October | 2018 | wordsfromanneli

October 31, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 23 Comments

The Thing About Oil

Whether we like it or not, we need oil products in our daily lives. The Calumet Specialty Products Partnership helps to provide them. Part of their production takes place in a refinery in the city of Great Falls, Montana.

As we descend from the low hills on our way from Havre to Helena, the city of Great Falls, Montana, sprawls in front of us. It is named for a series of five dams built nearby on the Missouri River, one of which helped provide the electricity needed to run the refinery.

The refinery is a landmark of the city, and its presence is hard to miss. But locals are glad for its existence as it provides many jobs and much-needed products.

When we have passed through we have sometimes taken the city center route and other times the Northwest Bypass. Either way, the refinery is unavoidable and so is the smell.

What amazed me is that right across the street the Montana Club Restaurant and a little farther on, the Wal-Mart and several other businesses, are bustling with customers and doing very well.

Obviously the refinery was there first.

We all hear about pipelines and air pollution and the bad petro-chemicals these days, but oil is part of our survival. We need to eat, and farmers need machinery, and that machinery needs to be oiled and fueled. Vehicles people drive need gasoline and oil. Other by-products like paint, solvents, candle wax, cosmetics, and asphalt are less necessary, but still convenient to have. Whether we like it or not, it is difficult to do without many of these products for our economy to function.

Finding ways of minimizing the impact of oil product manufacturing is an ongoing challenge, but the people of Great Falls are glad for the jobs and proud of the important products they provide.

October 30, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 39 Comments

Cranberries

Nearly home from Montana, we drove past this cranberry farm east of Vancouver, BC. Again, I only had seconds to snap a drive-by shot, but it made me look up cranberry harvesting when I got home.

I learned that cranberries can be harvested dry or wet. For the dry harvesting they go through the cranberry field with a machine much like a lawnmower except that it doesn’t cut the plants; it only scoops up the berries and bits of the plant. The berries are then sent through a machine that bounces them around and separates them from the other bits of debris through a grooved roller that rocks back and forth. Then comes the assembly line where workers pick out the bad berries from the conveyor belt.

On the tiny photo above, you can see that they have flooded the cranberry field. A taller machine, designed not to churn up the wet ground goes through and scoops up more berries to bring them to the surface.

Then the berries are “herded” together by floating dams just as if the berries were an oil spill. Once the berries are enclosed, they are vacuumed up into a truck while the water is drained off as the berries are loaded.

They still need to go through the assembly line for sorting, but machinery does all but this last step.

When you make a cranberry sauce for your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, you need to add about a cup of sugar for two cups of these very tart berries, but you can make your cranberry sauce more interesting by adding plums and apples if you have them handy.

Cranberries also make a wonderful addition to muffins. Throw in a cupful with the batter instead of using blueberries. Add some chopped nuts. The measuring doesn’t have to be an exact science. Experiment. They’re sure to be good.

October 25, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 37 Comments

American Beauty, or Land of Broken Dreams?

Montana is a beautiful state, at least in the spring, summer, and fall. I would not want to spend a winter in Montana (because … okay, I admit it, I’m a wimp). Their winters are harsh.

Seeing so many abandoned buildings in this state, I have come to think of Montana as a land of broken dreams (for many). In pioneer days, people must have come to Montana with hope and enthusiasm. They built their homes and tilled the soil, and waited for the crops to grow.

Then came the winter, the loneliness, and the difficulty in traveling the mile or two in harsh conditions for a sanity-restoring visit with the nearest neighbour.

What if you had an emergency, an accident, or your child was ill, and needed a doctor?

Is it any wonder that sometimes dreams turned into nightmares?

Some of these abandoned homes may have been left standing empty when a newer, more modern house was built nearby, but many simply became a place escaped from, left for the coyotes and pigeons to explore.

Here is one house that has seen happier days.

And here is another.

If only the walls could talk, what stories we would hear!

October 24, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 20 Comments

Casino

Are you a gambler?

Driving past a collection of houses, many of them uninhabited, I noticed the sign on one of the buildings: Lone Tree Casino.

Gambling casinos are typical of the businesses you find nowadays on Reserves. Some of these establishments are huge monstrosities, looking out of place on the undeveloped land. This one is unpretentious. At first I thought it was a derelict building, no longer in use, but on reflection, I may be wrong.

It seems to be a desolate town, and for those who regularly visit this establishment, a sad way to spend the time in this windowless building. But that’s just my humble opinion.

