Hey, Sugar

Eastern Montana is well into fall.  Some of the trees are still boasting beautiful colors but most have already lost their leaves.  Here are a few of photos from our recent rides.

The past couple of mornings, our front steps have been a skating rink.  I’m rather annoyed about the heavy frost on my car and realize I’ve been thoroughly spoiled by a garage where I went out every morning, jumped in the car and drove away without having to scrape the icy windows and brush off the snow.

Wheat, barley, pinto beans and alfalfa no longer stand in the fields.  The feed corn is being ground and hauled now and the beet farmers are gearing up to begin their harvest in earnest.   I’m fascinated by the growth, harvest, storing and processing of sugar beets.  Coming from Western Montana, who knew?  There is a flurry to find beet truck drivers to haul the produce to the “beet dumps”.  Each town has its own dump where the harvested beets are unloaded onto a beet piler which sends them up a long conveyor belt and creates several long parallel rows of beets that are about 300 ft. long, 20 feet tall, and 30 feet wide. 

The beets sit in these piles well into winter and freeze until they are needed by the factories, at which time they are scooped into beet haulers and taken to be processed. For now, the bulk of the beets are still in the soil.



I’m told the temperature has to drop sufficiently before the harvest begins or the beets, once piled up, will rot.  It also can’t be rainy as the trucks will get bogged down in the fields.  As always, farmers are at the mercy of the weather.

Sugar processing factories are also frantically looking for employees, but housing continues to be a major roadblock.  Brent has spent several days at Sidney Sugars putting in electrical pedestals at the factory site that will provide power to the housing this employer is forced to provide.  Bottom line:  folks need a place to live and such places are few, far between, and expensive.

On the home front, I just finished my first week working at Sidney Health Center as the Director of Nursing Asst.  Hurray!  It’s a very nice facility and my boss is a real character so I’m hoping that perhaps this will be the job I stay in until I retire.  Job hunting at 60’ish was not much fun.  For my part, I’m pretty picky.  For their part, I’m pretty old. 

We were forced to drop the price on our house ... again.  Sure wish it was on this side of the state.  We could not only sell it, we could both retire. 

More things that make you go "hmmmmm?"...



volkswagon sized "oversize load"



Tori Tiger



seems a rather precise limit

Heart Strings

The last few weeks have been difficult. Our reality finally found my heart. 650 miles from our home and family is going to take some adjustment after all.  And yet ...

I'm learning what gifts I have received from all of you that carry me forward day by day. Each gift is a link back to a special time, place and friend. I suppose you could call them heart strings. 

The first thing I hear each morning is the cooing of the wild doves and my beloved friend, Joni (who loves and even raises doves), has struck a cord inside me before I'm even out of bed.  As my feet hit the floor I am always careful not to step on a greyhound and am flooded by my connection to all my greyhound friends who are each so near and dear. 

As I think about this past week I am astonished by the connections with loved ones that have buoyed me:

• a motorcycle ride
• the color blue
• mexican food
• a herd of wild horses
• beautiful piano music
• an elk tooth ring
• a "speedy" red truck stopped by the HP
• fall colors
• a mother and daughter holding hands
• a glass of red wine
• being called "Sis"
• orchids
• prayers of thanks and ones for safety
• heart to heart hugs
• lovely sunsets
• playing cards
• pretty rocks
• a little boy named Bill
• laughter
• fresh apple cider
• birkenstocks
• mashed potatoes
• football
• popcorn

Each of these things, and so many more, remind me of the stories and friends of my life that make me who I am. Each of these things makes me smile and feel accompanied. And each reminds me I am Blessed. So this entry is for all of you who found yourselves in this list. I thank you and I miss you with all my heart.

Beyond the Next Horizon



My favorite part of the scenery



Self portrait



Sundays are the days we always ride (she says as if winter were not ever coming).  We're free to go and be. You just never know what you'll find around the next bend.  Bugs, gravel, truck traffic, holes, wind and rain notwithstanding, these are the days that delight us most and the ones that sustain us through the week.

We've found beauty, adventure, many nice roads and, to be sure, humor.  We've found some towns we certainly didn't know existed and many opportunities for Brent to help fulfill his goal of having a beer in every town in Monana. This isn't his only goal, but it's one of his more colorful ones. 

