A Montana Journal, ca March 2020

 We was down on river’s edge a few days past, me and Ol’ Black Tahoe, my trusted steed. It were a just little spit of water off the main flow of the Bitterroot near to settlement of Victor. Big enough, tho, and deep in places, to hold some acceptable trout. Off in some field close by I heard me the croaking rasp of a Sandhill Crane. They come back to the valley every year about this time to make their babies and push on with life. I have confidence that old bird is not one bit concerned with the current doings of us peoples. It is just being. And there so is life itself, what keeps trundling onward in its labor to continue its own existence. These days seem to find us all working plentiful hard for this life thing. Staying far one from another. Steering clear. Holed up and lonely. And so it should be, I reckon. A lot of us has given it up already. Not by choice, but by living’s design. It is a sadness all around, and surely more so for them what is left to mere remembrances of them departed. I suppose we’s all been on this same trail ever since some sawbones tapped our bottom and we sucked breath and wailed acceptance of this fragile, temporal thing. Seems we was born to some common contract writ by the Great Creator. Its provisions obligating us to love and care for one another, and every spec of life sharing firmament and firm ground. And then, tho with great reluctance and with reason and time unknown, to yield way to them coming after. And as is true for all, present or passed, life itself will continue with its dogged determination, steady on and doing what it does with such fierce tenacity. Then sun will rise, skies will blue and them Sandhills will return again to the valley.  I have not died today. And that is a fine thing. Yours truly…




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