Summer in Billings

It was two and a half years ago that I made my first ever Words Like Trees post, written here in Billings at Christmastime. A three hour drive to Bergen, followed by eighteen hours of airport-hopping, and we reached Billings this time in its brilliant summer heat. Because of the pandemic, we haven’t come here in eighteen months. At 107 Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) and cloudless skies, it could not be more different from Norway, and I am relishing the heat and light.

Summer wildfires are streaming through the countryside. On our final flight from Salt Lake City to Billings, we flew over a burning area, where great plumes of gray cloud were spiraling up to the level of our plane. The pilot announced, “You might smell a bit of smoke. Don’t be alarmed.” Wearing our facemasks, we smelled nothing after all.

We are visiting my husband’s parents and enjoying good family time, good food, and it is my first time coming to Billings in the summertime. We were going to drive over to the Beartooth Pass the other day, but a wildfire in the area made us change our plans.

I have been relishing this semi-arid landscape, and as it has cooled down into the high 80s, we have visited a couple of parks where I’ve been able to make the acquaintance of a different array of nature. I am enthralled.

We first visited the recently established Dover Park, built on land donated by a pioneer ranch family. Signs at the entrance warned of rattlesnakes, and the heat kept our movements slow. Hills spread out before us, swathed in drying grasses, though many still had green in their seed heads.

Peppered throughout we found salsify, spiky yuccas, a baby prickly pear, and the beautiful sagebrush which, when rubbed between the fingers, smelled of the herb.

We passed by sweet-smelling Russian olive trees, still in their spring flower. We crossed a rushing stream where the grasses rioted in brilliantly hydrated green. Down in those marshes, mosquitoes assailed us (we had not even anticipated them!) At steeper places, the vegetation fell away completely, and bare rock broke off in sharp angles.

*A closeup of the Russian olive flowers and leaves*

*Down in the marshes, looking back up into the hills, we saw this deer. After I took this photo, the deer came down into the marsh and waded through. The reeds were at the level of her head.*

We drove onward to Pictograph Cave State Park where sandstone bluffs dominated the landscape. Under one of the great domed caves along the trail, we could see the remnants of cave painting left at different times over the last 2000 years.

*In the crevices of the cave ceiling, we saw these swallows’ nests. I had never seen these in real life before, only in movies or photographs.*

This cave wall used to be nearly covered in pictographs. Most are no longer visible, but some of the ink can still be seen. The black dotted line below the paintings shows the level of the floor when archaeologists began excavating. Artifacts were found going back thousands of years.

When we moved to Norway, I felt like we had arrived at the most unequivocally beautiful place in the world. With the day-in, day-out repetition of that lush landscape, however, and with the stress of teaching, the rain and the dark winters, that beauty was something I sometimes rolled my eyes at. It’s another waterfall. It’s another mountain. They all began to look the same. I felt cynical at times: real beauty in a place lasts only so long as its novelty.

In the last year, I have recuperated my sense of beauty in the place I call home these days. Maybe it takes a certain amount of time until a place feels real enough to love. Maybe I only have room for one place at a time in my heart, and it has taken this time to transplant Norway there instead of Minnesota. But I still love the broadleaf forests of central Minnesota, where the deep, fragrant soil is so full of living things and the dappling shade on a windy afternoon makes you feel like the whole forest is moving. Those are things Norway doesn’t do. So maybe it is none of these. Maybe I am just feeling more at home.

According to my husband, things are greener than they are normally here in summer. We are still in the last days of springtime, he says. Soon, everything but the sagebrush will go brown. The marshes will dry. I expect in that season, it will have its own other beauty. I’m glad I got the chance to see it now.

Each place, each time, each difference brings a different sort of beauty. They aren’t the same, but all of these natural places have it, when our minds are open to see. That’s the lesson that this summer visit to Montana is reaffirming for me.

We’ve gotten our first Covid vaccines, which feels really good. In a few weeks, in Wisconsin, we’ll be able to get the second shot. Tomorrow, we’re driving to the mountains, a part of the range more distant from the fire. We’ll camp two nights. I’m finding some good time too for reading and writing, a bit of exercise, and my husband took me last night for a walk around his childhood neighborhood. It is so good to see this place he comes from, get to know it in this warmer season.

Best wishes for the coming week,
Jimmy