When I was little (many of my stories start like this), I was taken on many roadtrips around the state of MT. It just happened like that. I think that my parents and grandparents used this as a diversion- not as boring as spending Saturday afternoon watching curling and drinking beer.
I really didn't enjoy them much. Time is so funny to kids- especially in the car where you can't move around and spend energy. I hated the process of getting there. And all small roads in MT in certain parts of the state look the same. Trees. Sunlight laughing through the trees. Rocks. I often wondered what was looking at our car pass by from the trees. I had read lots of books about fairies, Greek mythology, and the like, and wanted them to be true. But MT isn't really the place to transplant those stories. They fit locales with more gentleness of character.
The one destination that I hated above all others (most were fine once we arrived, and I could run around and make noise) was the Big Hole. We went there on some kind of annual pilgrimage with my grandparents. I really, really hated the place. It has bad hoodoo in my book. I swore after one interminable road trip in my pre-teen years never to return. It's where the Nez Pierce were ambushed and killed in their sleep. I was probably exposed to Little Big Man at too early an age to handle these kinds of stories with aplomb. I hated the thought of all that screaming, dying and blood. And then the silence. I hated that there was a visitor's center with a slide show about the history, and exhibits featuring bullets. I just plain hated the place period. I had wanted to be an Indian princess when I was 5. I insisted on wearing my hair in braids and jumping on the bed in some kind of approximation of what I thought an Indian princess would do. I always thought that the cowboys and army men were poor sports, and just plain mean. Guess I was a child of the 70's after all.
And no, I won't go to the Big Hole ever again. Some memories need to fade out.
"The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk."
5 comments:
Yeah, battlefields are bad places. You can feel the pain and fear that went on there, and the silence is oppressive. I never had to go to Big Hole, but the Little Bighorn was pretty bad, too. The visitor center has become nicer throughout the years, talking more about what life was like during those times than the battle, if I remember correctly, but it was still pretty sad. Unlike the tribes, the cavalry had headstones, scattered across the plains. Even though I didn't like what the soldiers were trying to do, I still pitied them- killed alone or in small groups, run down. Sad.
The Flatehead Valley, especially up toward Glacier and east to Jewel Basin, was definitely a place for dryads, naiads, and fairies, with its thick, deep cedar forests and numerous waterfalls...
That's Flathead, not Flatehead. It's apparently still too early in the morning....
I've felt some nasty hoodoo there, but a couple of other places, as well. And then there are the magical places. There's a place in AZ called Montezuma's Well. Pure magic. Never felt the like. One of my favorite places ever. These places hopefully balance out the other ones. I like to think of it as a sort of ying/yang proposition.
The Little Bighorn reference reminds me of a sign I saw driving cross country way back in '86. On I-90 in ND, there was one that read something like "Thank you for visiting North Dakota. Custer was healthy when he left." Does anyone know if it's still there?
On a grimmer note, if you want to visit a museum with bad karma, try the "Peace Museum" in Hiroshima -- no tombstones there, but they do have bits of sidewalk with the inverse shadows of people who were standing there when the bomb went off...
Funny (but not really) how many bad places there are. Generated by humans. My friend J says that Auschwitz is off the scale on bad. I doubt that I could handle it. I would be a wreck.
I haven't been to ND in many, many years, and have no plans to go there in the immediate or long-term future. So that mystery will need to be solved by someone else. Sorry!
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