There has been improvement though. No longer should it be called Lone Tree Casino. I see many trees in the area now.

October 23, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 30 Comments

What’s in a Name?

Dunkirk, Zurich, Malta, Glasgow, Cleveland, Devon, Rudyard, Harlem, Jordan, Belgrade, Amsterdam-Churchill, Havre, and Manhattan. These are names of places all over the world, but they are also names of places in Montana.

On our way home we stopped for the night in Zurich. Not Zurich, Switzerland, but Zurich, Montana. It’s a tiny farming community where the people drive their ATVs down the middle of the road if they’re taking their trash to the local garbage dump. You just have to slow down and wait until they make their turn into the dumping station up ahead on the left.

Then you can continue on to the little gem of a community park where they kindly allow campers to stay the night for a mere ten-dollar fee for electricity. Such a peaceful location.

The community hall was not in use the day we were there, camped in the corner.

The view from my trailer window is of black cottonwoods that whisper as they drop their last golden leaves. The only notably loud sound was made by the pheasant who cackled enthusiastically before taking wing out of the creek bed beside our trailer.

I thought it odd that Montana has so many names that duplicate other places in the world, but on looking more closely at the map, I saw names of a completely different sort: Poplar, Wolf Point, Plentywood, Buffalo, Cat Creek, Musselshell, Rattlesnake, Lodgepole, Sleeping Buffalo, Whitewater, Crow Rock, Grass Range, Forest Grove, Roundup, Deer Lodge, Cut Bank, Sunburst, Sweetgrass, Fox Crossing, Chinook, Gold Butte.

Montana names are such fun!

October 21, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 29 Comments

It’s Time

The autumn days are nearing their end. Nights are colder. Even though this coming week is one last promise of warmer weather, we know it can’t last. The RV park is emptying out. It’s soon time to go home.

It’s been a treat,

But where’s the heat?

A week’s reprieve

Will cold relieve,

The sun’s last rays

Of autumn days

Will soon be gone

And cold comes on.

It’s time to go

Before the snow,

Back home to rain

And rain and rain.

October 19, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 24 Comments

Oh Deer, Deer.

Dear me, these mule deer are late for school. They are just down the hill from the school beyond the fence.

See them there, talking about whether it’s wise to skip school. The leader of the pack reminds them that this school has been closed since 1966, and the teacher is long gone.

But what to do about this fence. Who will go first to show how it’s done? Finally, one of them hops over and the rest follow, running until they are out of sight. They are already far away from me, but they’re taking no chances.

This white-tailed deer is a bit braver and as long as I didn’t try to get out of the truck it posed for a couple of pictures. You can see the line where I didn’t have the window lowered enough.

They’re only deer, whether mule deer or white-tailed deer, but I like to take a picture of them because they are such en”dear”ing animals. Maybe I watched too many Walt Disney movies, but I love seeing these gentle animals.

By the way, if there are any truck experts out there, I’d appreciate knowing the models and year of the trucks by the school.

I will be on the road for a few days, but will answer your comments when I am connected again.

October 16, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 30 Comments

Montana Sky

Reflections of hay fields glow in the sky

Cottonwoods thinning their leaves by and by

Warm evening sunset brings hope for fine days

Before winter’s sun begins thinning its rays.

October 14, 2018
by wordsfromanneli 22 Comments

Pioneering

“Someone” lived here once upon a time. “Someone” must have worked very hard to make ends meet, cook meals, raise children, keep warm in an uninsulated house in extremely cold winters, and keep their spirits up when the nearest neighbour was miles away.

I can’t imagine anyone being that tough, to live out there so isolated and to work so hard on the land, fighting the elements.

I peeked into the house and saw the kitchen stove still in its place. It must have run on propane, as I doubt they had electricity until later years. They probably had to bring the water to the house from somewhere, either with buckets, or from a shallow well that you had to pump by hand. Either way, it would have been a chore to heat water for a bath.

Most likely the nearest neighbours were the local birds and other animals like coyotes, porcupines, deer, and rattlesnakes.

The pronghorns must have been a wonderful sight to see then, just as they are now. These antelopes were about half a mile away when I tried to snap a shot of them.

The one in the photo below looks like it might be trying to grow antlers. A young buck, maybe?

Another neighbour’s feed house tells the story of the climate in this area. Do you think it’s windy much?

You have to be very tough to live in this country. It’s one thing to visit here, but to actually spend a winter in this harsh place takes a lot of fortitude.