I live in Havre, Montana, again.
Well, no. I live in a house that is, more-or-less, nowhere, in a little spot in the empty place on the map between Havre and whatever town the map has just south of Havre; usually Fort Benton or Great Falls. However, since I’m only five miles from Havre, and there’s nowhere closer to get mail or groceries, I’m in Havre in most of the ways that count.
Havre is in eastern Montana, which is not especially mountainous. We have a few low mountains, and various hills and badlands besides, but mainly we have rolling plains and grass. You can see the nearest tree from miles around.
It’s just as dead here as you might imagine; we do have close neighbors, but, since this is Montana, we don’t exactly have block parties. One of the distinctive things about the American West in general is that people don’t just drop in on their neighbors without good reason. As my great-grandfather was wont to say, Montana is a refuge for scoundrels, and that’s a reason why.
The only life that doesn’t maintain its distance is the animals, of which we mainly have antelopes, deer, smaller mammals, and birds. They can jump over, run under, or fly above the omnipresent barbwire fences, which are used to contain cattle and horses that are not in any fields around me this time of year. And there’s a sea of grass and low, scrubby plants, including sagebrush and some plants that form tumbleweeds as part of their life-cycle.
Usually, by this time we have snow on the ground, enough snow to utterly obscure everything else on the ground except the trees, fences, and buildings, save the parts where people have removed it by main force. This season, the temperature has hovered anywhere from the high teens to the low fifties, and there hasn’t been so much as a flake since I came here after the holidays. In fact, tonight the low will be 35. Above zero. Amazing.