We've gone every direction from Savage.  North to within a few miles of the Canadian border, east as far as Westby, south to Medora and west to Wolf Point. 

Sweet statue in front of Culbertson School.

Fun little spot.  Great folks.  They are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their new sign.  Stay tuned for the "after" photo.

On this particular day we found a road that skirted Medicine Lake and were surprised to see so many pelicans. In fact, there were small lakes all over, once again dispelling my assumption that this is desert country.  Here was our turnaround point last weekend. 

Each time we venture out we find wonderful people, awesome vistas and -

"Things that make you go hmmmmmm.....?"

  

In Brockton there's the Log Cabin Bar - built of corrugated steel.



The remodeled version is a definite inprovement.

  
- In Culbertson you will find "Rolling Hills Winery and Car Wash" (seriously)
- On 94E approaching Glendive, exit 192 is "Bad Route Road" 
- Exit 198 is "Cracker Box Road" 
- Exit 204 is "Whoopup Creek Road".
- I asked to have artichokes added to my pizza. The cook's comment: "You mean, like spinach?"





The striking similarity to our neighborhood bothers me a bit.  This one is Mars.

  Hmmmmmm....?
 

Stalwart Beauty



The Beauty of Bounty

I have to admit, I came to eastern Montana expecting high desert - a place where a jackrabbit has to carry a lunch.  Little beyond dust and sagebrush ... and oil. What a surprise!  Frankly, I don't know that I've ever seen land more bountiful in crops and natural resources. 

It's stunning as we ride through the surrounding countryside to behold the colors. I did not imagine such beauty. Yellows, tans, and rich golds of the wheat and barley are mixed in with the greens of sugar beets, sunflowers, soy beans, and corn, often a far as the eye can see.  And you can see a long way out here.  While I certainly miss the beautiful Bitterroot, Sapphire and Mission Mountain ranges, this is obviously the type of terrain that made Montana famous as the Big Sky Country. 

 

Field of Sunflowers

 The sunflowers have become mostly heads, leaving little room for the yellow petals now and it's clear the bounty is remarkable.  It will be a rich harvest, indeed. And next is an endless wheat field, the stalks so dense that the sun reflects as if it were shining on water.

 

Where the land becomes too rugged for crops, you find still more colors: scrub oak, cottonwood, shrubs, blue sage and the pink scoria (red lava rock, best known in it's role as the commonly used landscaping pebbles at Taco Bell).  Interestingly, especially for we western Montanans, you'll not find pine trees anywhere unless they were planted in a yard for landscaping or in a row as a wind break.

Earlier this month, we took a ride through Theodore Roosevelt Park - a perfect example...

 

Back to the bounty of the land.  Beyond the crops that are laboriously tended and harvested there are the natural resources - oil, natural gas, propane, scoria and coal - the reasons the population has positively exploded in this part of the world.   These are the riches that have drawn thousands of folks like us who are blessed to have found a way to make a living. 

But I can't wondering about the locals - the folks who have lived on this land for generations.  How can they not resent the devasating impact on the region's infrastructure and it's comfortable "small town-ness"?

I've been told that Williston was once a very nice, sleepy small community.  Frankly, that's nearly impossible to picture now. It is an industrial mecca which goes full speed 24 hours per day. On my first trip into Williston, I counted the oncoming semi's when the light turned green. Thirty-one in a row!  The town is in constant motion, host to the haulers of oil, gravel, sand, water, scoria, natural gas, propane, wheat, beets, the huge drilling convoys moving from one site to another, and the thousands of support personnel, also in motion in their own pickup trucks making it all happen. You can imagine the impact on the streets and surrounding highways (requiring extreme caution by motorcyclists).  The growth is also taking a tremendous toll on the support systems that make a community viable: water, food, police protection, schools, sanitation, and most especially housing.  There are "man-camps" everywhere, from the one in the Wal-Mart parking lot, to a row of trailers in a locals' front yards, to the huge FEMA trailer mazes that house upwards of 2,000 men.  I found it nothing short of overwhelming.

