Montana

My favorite book of poems is "The Way It Is - New & Selected Poems" by William Stafford.  William Stafford is my favorite poet.  I always have a book of poems by him "close at hand".  For some reason,  I had placed my favorite book of his in a bookcase in the living room and forgot about it.  Last night at two o'clock when sleep would simply not make it's presence known, I tip toed out to the living room to read until sleep became a possibility.  I went to the book case and there was "The Way It Is" ~ it was like re-discovering an old friend. I randomly opened the book and it cracked open to page 37 probably because I had opened it to this page many times before.  And sure enough there under the entry 16 June was the poem "Godiva County, Montana".  Follows is the poem:

She's a big country.  Her undulations
roll and flow in the sun.  Those flanks
quiver when the wind caresses the grass.
Who turns away when so generous a body
offers to play hid-and -seek all summer?
One shoulder leans bare all the way up
the mountain; limbs range and plunge
wildly into the river.  We risk our eyes
every day; they celebrate; they dance
and flirt over this offered treasure.
"Be alive," the land says.  "Listen--
this is your time, your world, your pleasure."

Ironically, I had just read a New Yorker the afternoon before containing a section on promoting tourism in Montana which listed the authors of the state and their reflections on the Montana life style. The advertisement waxed and waned on about the big sky, wide open spaces, etc. etc. etc.  Montana has apparently always been the darling of the Eastern Seaboard.  In a book that I am currently reading, "Lords of Finance - The Bankers Who Broke the World" by Liaquat Ahamed.  On page 49 Ahamed writes about the impending credit crisis in 1914,

Among the eight men gathered at the House of Morgan that Friday morning in August, the one who seemed to understand best the significance of the tempest of events was Henry Davison, Jack Morgan's right hand man--he essentially ran the firm while Morgan, the largest capital partner, lived the life of an English squire.  A few days after the meeting, Davison telegraphed his colleague, Thomas Lamont, who was trout fishing in Montana[emphasis added].  "The credit of all Europe has broken down absolutely.  Specie payments suspended and moratorium in force in France and practically in all countries, though not officially in England...it is as if we had had an earthquake, are as yet somewhat stunned, but will soon get to righting things."

 It was 1914 and people were off visiting the trout streams of Montana!  I wonder if Lamont broke off his trout fishing trip and returned to New York?  I know what I would have done!  Impending finance disaster be damned!

A recurring theme of mine, sense of "place".  Montanans live it ~ experience it.  William Stafford was from Kansas ~ a land of the plains.  Montana represents a love affair of plains married to the mountains ~ the Rocky Mountain front.  Stafford as a plains animal summed up pretty well, in my view, how Montana natives feel about their home.  It's like living with Lady Godiva and being able to "view" her 24 - 7.  Who could "turn away"?

Gordon, et. al.