Missing Montana to the point where I ache with the want.
Home.....
Remember that semi-corny line from The Wizard Of Oz?
"There's no place like home..."
"There's no place like home..."
Now where are my damn ruby slippers?!
I took that picture from what used to be my parent's place...the chunk of ground I spent most of my kid years on.
Just behind and to the left of where I was standing is the Old Pond. A slimy mess in the eyes of most people...but to a kid it is wonderful...and I mean that literally....Wonder Full.
There were water beetles; big ones, the size of your thumb with fearsome looking pincers that we used to get a satisfying panic reaction from my sister with. A menagerie of other bugs and critters were also there to discovered. Dragonflies, leaches, water skippers, tadpoles and frogs...many, many frogs.
Oh, the hours we spent stalking and snatching frogs. There is quite an art to frog catching, beginning with the proper selection of a promising site. There had to be a gentle enough slope to the bank so you could bend over without falling in; and also an adequate amount of cover in the water for the frog to feel secure enough to poke his head up. One develops an eye for picking out the shape of a frog's head from all the other clutter floating around in such a body of water. To this day I catch myself doing a perfunctory scan of any mucky body of water for that tell-tale shape.
In the spring we used to anxiously check the shallows for blobs of frog eggs. When they were finally spotted we'd hunt around for the Old Hubcap. I don't know what kind of vehicle it was from, but it was the perfect size and shape to function as a petri dish of sorts, and was used year after year. We'd scoop some of those eggs in there, careful to change the water at least once a day and watch the babies form inside. After they hatched we could only keep them for a bit longer without them all dying off...but even after letting them go we could always scoop a couple up to check their progress from egg to frog.
Our house stood about 50 yards further back from the pond, behind where the picture was taken...so the view in the picture was part of what was seen out the front windows.
The creek in the foreground, or 'crick' more aptly...was also part of our playground. We had an old leaky aluminum canoe that we would paddle up and down. Good skill to learn. It wasn't that deep, but the bottom was full of very squishy mud...although that provided it's own kind of fun on occasion.
In the spring, during runoff that crick would overflow and flood a good part of the field. Carp would swim up from the river to spawn out in the flooded grass. Now, you want to talk about fun! We would wade around, dragging the canoe next to us in a kind of tempered excitability because as you slowly walked....EEEKK! All of the sudden you would step on one of those carp and off they would swim, leaving a wake behind...and then the show would begin. Running as fast as possible in two feet of water, we'd chase after them. This caused a domino effect and soon there would be a mass of fleeing carp...squealing kids in pursuit, recklessly flinging ourselves belly first into the water where we thought we would land on them.
Nine times out of ten we would miss and be left with nothing but a nose full of water. When we did get one we would put it in the canoe which we would half-swamp with water...kind of a holding tank. When we tuckered out, back to our side of the crick we'd go dragging our floating aquarium along to examine our 'catch'. As far as I know, the carp we caught by hand were the biggest fish in that part of the Yellowstone. I'm bad with spatial estimation, but I'm guessing many of them were upwards of two feet long and very heavy.
The trees extended quite a way to the right and left and also into the background. Most of the tall ones are cottonwood and made for excellent climbing. As a mom of three kids now, I shudder to think of the monkeying around at great heights that we did. I can hear myself now, "GET DOWN FROM THERE BEFORE YOU BREAK YOUR NECK!!" Thank God my Mom was a lot more laid back...or did she actually know?
The under brush was very thick in places to where you had to fight your way through, but it also provided 'room' after 'room' in an endless playhouse. Other times we would build forts with old sticks and slabs of bark. These were furnished with whatever we could sneak out of the house, and one year we even attempted planting a little garden, but irrigation proved to be too much of a hurdle.
We were gracious enough to allow the owner of that field(see the fence...it's the property line) to run cows on it once in awhile. This made for some interesting journeys across it. The older cows were ornery, and would chase after with sufficient provocation...not that we ever did that. It is amazing how fast you can run barefoot and in shorts through the thorns of wild rose bushes with the proper incentive!
It was out in that field on a solo walk that I first discovered that deer make noise. I heard a weird kind of grunting beller unlike that of any animal I knew of. A little ways away I saw a buck, so I found a good place to hide and a couple minutes later a doe came into view. I've never heard it since. It was one of those magical moments where you seem to be invisible and so able to watch nature play out undisturbed.
The mountain. That is My Mountain. Emigrant Peak to the rest of the world. It seemed to have an ever changing face to it, the light and conditions were never the same day to day, or even hour to hour sometimes. Thunderstorms used to slide around the front and over the top of it and I would sit out front of the house in an old slicker and watch the lightening at night. One night that I will always remember there was a particularly fierce show, close to terrifying, but I'm glad I stayed to watch. The clouds seemed to change colors from the dark black/grey to purple and even kind of a green color at times.
It was awesome...and I miss it.
