Walker's Dusk View - Missoula, Montana

“Walkers are 'practitioners of the city,' for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Small City at Sunset, Missoula, Montana

At six
  the sun sets
escorted by puffs of blushing clouds,
distributing its last golden wealth
to the immediate heaven
while the whole cosmos
turns green and blue with envy
The mountains stretching —
   a huge black cat
motionless...
the humming city nestles cosily to rest. 
- From "City Sunset" by Celestine Kulagoe
from Some Modern Poetry from the Solomon Islands, edited by Albert Wendt (Fiji: Mana Publications, 1975)

(Click the above text links to read the full poem and learn more about the author.)

Night Lights, Butte, Montana

“Looking down from the mountain, it’s like
someone threw diamonds all over the floor.
But coming into the valley, the lights illumine
what is true, and real.

That‘s what the city‘s like - surreal & dazzling from afar.
But when you get down to touchstone reality,
It‘s pretty much the same as right here…

Because you can‘t leave yourself behind.”

- from Cubic Zirconia by (ahem) Cyndy Hull






I know, I know - what has it come to that I’m quoting my unpublished journals? But descending into the night lights of Butte, America, will forever remind me of reading words fresh from my pen and realizing, “I think I just wrote a country song…”
Not that I have anything against country music; I just never aspired to write a song in that category. For the record, that’s my listening genre of choice on Montana road trips - it just seems right. Hit the radio’s Seek button to find a clear country station, then sing along once you catch the tune. Absorb a little down-home flavour via local news and commercials. Smile at the live and unfettered elation of caller number four when the DJ announces yes! they’re the winner of county fair concert tickets. And on rolling stretches bereft of any station at all, open your eyes wider, take it all in, and let your soul feed on the quiet.