How I Spent North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho...in less than 24 hours!

I wish I could write this adequately. Of sunrise over North Dakota so bright and so sudden and so riveting that I struggle to tear myself away, and am seeing spots for minutes on end.Of land carved by some unforeseen spoon, dotted with horses and the white remnants of an early thaw. Of prairie grass that would it not for early January flapping in the breeze. It sort of makes me undeniably content just sitting and watching the world slide by, surrounded by lost souls and adventures so similar to my own.

Theres no good way to voice the spontaneous immediacy and distance I feel, looking out on the waves like foothills. Its sort of like sitting on some abandoned Atlantic beach and knowing that the only thing between you and Africa is water. Where cowboys ride trains past ancient Pioneer cemeteries with three graves and faded Pickett fences. And footprints mark the snow pack even hours from the next town. And empty churches and freight liners whisper sweet departure songs to empty grain silos. Even the sun makes rainbows through the ice.

For coffee and sagebrush I could translate the tails of this forgotten West quite happily for days on end.

Riding trains is sort of this sweet zen. I've whiled away nearly the whole day just staring out the window. The more you stare at the same things for hours on end, the more intriguing places your mind usually wanders. Deep Montana in the early evening, and I was really hoping for a sunset to light up the prarie-land and the very beginnings of high mountains. Clouds came in, so instead I'm marvelling at the beginning of the Rockies in the dying light and two guys with twelve-string guitars playing old blues and John Denver.

Someday I'll learn to play the guitar. I've got to. Montana is flat. Every small town we've passed through today I peer around desperately, trying to imagine myself here. Its so brown, that's the first thing. Other than that I think the endlessness of the high-prairie and the slow heave of the horizon just might grown on me. I love the expanse, if that's even a word. I love a gaze in every direction going on for miles on end. Even the sad sort of desolation of empty houses and empty land, its something bewitching.

There would certainly be sunshine, however...