“…the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation…” Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.”
Describing the land tracts, leases and public lands of eastern Montana would not convey a sense of presence. One cannot conceive the life and society of the High Plains by driving through. Fortunately my traveling companion and cousin, Donnie Mawyer, spent decades as a hunting and fishing guide and occasional cowboy in Montana. Montana is the big leagues for fish and game, with vast sprawling Pleistocene landscapes and literally legendary fishing rivers like the Madison and the Jefferson.
Donnie Mawyer on the Little Big Horn.
The guide has to be a naturalist, pack animal and boat handler, gun and rod expert, wilderness navigator, camp host, and much else besides. You have to like animals and you have to like people, and in the end you have to be able to sight an East Coast banker in on an elk four football fields away, and then finesse your banker into actually hitting his elk. Understanding how important the trip and the trophy are to the client was Donnie’s most special skill as a guide. His sensitivity made him a celebrity guide and sensei of other guides. Then there were the necessary jobs of convenience to fill in the off seasons, because even a very good hunting and fishing guide still has bills to pay.
Cowboy life is rough stuff even when everything goes as well as could be. Throw in a few horse wrecks and bull stompings and no wonder the old cowboys in the old bars in remote towns in Montana appear physically and emotionally mangled. There’s nobody going to come up to these old prairie salts and say “Damn glad you did that to yourself—what a terrific choice.” Just to vary the possibilities, let an oilfield or two spring up in the local geology and you can add being worn down by heavy machinery to your resume.
Cowboy life is rough stuff even when everything goes as well as could be. Throw in a few horse wrecks and bull stompings and no wonder the old cowboys in the old bars in remote towns in Montana appear physically and emotionally mangled. There’s nobody going to come up to these old prairie salts and say “Damn glad you did that to yourself—what a terrific choice.” Just to vary the possibilities, let an oilfield or two spring up in the local geology and you can add being worn down by heavy machinery to your resume.
An iron grasshopper. Baker Oil Field, Wibaux Co. MT.
A far-flung road north of Wibaux.
The guide and game situation in Montana is not as easy as it was. There is less game and the rules have changed. The world has changed. The situation for ranchers, who are the responsible society of this part of the High Plains, is also not getting better. We knew about the drought before we went. It is severe, as is the fire risk. We learned the 2021 price of hay for the winter has shot up 300%, and this will probably sell out some ranchers. These details could have been guessed in advance, very Adam Smithianly. The grasshoppers, however, were a surprise. So many grasshoppers were plastered to the front of my car for the rest of the trip that I did not think to take any grasshopper photos. I regret it. A multi-generational grasshopper infestation was in full swing in Wibaux County, enough for the locals to feel the economic impact. I guess I can check “locust plague” off my bucket list the way Don’s old doctor and lawyer clients checked off “elk,” “grizzly” and “mountain goat.”
Wibaux, MT. Population approximately 600.
The corner of Main and First Street, Beach, North Dakota. Population just over a thousand.
Clearly these High Plains towns have been larger and more prosperous than they currently are. It’s quite obvious that there was once more to these places. It’s as if a certain pattern of early 20th century town and community growth was broken off, and then resumed in a different 1960s pattern, resulting in the newer town or village growing out as a weak appendage of the now nearly dead historic core. This, I think, is what it looks like. The most obvious explanation to me is ghosts. We living beings flounder around with very little concern for the dead and the spirits of things around us, and where people are thin on the ground the situation is emotionally not too stable.
Old railroad hotel and open invitation to get haunted. Dillon, Montana.
Modernity is the interstate. The larger towns have interstate exits with gas and convenience stations, fast food and motels. Dickinson, where we stayed three nights, is large enough to have a dead mall, but too small to overpower its exits, which have come to dominate the town so neatly split down the middle. However, an interstate exit equals jobs. A big cluster like Dickinson equals quite a lot of interstate service jobs. It’s not nothing. The population of Dickinson, ND is over 25,000. It’s the regional capital. The next regional capital west of there is Glendive, MT, population about 6000. Glendive’s a good place for a Creationist museum. It’s pretty clear the population is mainly composed of Dissenters—all kinds. It’s dissenters and more dissenters all the way.
Blame belongs to Easterners for all the things there are to dissent from. Viewed from the High Plains, the Easterners are very obviously in charge of the world, and they’re not doing a very good job. The High Plains and the High Desert are on their own and they know it. This reminds to me ask who the last Western president was. Nebraska: Gerald Ford. LBJ was a Texan but then we have to speculate whether Texas is part of the rest of the West or somewhat like a different country. If Kansas is west enough, then the answer could be Eisenhower (also born in Texas though). California is not the west, it's the coast. There has never been a Mountain West president. It’s possible that as a nation and as a people, so to speak, we could do with a crack at that.
These are the people, and agriculture, specifically the ranches, remains the chief economic and civilizational explanation for life on the High Plains. This despite the Billings refineries, a brief hydrocarbon boom and the reasonable expectation that there will be another. The stick-togetherness is about farming and cattle on these vast expanses. An active social life requires burning a lot of gas. And success on the ranch requires equipment. A combine harvester can cost half a million dollars. Being a rancher is like having several largely entrepreneurial full-time jobs at the same time. Prosperity hangs by a thread. But I speak as a retired editor, the most ruthlessly unprosperous profession in America. So on some levels these guys are pretty lucky. And they have the Badlands.
And the K-T Boundary, and the mass extinction that ended the Mesozoic. And the ever-looming possibility of that dinosaur jackpot. Like Dinosaur Dan, living in a trailer with thirteen children, hitting a multimillion dollar T. rex and, two divorces later, very nearly half-ruined again. I did not meet Dinosaur Dan. A guy deserves some privacy. You need privacy to be a legend, and Montana can still produce legends.
Blame belongs to Easterners for all the things there are to dissent from. Viewed from the High Plains, the Easterners are very obviously in charge of the world, and they’re not doing a very good job. The High Plains and the High Desert are on their own and they know it. This reminds to me ask who the last Western president was. Nebraska: Gerald Ford. LBJ was a Texan but then we have to speculate whether Texas is part of the rest of the West or somewhat like a different country. If Kansas is west enough, then the answer could be Eisenhower (also born in Texas though). California is not the west, it's the coast. There has never been a Mountain West president. It’s possible that as a nation and as a people, so to speak, we could do with a crack at that.
These are the people, and agriculture, specifically the ranches, remains the chief economic and civilizational explanation for life on the High Plains. This despite the Billings refineries, a brief hydrocarbon boom and the reasonable expectation that there will be another. The stick-togetherness is about farming and cattle on these vast expanses. An active social life requires burning a lot of gas. And success on the ranch requires equipment. A combine harvester can cost half a million dollars. Being a rancher is like having several largely entrepreneurial full-time jobs at the same time. Prosperity hangs by a thread. But I speak as a retired editor, the most ruthlessly unprosperous profession in America. So on some levels these guys are pretty lucky. And they have the Badlands.
And the K-T Boundary, and the mass extinction that ended the Mesozoic. And the ever-looming possibility of that dinosaur jackpot. Like Dinosaur Dan, living in a trailer with thirteen children, hitting a multimillion dollar T. rex and, two divorces later, very nearly half-ruined again. I did not meet Dinosaur Dan. A guy deserves some privacy. You need privacy to be a legend, and Montana can still produce legends.
I need privacy.
Hard rock on the anticline, Wibaux County.
Steeper than it looks.
A glorious honey-gold sandstone.
NEXT BLOG: ANOTHER SIDE OF MONTANA
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