fields. Obvious hippie buses. I started to think about how in the world hippies got buses?? Seriously though. How did a group of people that were all about freedom, organic living, drugs, music and community end up with a bus? Did one of them used to be a bus driver and one day he just gave up? Do people normally just abandon buses and then hippies saw a use for them? I’m not sure. I definitely don’t have the answer for this. But I’m almost certain that someone who is not concerned with possessions and materialism did not buy an old school bus. So, my question will linger in the air of the Montana mountains as we travel through and I’ll forget all about it in an hour or so. Till we pass another one.
I look up from my computer and I’m almost certain that sister maria is going to run up over on of these grassy hills and start singing that the hills are alive… the mountains and hills of western Montana are beautiful.
