Photo: Adam Sexton
It’s really a matter of scale. At least that is what sticks with me. I had never really felt the sensation of “vastness” before this trip, not in the way I experienced it in Montana.
First it was the mountains. While driving up and out of Helena, MT our first day there, we ogled the craggy hills that dwarfed just about everything on the east coast. A friend of mine remarked, “every hill here would be a historic monument back east”, true, I guess it’s all relative.
In Butte, Mt, we witnessed the one of the largest Superfund sites in the nation – the Berkeley Pit. This mother-of-all-pits has water with the same acidity as lemon juice, is home to a few bacteria that thrive on heavy metals, and is threatening the local water supply with serious consequences predicted by 2024. Dug out of what was called “the richest hill on earth” by the Anaconda Mining Co. it produced a staggering quantity of copper from 1955 till its closure 1982. At a mile and a half wide and nearly as deep, it is a testament to human power. As disturbing as it is to see environmental degradation on such a massive scale, it is consistent with its surroundings. In a place where human and geological scales are in such apparent contrast, it seems as if the pit is simply the human response to a landscape so vast. As much as it was necessary to open this hill in order to extract the ore as efficiently as possible, it is hard to ignore the human tendency to feel insecurity and belittlement in a place where the natural world is as raw, and survival as harsh, as it is in these dry mountains. What better way to assert man’s dominance than to make an inverse mountain?
Our traveling band moved on the next day to Glacier National Park. This unbelievably majestic patch of earth is a real national treasure. Despite being heavily visited by tourists from all over the globe, the park has managed to avoid the ‘amusement park’ feel that might overwhelm any other place. This park is immune to such plights. You could see it in the faces of the visitors, no matter how many trinket shops and faux chalets greet you at the park entrance, the mountains steal the show. The land held the power to shut people up. The mountains looked down upon the people with a smug regality: “Yes, you can admire us, and yes, nature has the power to wipe you from the face of the earth without a trace.” We had entered a time warp of sorts. The world we entered operated in centuries and eons, not days and hours. Tourists openly gawked and snapped pictures with hopeful desperation, trying to preserve their sense of wonder and amazement, and bring it with them. Looking back through my pictures I now realize it is not a sensation that transports well.
Photo: Adam Sexton
The four+ hour drive back to Helena is when it hit me. Descending from the jagged peaks and valleys of the Rocky Mountains and arriving on the high plains we were met with a landscape surreal and completely alien to me. Let me just say now, I have only been west of the Mississippi one other time, and my appreciation for land and space at that time was quite limited. A golden, gently undulating surface, stretched to the horizon. Crumbling rock broke the surface at the crest of the steeper hills, like white-caps on the open water, and the vast openness was overwhelming. For miles we drove, cresting over slight hills that opened onto 10 mile straight-aways. Even at 90 mph the land seemed to slowly drift by as dusk set in over a hazy saw-blade in the distance.
Photo: Autumn Visconti
I can’t quite explain all the emotions brought about by being in a place so vast and devoid of other people. I may have discovered I have slight agoraphobia. Maybe it was the contrast to our Prius, packed with 5 people and all our stuff? Maybe it was sheer exhaustion? Or, most likely, it was the result of spending 3 days within 10 feet of of my closest friends. Whatever is was, the landscape of Montana provided more than just an incredible backdrop for a group of friends reuniting; it had the power to set the mood, consume our attention, and overwhelm our senses.
Photo: Adam Sexton
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