Nevada City, Montana is a collection of buildings, old equipment and other various gold-rush ephemera laid out on a slightly sloping field in the southwestern part of the state. My college roommate and I walked among its old buildings and rusting farm equipment on a drizzly spring day nearly four years ago.
Pick any road in Big Sky Country and turn your gaze to either side and you can't help but marvel at the roadside scenery.
I wondered what native young men thought of their Montana, what they'd thought in 1870, what the old men felt in it, and all the lovely women hidden. -- Jack Kerouac, Esquire magazine, published March 1970
To protect the grasslands at Little Bighorn National Park (and what still may be an archeological site, since I know they've found artifacts decades after the battle), a gravel path winds through the hills, leading you past markers where soldiers fell.
As dusk fell over I-90 on a late-spring day in 2006, my college roommate and I drove east from Bozeman, on our way to Billings for the night. The road was open beneath the big sky, a few trucks speeding in each direction. As we passed them, their radio frequencies would momentarily interrupt the signal from my iPod to the radio, and our song would cut out and a word or two of truck lingo might creep in.
Even without a wheel, the mind's eye still draws a circle around the ends of the spokes.
Private Roy W. Cottrell was a member of the 364th Infantry, a unit of the 91st Division that saw action (search for "September 29") in France during World War I. Searching elsewhere, I found a listing of some men killed in action on Sept. 29, 1918, in Binarville and Le Catelet, France.
Photo taken at Custer National Cemetery in Little Bighorn National Park on Memorial Day, 2006.
"Sky high, Colorado," May 2006
It's not just Montana that deserves the "Big Sky" moniker. Sure, the wide, open vistas allow for the huge blue sky to stretch across the horizon. But Colorado has some big sky of its own, even with the peaks of the Rocky Mountains around you. Only something as big as the sky could dwarf the peaks in your view.
The sky is great for photography. It changes colors, it brings in accessories, it strips itself bare and leaves you nothing but a monochromatic canvas. It casts shadows or opens everything up to the light. It's usually seen as the background, but it can sometimes be the subject on its own.
