I read somewhere, years ago, that “montana” is Spanish for mountain, or mountainous. As a native of eastern Montana, I’d venture to guess that Mr. Ashley, the man who suggested this name for our fair state, never traveled east of Billings. Because if he had, he wouldn’t have seen anything resembling a mountain.
What Mr. Ashley would have seen instead is a fraternal twin to its other half, a rolling expanse of land that shares little or nothing with its western sibling besides the same birth date. While western Montana rises up like the front end of a head-on collision with Idaho, our half lies quietly dramatic, its treeless knolls and dry gullies twisting and rippling for miles in every direction.
Carter County, my county, forms the far southeastern corner, sprawling like an old wool blanket spread carelessly across the ground, complete with ridges, wrinkles, hollows, and an occasional hole. The closest thing Carter County can claim to a mountain is the buttes—a series of sandstone flattops that look like the beginnings of mountains, as though some ambitious fellow came along and started building a mountain ridge, but didn’t have the energy to finish it. The Finger Buttes cross the county at an angle, south to northwest, like giant stones laid out to keep the wind from blowing the blanket away.
But back to Mr. Ashley. I understand his mistake. He had obvious reasons. For one thing, Montana is a damn fine name—a noble-sounding name that rings especially full and rich when spoken by a man with a deep voice and a steady character. Someone calm and patient enough to linger on the n’s so that the word hums slightly, bringing a smile to your face in the same way that a nice song would. And it’s impossible to deny that the mountains cluttering western Montana are magnificent. Maybe the only creation that can crowd into the perfection of a blue sky and improve on it.
But despite all that, I prefer the prairie. Mainly because I’ve lived my whole life here, of course. But there’s more to it than that. When I finally had a chance to see the Rocky Mountains, they affected me in a way I didn’t expect. I was still a young man—twenty-three, to be exact. My older brother Jack and I drove to Bozeman in the spring of 1925 to buy some oak flooring for the big house my folks were building. On that clear spring day, we rounded the curve into the Bozeman Pass, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful. There the mountains sat, blue-purple and surprising, like two black eyes.
Up until then, I had not seen any ground higher than the Black Hills of South Dakota. My glances at the sky were brief, just long enough to figure out what kind of weather we could expect. So my neck wasn’t used to holding my head at the angle required to view these towers of rock. Jack and I stared for fifteen minutes, rotating, squinting into the bright sun, shading our eyes. We paid the price later, too, with necks so stiff we had to sleep without pillows. But it was well worth it.
We decided to get closer, so we drove until the two-rut road ended, gawking, saying little. Then we climbed from the flatbed and stared a while longer.
“Let’s climb the damn thing,” I said.
Jack, in a rare moment of skepticism, peered up at the rising slope of pine, his eyes small and dark. It looked as if we could reach out and brush our hands across the tops of the trees. “I don’t know, Blake. I think it’s a little further than it looks.”
“Ah, come on. Let’s climb it.”
Jack gave in, but he proved to be right. Just as our necks weren’t used to bending backward, our legs weren’t prepared for ground that pushed back. We didn’t make it far before we had to rest our cramping calves. I could barely breathe. I began to feel a little stifled up there. I panted hard as we kneaded our aching muscles. “I don’t know if there’s a special shoe for this type ofthing, but if there is, I bet that it doesn’t look anything like a cowboy boot,” I said.
Jack laughed, and although his smile quickly faded, he seemed more relaxed than he had in years. Something about being up in the middle of those trees seemed to affect him in a different way than it did me. And for a brief moment, I thought about asking him about all the things I’d always wanted to know. About the army, and the years he had disappeared, and about his wife Rita. I wanted to know about his intentions for the ranch. Now that he was the oldest, he was the natural heir, but because he’d spent so much time away, I had more time invested, and I wanted to know whether he planned to take over when Dad and Mom couldn’t take care of the place anymore. I even felt like I had a case for taking over the ranch myself, but we had never discussed the possibility. Just as we had never discussed any of this with our father. For that tiny moment, that conversation seemed possible. But I hesitated, and that was all the time it took for those small dark eyes to narrow, and for his thin lips to purse. He sighed, and looked away, and I could feel him drift. And I knew it was too late.
I turned my attention to the view from where we sat. We could see nothing but trees except far in the distance, where rolling farmland stretched out in patches of green and brown. It was beautiful in a different way from our own ranch—the colors were darker, and the landscape had more abrupt angles.
“I wonder what land is worth out here,” Jack said.
I shrugged. This question had not even occurred to me. “Probably a hell of a lot more than out where we are, huh?” I said.
Jack chuckled. “Oh yeah,” he said.
It wasn’t much longer before he suggested we head on in to Bozeman.
In town, we argued about where to stay. Jack thought we ought to treat ourselves to a room in the Grand Hotel, the most expensive place in town.
“We can’t spend that kind of money,” I said. “Mom would kill us.”
Jack frowned. “What’re you going to do, squeal? How’s she gonna know? Come on, let’s live it up for once. How many chances like this are we ever going to get?”
I was too intimidated to put up a fight, knowing Jack would get surly if I did. But I could hardly look at my parents for the next two weeks, especially when Jack told them a bold-faced lie about how much money we spent.
That night in Bozeman, as I lay in that fancy hotel room, something about the day gnawed at me—something besides the ache in my muscles, or the argument with Jack, or the money. I tossed through a couple of sleepless hours before I figured out what it was. It finally struck me when I imagined being back home, standing at the top of a divide, looking at the circle of open space, the miles and miles of grass around me.
I realized that the mountains just don’t give you much. You hike a ways, and the trees are thick as hair around you, so you walk a few painful yards further. And maybe you find a small clearing, and can see a little further. Even at the top, you might be able to see forever, but everything is miles away.
That’s what bothered me about it, and still does. I realized that the lack of breath I experienced halfway up that mountain was not just the result of the climb. I felt closed in, smothered, up there with so little space around me. I didn’t like not being able to see what was coming, or where we’d been. And I know that if I lived in mountain country, I could never love the land around me like I do my own. That night, I figured out why people like me fall in love with the prairie, even as brutal and unforgiving as it can be. Because when the earth spreads itself out in front of you, completely vulnerable, completely naked, you simply can’t help yourself.