So you can imagine how fortunate we feel to be in Savage, roughly 60 miles southwest of Williston.  It's the best of small town America - a still sleepy small community - right on the edge of the boom so there's work aplenty, neighbors are family and all you need do is ask.

We are rich in the bounty that surrounds us, whether it be of the earth or of the heart.

 

Romance and Reality

Oh, I'm in love!  I'm in love!  Of course, you all knew that.  But ten months is a long time and I am positively basking in the presence of my partner, my lover and my best friend (who I am delighted to say are all the same guy!).  Talking long hours, toasting to life in general, snuggling on the couch togther watching the Olympics, and  riding side-by-side for hundreds of miles whenever we have the opportunity.  I'm in Heaven!  Can you say Savage and Heaven in the same sentence?

Truth is, Brent's my hero for a lot of reasons, but of late, for  keeping us afloat through some pretty scary financial crises.  Nikki says he's her hero too - for riding out two blowouts on his bike with me on the back and "saving my life" both times.  Both stories for another day.

But lest you think we are in paradise, I'm here in this moment to tell you there are some unanticipated challenges.  

The problem is mud.  Big time mud.  You see, while the yard was completely fenced when we got here, the sod never arrived.  And still we wait.  Our new home sits on a bare dirt lot.  Please don't read "ungrateful" into this, but I must say, sheets of rain on this bare dirt lot mean eight muddy paws on the white kitchen linoleum and on the new carpet. Total insanity may not be that far for me anyway, but this may be as close as I've ever come.  I've spent the past month finding ways to stay creative through the dirt and the mud, and their threat to the aforementioned floor coverings.  I've also spent lots of time cleaning floors and walking dogs where the mud isn't.

Now, to be sure, the bottom half of the screen that's missing in the sliding door is perfectly suited for an impromptu "dog door" - after I added the large white dishtowel safety pinned on three corners to add some protection (read on).  Honestly, it's working OK for now - at least until the one that finally arrived in the mail yesterday is installed.  In the meantime, tho, every insect that flies, creeps, crawls or scurries ignores the "security dishtowel" and takes this open door as an invitation.  So I spend a lot of my day discouraging an overpopulation of bugs.  I've never been squeamish about such things but even the bravest of hearts would cringe at the numbers of flies, hornets, wasps and ants (2 kinds) that I eliminate in a day's time.  You know how it is when you find a tick crawling on you?  I'm starting to cringe every time I hear that telltale buzz.

The trouble is, Boo, timid soul that he is, is terrified of the fly swatter.  So here's the scene...

I  spy (sigh) another wasp and two flies buzzing around my kitchen. Simply grabbing the brand-new but well-worn fly swatter is not a option. First, I have to scan the room to see if Boo is present.  If he is, I'm obliged to "turn the other cheek" until he goes elsewhere - pretending, in spite of the twitching in my left eyelid, that everything is fine.  You see, if Boo is anywhere nearby and I swat the intruder, he's off in a black streak to the back of the house or, if it's closer, to the yard - be it grit or mud.  No amount of coaxing convinces him it's safe to return.  Rather he stays wherever he's hiding and peeks out at me with terror in his liquid brown eyes. Better to tolerate the offending insect.

Tori, on the other hand, has discovered that the handle of the fly swatter makes a pretty satisfactory ear scratcher and does her best cockroach while I frenetically pursue bugs whenever Boo is absent.

But wait!  Lest you think our Boo is a total coward, let me astonish you greyhound lovers.  You know most greys don't think much of water.  In fact, Boo is one who is quite certain all water is crocodile infested and is definitely not his bag.  So here's how it happened.

We were out our first day here.  It was 95 degrees and we were walking by the 15' deep irrigation canal that flows - rather rigorously - right across the street from us.  Suddenly, Boo headed straight for the canal.  I was horrified and tried desperately to explain to him that the brown surface was water.  "You don't get it, Boo", I cried.  "That's water!  You don't wanna do this!"  Undetered, he pulled right to the edge and plunged in. 

The panic I expected to appear on his face was, in fact, serenity.  He just floated there, lazily paddling to stay in one spot while I held my breath and contemplated the prospect of diving in to save his black butt.  After several minutes, he'd had enough, casually drifted to the shore and (with a little help from the lead) crawled out, shook himself and happily proceeded on our walk. 

