the missouri
todd and i spent the weekend in great falls, montana. about three hours from missoula. the wind was blowing crazily, spookily. the drive on highway 200 was scary and empty. there was something abandoned about much of the place, something wrecked and hateful. people didn't generally smile. todd fished a private pond near fairfield, which, he later learned, was formed through flood irrigation. the fields are flooded in the spring, destroying the natural flow and habitat of the irrigated rivers (the sun and the dearborn). the water washes over the hilly land and runs downhill. some landowners create dams in the natural crevices, capturing the runoff and creating ponds. they find rainbows and grayling in their unnatural ponds, fish sucked into the pipes and then flooded over the land. the fish in the pond are the lucky few who don't end up strewn along the field, baked in the sun, 'fertilizer' for the irrigators.
the drive made me aware of the sheer amount of human detritus ejected into the world. that which doesn't make it into the trash cans and landfills. the thirty-mile-an-hour winds are so regular that the plastic bags normally hidden from sight collected everywhere in the road-side fences. ripped black and white plastic flapped along the highway and colleceted in the lee of small hills, like drifted snow. the wind collected into piles and tied to barbwire fences the tons of abandoned bags and cups and myriad other garbage, where it flickered and strained to be seen. unlike most places, where this garbage can be ignored and invisible, the interstate and highways around great falls were huge receptacles, because the wind had swirled and prodded the paper and plastic all into gross eddies.
the mighty missouri. oh, my, it's hard to visit it without crying. we visited a place known as "giant springs," the shortest river in the world, where so much spring water flows out of the ground it qualifies as a river.
it flows directly into the missouri, about thirty feet away. the water percolates through the little belt mountains, taking hundreds of years to reach the point where it bubbles out of the ground. indisputably a sacred place with ancient knowledge. now, it's been walled in with rocks and concrete so people can walk right up to, and over top of, the main spring. the 'park' surrounding it is fully mowed and manicured, and its nearest neighbor is a huge trout hatchery. there's a paved parking lot just uphill, with plenty of concrete sidewalks weaving through the landscape. when you sit next to the spring, though, and will your peripheral vision away, you can appreciate the deep emerald greens pulsing deep in the spring pond. you can thirst for the water, alive and silken, cold in the summer and warm in the winter.
great falls' namesake(s) were a series of falls, four or five or more. now, in their stead, are a series of huge hydroelectric dams. the dams either divert the water away from the natural falls or create a backwater that makes the falls behind them disappear. conveniently, the city has posted tourist signs where the dams are, with artists' renderings of the scene before the dam and quotes from lewis and clark that say things like 'this is the most beautiful thing i have ever beheld.' the signs, of course, not the benefits obtained from the dam, such as power, hiking (?), biking (?) and bird habitat (?). the signs are a perfect compliment to the arrogant taming of this castrated river and eviscerated land. where the river once ran, the rock walls have primordial carvings, created by the unimaginable springtime flow of the river that once ran here. that was the one word that kept springing to mind: unimaginable. the river, before the devastation of the last century, and what it must have once looked like, sounded like, felt like. the life that it once sustained. you can't help, when looking at these things, but try to put it back together in your imagination, try to eradicate the dams and the trash and the concrete. as you try, you can't help but realize that it is utterly impossible, and realize how very far we have come.
it is an angry place; it is waiting.
the drive made me aware of the sheer amount of human detritus ejected into the world. that which doesn't make it into the trash cans and landfills. the thirty-mile-an-hour winds are so regular that the plastic bags normally hidden from sight collected everywhere in the road-side fences. ripped black and white plastic flapped along the highway and colleceted in the lee of small hills, like drifted snow. the wind collected into piles and tied to barbwire fences the tons of abandoned bags and cups and myriad other garbage, where it flickered and strained to be seen. unlike most places, where this garbage can be ignored and invisible, the interstate and highways around great falls were huge receptacles, because the wind had swirled and prodded the paper and plastic all into gross eddies.
the mighty missouri. oh, my, it's hard to visit it without crying. we visited a place known as "giant springs," the shortest river in the world, where so much spring water flows out of the ground it qualifies as a river.
it flows directly into the missouri, about thirty feet away. the water percolates through the little belt mountains, taking hundreds of years to reach the point where it bubbles out of the ground. indisputably a sacred place with ancient knowledge. now, it's been walled in with rocks and concrete so people can walk right up to, and over top of, the main spring. the 'park' surrounding it is fully mowed and manicured, and its nearest neighbor is a huge trout hatchery. there's a paved parking lot just uphill, with plenty of concrete sidewalks weaving through the landscape. when you sit next to the spring, though, and will your peripheral vision away, you can appreciate the deep emerald greens pulsing deep in the spring pond. you can thirst for the water, alive and silken, cold in the summer and warm in the winter.great falls' namesake(s) were a series of falls, four or five or more. now, in their stead, are a series of huge hydroelectric dams. the dams either divert the water away from the natural falls or create a backwater that makes the falls behind them disappear. conveniently, the city has posted tourist signs where the dams are, with artists' renderings of the scene before the dam and quotes from lewis and clark that say things like 'this is the most beautiful thing i have ever beheld.' the signs, of course, not the benefits obtained from the dam, such as power, hiking (?), biking (?) and bird habitat (?). the signs are a perfect compliment to the arrogant taming of this castrated river and eviscerated land. where the river once ran, the rock walls have primordial carvings, created by the unimaginable springtime flow of the river that once ran here. that was the one word that kept springing to mind: unimaginable. the river, before the devastation of the last century, and what it must have once looked like, sounded like, felt like. the life that it once sustained. you can't help, when looking at these things, but try to put it back together in your imagination, try to eradicate the dams and the trash and the concrete. as you try, you can't help but realize that it is utterly impossible, and realize how very far we have come.
it is an angry place; it is waiting.
Comments
yuck. just yuck. I esp. am horrified by the artist renderings of the lost falls. *shudder*