There’s an immense open shoot of land placed in front of me with a melancholy that blows like whistling wind far and high across the Montana plains. Stretched in the background, two gentle sleeping giants that come into focus as the eyes frown and narrow down into slits. Like a hawks eye everything is brilliantly still but the two tangled butterflies swept up into the sky in front of me keep my attention on them long enough to write about it. 

It’s warmer now, and as the sweat on my forearms turns into a soft white dust, my thoughts leave with the time of year. It’s Spring, and with it a sense of a renewed hope is felt across these plaines. Birds begin their song again and the smell in the air carries the familiarity of the evergreens and what’s to come. A renewed sense of hope. And as you inhale, it brings you back to rolling fields and the feeling of being part of the earth, like a child getting dirt all up and over your jeans just to be told off with a smile that you could turn around with the whit and charm you only have has little boy. 

Up there on those mountain giants, dusty snow holds on like the stubborn morning blanket that dooes’t want you to leave. The water melting softly down through thousand year old wrinkles turned veins. And as my eyes soften I let the hues of blue turn purple as the Sun itself draws back in from the days work. It will soon be night, but home will always be there, at least the soil that underneath it will. 

The Winters here have been said to be the most brutal in all the land, for Man and animal alike. The trees however, seem to push through each time even when I think they can’t take the load any more. Giants in their own right they have the serenity of time to grow. Starting slow and experiencing every ounce of what Mother has in stall for them. Truly being, and seeing kids etchin’ names into their skin they see it all. And now as the snow melts all of those names etched come through again. See I was so busy thinking about tomorrow, I missed the trick and now all I have is an empty hollow trunk to stare at. 

Each year the pilgrimage to warmer climates further on south leaves things here eerily quiet. Work dries up and Joe’s Bar down on 21st street seems to be about the only thing that stays alive this time of the season. That silence is worth its weight in Gold sometimes. And it comes as a welcome token to some folk who’d rather less people knocking on their front porch. Talk goes less to impressing and more towards letting the face grow old and keeping the fire wood dry. Talk goes towards what crops are growing and what never stood a chance and how old Billy O’Dowd passed and what will happen to all of his land. Small chatter like this keeps the wolves from howlin’ on the door for a while. 

I should move on but the dry weeds sway from side to side and the gentle cooling breeze softens me up and keeps me from wanting to leave. So I take one boot off, the worn sun soaked leather makes it easier now. Then with my other hand I beat the end of the hard heel to remove the tiny bits of pebble stuck in the edges. I repeat the same on the other side and put them down beside me to breathe for a while. 

Here lies a landscape of wild deer and tiny watering holes. Birds of many kind fly high circling the land with laser like vision for bugs and for mice deep below the weeds. I look at it all and I try perplexed and buffoon’d to make sense of it, to make sense of all of it. But the deeper go the more I realise how serenely perfect it all can be, and maybe I should accept it and let my soul bleed into this soil that I came from. To return back to being the trees, and then one day I’ll return to those giants ahead of me. One day where time keeps no prisoners, and love is just a thing that you’re born with that can’t be lost as you go on growing old. And in that feeling my thoughts turn to powder, realising that she’s got me. She always had me, and no amount of etching in wood or calling her by many names would lead to much. 

So I let the Sun set in front, and I let the snow slowly melt, and I let my mind wind itself down into water that I know I’ll be drinking in the later months. And I let all of it happen without moving an inch. And with that I saddle up with the willows around me and I let mountains scream for me.