When in Rome, I guess.  Swat the flies when the coast is clear.  Jump in the irrigation ditch when it's hot and realize that it's just mud.  Deal with it.  The ditch dips have become a regular routine for Boo, the flies are "bugging me" less <g>, Tori maintains her position as Princess, and someday, the good Lord willin', we'll have a yard.

Live from Savage, Montana.  Good night y'all.

A Blizzard of Change

Living in a snow globe can't be much different than our lives of late - especially when someone picks it up and shakes the daylights out of it.

On October 3rd, 2011, Brent left our home in the Bitterroot Valley to find work in the area of the Bakken oil boom. We expected he'd be gone 1-2 months at most. OK, maybe we weren't thinking it through at the time. 

What he encountered defied description.  Work brings the unemployed, and there are sure a lot with today's economy.  There's money to be made everywhere which, of course, brings drugs and crime.Williston's population exploded and the area was totally unprepared for the influx of people.  The Bakken is, indeed, rockin' but the challenges are unbelievable. The only thing there seems to be aplenty is jobs. Just try, for instance, to find a bed for the night, or a place to park your vehicle, or a restaurant with an open seat. With no other choice, Brent spent a couple of nights in a gravel pit (with no services) followed by several awful nights in Williston, ND's Wal-Mart parking lot, in the back of our Explorer. He spent his days interviewing for the plethora of jobs but in each case, the story was the same. No place to live.

Just when  he was about to give up and head home he was interviewed by Jason, the owner of Prairie Electric in Savage, Montana.  Jason invited Brent to spend a week working for him and then to decide if it was a good fit for both of them.

It was a very good fit and Brent spent the ensuing 10 months living in a fifth wheel trailer Jason provided and made a big dent in our long list of debts that resulted from no jobs in Western Montana for the previous 2 years. Not only was the job a great fit, the community welcomed him with open arms, caring about him in ways that often made me tearful with gratitude. Savage quickly became Brent's new home.

Meanwhile, back in western Montana, I was struggling with the upkeep on our home. I also worked at the job I loved with the American Cancer Society, travelled a lot, and spent time with friends.  But my heart ached for my partner and best friend. 

I clearly remember the phone converation in April when Brent said, "Honey, I'm staying here.  The people are awesome, there's plenty of work and I feel like this is where I belong."  Thus began the flurry in our own personal snow globe.  I chose to stay in my job until mid-July so I would be vested in the retirement program.  It was the longest three months of my life but it was certainly filled with things to do; clean out Brent's work storage unit (thanks to a dozen wonderful people who helped make that happen); sort out our garage into piles: to sell on craig's list, to throw away, to recycle, to give away and, finally, to dispose of at a garage sale (special thanks to brother, John for sticking with me through that ordeal). 

Then there was listing the house and trying to keep it pristine for showings in the midst of the chaos; deciding what to take and what to leave so we could exist comfortably in Savage but leave our beautiful home looking lived in.  Jason purchased a 16 x 80 mobile home that was to be ours to rent in Savage (thus making our reunion possible) but the prospect of downsizing from 4800 square feet caused many a sleepless night.  While I was more than ready to  lose the upkeep of the house, what to do with all the "stuff"?  "Blizzard" is such an apt description of those weeks.

On July 20th, thanks again to our wonderful friends and family, we packed a 17' U-Haul, spent a pleasant evening relaxing together and, the following morning, headed east. John drove the U-Haul the whole way, Brent and I switched off between the Explorer (where the dogs were riding) and my motorcycle (which there was no hope of fitting into the U-Haul). We arrived in Savage at 1:00 a.m. on July 22nd, slept where we fell and began unpacking and setting up housekeeping the next morning.

We'll be in transition for some time but, for those of you who asked me to write about the experience this initial entry is meant to provide a foundation for our "life in Savage".

Our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been so supportive - watching over me, watching over Brent, helping with all the heavy work, sorting, cleaning, listening, motivating, moving, comforting and showing up with a bottle of wine.  And thanks to those of you who have welcomed us to Savage with open arms. We couldn't have done it without all of you ... then or now.