This must be the place: ‘I’m headed for the Bozeman Round and it’s goodbye to Old Missoula, sleepy town’
Garret K. Woodward photo
Hello from 26,982 feet above Southern Appalachia. Somewhere near southeastern Kentucky. En route to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over an hour flight delay leaving the Asheville airport. Ground speed is 539 miles per hour. About 760 miles to our destination. One hour and 41 minutes left before touchdown in the Twin Cities.
It’s Sunday evening. And while many folks I know are either relaxing on their couches, prepping work for tomorrow or nursing their Saturday night hangovers — all of which slowly gearing up for the transition into Monday morning — here I am, Seat 24D. Overhead lights have been dimmed. Headrests screens glow with whatever film, TV show or live broadcast we desire.
Since my credit card wasn’t able to connect properly with the Delta inflight Wi-Fi purchase, I’m currently offline, typing away this here column. It’s due tomorrow morning. Might as well hunker down and let the ole fingertips roll along the keyboard and see what may get conjured from the high skies over “The Bluegrass State.”
With no access at the moment to my Spotify account, I suppose I must dig into whatever remains on my very outdated and rarely used Apple music account. Thankfully, there’s some live recordings I downloaded years ago of the now-defunct indie/jazz instrumental trio That Toga Band, formerly based in Burlington, Vermont.
The group was fronted by my high school buddy, Tom, when he was attending the University of Vermont. Circa 2004. We were just 19 or so, but quickly assimilating into adulthood or whatever it was, this rough semblance of a life solely constructed by ourselves for the first time with parents or authority figures saying otherwise.
I haven’t listened to the recordings in a long time. But, I’m immediately taken back to that time and place when I’d be back home from college in Connecticut for the holidays or spring break, when I’d leave my hometown of Rouses Point, New York, and motor over the Lake Champlain bridge to nearby Burlington.
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In those days, I’d crash on Tom’s couch or the hardwood floor of his quaint apartment a few blocks from Church Street and the heart of downtown Burlington. Midnight shenanigans in cozy New England dive bars. Heavy snowflakes of Christmastime cascading down upon the city. Strings of lights across foggy windows. Hearty conversations about what the future might hold. Fingers crossed.
Images of this trip now in progress, in joyous motion from Waynesville to Whitefish, Montana. A trip of business and pleasure, all while working from the road remotely for this fine publication. Whitefish. Oh, beautiful Whitefish, the land of crystal blue waters, ancient forests and seemingly never-ending blood-orange sunsets.
I’m heading there on assignment for Rolling Stone. Covering the massive Under the Big Sky music festival. Featuring some of the biggest names in Americana and country music, it’ll be my second year in attendance. But, more so, it’s about the adventure, this culmination of thoughts, plans and actions in regards to this trip that have been mulled over for months behind my writing desk.
There’s just something about Montana that makes my heart and soul yearn for it. Ever since I first stepped foot in Big Sky Country when I was seven years old on a family road trip to Glacier National Park, the landscape and its inhabitants happily haunt my dreams.
And this genuine, tightly-held relationship with Montana has remained within my restless existence throughout my life. Between youthful excursions and later working in the Rocky Mountains in Eastern Idaho as a rookie journalist following college graduation in 2007, I’ve ventured to Montana continually, this latest go-round another unwritten chapter unfolding in real time.
Once again, my girlfriend, Sarah, is riding co-pilot. As it stands, the road trip route will be Interstate 94 from Minnesota through North Dakota into Montana, pressing the gas pedal down westward along I-90 through Billing, Bozeman, Butte and Missoula, then an abrupt turn north by Flathead Lake to Whitefish.
It dawned on me that the last time I wandered through North Dakota was September 2008. I was 23 years old and had just left my rookie reporting gig at the Teton Valley News due to hitting my head on the ceiling of the publication. And I thought maybe I’d try my luck back in my native North Country of Upstate New York.
Truth-be-told, the exact day I packed up and left Eastern Idaho was the same damn day Wall Street began to crumble into financial ruin. And all in the middle of an upcoming presidential election, not to mention war raging in the Middle East and tensions across the globe. Nothing’s the same, everything’s the same, as they say.
I remember driving across Wyoming into Montana and then through North Dakota. Below is an excerpt from my dusty road journals:
“Sept. 13, 2008: Highway 12. Western North Dakota. Across the Powder River. Infamous Midwestern rainstorm overhead. Dark clouds and dime-sized raindrops swallowed the horizon.
The desolate route resulted in a cattle run blocking my path. Ranchers, straight out of a Marlboro advertisement, rustling up their crop. They ventured by my field of vision, ultimately through the river and into the endless fields. Faces anonymous under low brimmed hats. Jackets held tightly through the numbing Canadian winds from the north.
Dusty downtowns, empty lots and mangy dogs dotted the forgotten stretch of pothole-laced pavement. I crossed the state line at Plevna. Obscure red dirt roads branching off to nowhere. Crosses seemingly every few miles memorializing recent tragedies and loved ones lost long ago.
Crept into Marmarth, a town of complete abandonment on the open range. Scratchy AM radio stations broadcasting religious fervor or the prospects of the local football team in the state playoffs. Gravel streets and cracked foundations of businesses once proudly owned and operated. The winds howled through the empty avenues and streets. Leaves tumbling into the corners of the community. Birds chirping above. Mystic Theater all shuttered up.
Stopped for a beer at the Pastime Bar & Steakhouse. Jukebox filled with Hank Williams, George Jones, Buck Owens and Jim Reeves. The good stuff.
Oil derricks. Wind turbines. Sunflower fields. Ice-cream scoops of dirt on the barren landscape surrounding the bright lights of Lady Luck situated on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
The sun ducked behind never-ending cornfields through northwestern South Dakota. Johnny Cash echoed out the radio. Long stretches of nonexistent humanity. Zigzagging roadways. Beady eyed sheriff deputies setting their sights on my unknown vehicle barreling down Route 83 — the ‘Road to Nowhere.’
Moonlight reflects off the soon-to-be harvested land like a silent pond during a quiet Massachusetts winter. Motel in Plankinton, South Dakota, around midnight.”
Life is beautiful, grasp for it y’all.
