While spending a hungover morning in a moving vehicle doesn’t sound like much fun, the constantly changing landscape outside povided a beatuful distraction. Staring silently and vacantly into the distance is one of my favourite hungover pastimes anyhow, so the flat plains and badlands of Wyoming and eastern Montana were scrutinised (albeit none too closely) by my heavily lidded eyes.
What struck me most prominently was the discrepancy between the views on each side of the highway. In various parts , we would be hugging the base of a cliff or butte, a scree-covered rock face climbing steeply to our right, while to our left, a vast, snow-covered landscape would stretch for miles, with nary a tree to be seen, to break the expanse of white. In those parts I almost found it more akin to Minnesota or Wisconsin, the cold, flat, dairy states to the east, from whence we had come. Those places had their charm and innate beauty too, like the frozen waterfalls that hang like overcooked icicles at the edge of the highway, or the brief glimpses of the Mississippi River in the distance, framed between opposing icy bluffs. To walk out into the snowy night in simply a pair of shorts and to feel the falling flakes sting my skin as I stand waist-deep in the hot tub. Yes indeed, the Midwest has been beautiful, breathtaking and eye-catching. However, this is my first time in Montana, the country that has been immortalised in soft-focus filter in movies like ‘The Horse Whisperer’ and ‘Legends of the Fall’, and burned into my emotional memory, as one of those absolutely awe-inspiring landscapes that I must experience before I die. This is going to be my first experience of that.
Our only stop in Montana was in Billings, just off I-90, at a Holiday Inn with an impressively open-plan lobby, and a casino in the bar. I went for a meal at a suitably dilapidated-looking restaurant nearby, which aso boasted a casino in the bar. The waitresses in the restaurant had very thick Western accents, and, if possible, thicker glasses. The entire place was crying out to me to order steak, and lo and behold, steak and eggs was the order of the day. A good thick steak was placed before me. That seems to be the way it is here. All the buildings are low and thick as well, to defend against the chill winds sweeping down across the plains from Canada. The landscape here revolts against conventional towns and cities. All the urban areas look like they have been plonked down randomly in the wilderness. It doesn’t feel like anybody actually lives in them. It is a ghost town. As we pull back out on the highway, the haphazard buildings fall away, and we are once more driving through cattle country. The sage brush and low scrub are interspersed here and there with patches of snow in the gullies of the undulating landscape.
As we chase the sun further and further west, the rises get steeper, the gullies become ravines, and the landscape definitively becomes the foothills. The Rockies certainly live up to their name. Pine-covered slopes rise up on both sides, wirth glimpses of craggy rockface between the branches. As one of the cast observed, one could totally hide a yeti in there, and never have anyone discover him. The trees make a nice break from this morning’s bare, flat, landscape. I love trees. At this point also, the mountains start very suddenly, and curve away just as quickly. The highway seems to be built on a high plateau between ridges of the Rockies. You can feel the altitude, but the land is flatter here, with peaks towering in the distance to the north and south. We are once more in ranchland, well-watered with lakes and rivers coursing down from the continental divide, still somewhere ahead of us, deeper into the mountain range behind which the sun is sinking fast. There is still more, so much more, of Montana to see, but not on this trip, becaue soon all we will see are the far-spreading lights of Butte and Missoula in the darkness.
The Rockies, in my experience, create a unique type of sunset, prolonged much longer than other sunsets, with the clouds and sky a blue-steel grey, tinged with trailing skeins of pastel yellows. The colours of the grass even change perceptibly at this time of day. The light scrub has brightened almost to the colour of sand and resembles a desert. The grasses, conversely, have deepened in colour, and seem a deep green, with golden tints at the tips. As I stare outwards, a stereotypical red barn with a white roof grabs my attention. Such a splash of colour in the darkling landscape is almost as surprising as a ship in the desert. After the barn, the land starts to rise again. The plateau has ended, and now the real mountainous Montana begins. I lament the fact that it is now simply too dark to see out, and I return to the table where a near-constant game of cards has been occupying the attention of various cast members throughout the long nights on the bus. But that is a story for another time.
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