LIFE’S Observations… Montana has been called Big Sky Country for a long time. Maybe not since the first immigrants came across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia more than 16,000 years ago, but then it was covered with ice and it may have been overcast a lot. However, By David Mosdal 12,000 years ago, there are Guest Columnist suggestions that people realized that this was a nice place to live, so some stayed. Many people passed through Montana over the centuries. Sometime before English was ever spoken here, a local named it Big Sky Country. People move around. We did. We lived near Lake Erie for a few years in the 80's and 90's and with the constant high humidity we definitely missed the big sky. On the
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clearest of winter nights, it was still challenging to find the North Star and the Big Dipper. The Milky Way was kind of a smudge of dim light. That was hard on this Montana boy. Occasionally, we'd take the kids to Lake Erie where they could play on the beach and swim in the water, but I would stay on a park bench high above the water where I could rest my eyes, looking at anything far away. With a blue sky, the air might be clear enough to see bits of the Canadian shoreline, 25 or more miles away, though it wasn't as rewarding as seeing the breaks along the Yellowstone or Missouri Rivers at twice that distance. We take it for granted here that we can count cows a mile away but once you get into “East Dakota” and beyond, you'll see flatter land, taller crops and a wetter climate that make long views increasingly less likely. Last week we were in Minnesota visiting grandchildren (and their parents). On the way there and back I always do a lot of “rubber necking” according to my wife, but I need to know – How are the crops looking? Are they putting up a lot of hay? Are the store parking lots indicating a robust amount of business? Are the morning “coffee tables” in small town cafes filled with old farmers retelling old stories? Are the highways populated with hundreds of orange cones AND workers at the same time? The answer is generally YES. We saw a healthy amount of optimism. I love to take a road trip every so often to reaffirm my faith in humanity and what we can do, but even more, I am grateful to come home again. Even though it may soon be interrupted, I love the feeling of peace and contentment of once again being under vastness of the Big Sky.
