gas station chinese food for lunch

Here is what I wrote for the paper to say goodbye to be beloved little Malta:

Over the last seven weeks in Malta, I have had the chance to meet many of you.

The question on every one's mind seems to be "How are you liking Malta?"

I often reply with a short "It’s great, everyone is really friendly." And you all are really friendly, that’s not a lie. But I figured since I’m leaving now, this is the perfect chance to expound on my answer a little without any repercussions.

Coming from a college town of nearly 50,000 people to a county with one-tenth of that population, was sort of like diving into ice cold water on a hot afternoon, not that there are many of those around here.

I know that the water will be cold, I am prepared, but when the water rushes over my body I’m still a little shocked, though its not exactly unpleasant.

That’s what this has been like for me: a refreshing dive into unknown waters. No matter how much I told myself, ‘I can handle small, I like small’ I couldn’t fathom how small nor how different 11 hours north of my home town in Utah would actually be.

But it has in no way been bad, aside from the occasional bout of boredom on Friday night, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The prairie landscape, while unfamiliar to a girl who grew on the Rocky Mountains, is absolutely beautiful.

Though you might grown when I tell you I went camping at the American Prairie Foundation BioBlitz, waking up that morning and looking out the screen door of my yurt to see miles and miles of nothing but grass and sky, was breathtaking.

As I stare into Montana’s empty horizon, I am reminded how infinite this world really is, how small a part I play and how hard I should work to make that part important.

I would hope that many of you experience a similar feeling of awe as you work you’re wheat and alfalfa fields, looking out on the vast expanse of flat grassland.

Though I sometimes found myself wishing there was a Walmart or Sally’s Beauty Supply store in town, I quickly reminded myself that its pretty amazing to see small businesses do in fact still exist in America.

Living in a world of Walmart’s and Sally’s, nearly everything us humans desire is at our figure tips. But the human connection, what we crave most in a world of increasing isolation, is often missing.

The owner of Walmart, or even the high school bag boys who work there, don’t stop to chat with me as I pick out my favorite cream cheese the way Drew Nagy does at the Albertsons in Malta.

When I walk around my college campus, no one recognized my name from the school paper, even within my own department, fellow students rarely got chatty in the elevator, preferring to go it alone.

I may have been slightly naive as I packed up my little Toyota and headed north. I thought ‘the west is the west,’ but I should have known there are cultural outliers, after all, California is technically ‘the west.’

I now recognize that Northern Utah, characterized by suburbs and LDS/Mormon standards, falls under the realm of western outliers.

Arriving in Malta, I was left to decipher a new accent and lots of confusing farming terms, along with the federal bureaucracies alphabet soup.

When Marko Manokian, from MSU Extension first said "summer fallow" in a conversation about farming, I thought he meant a bird, and yes, I now know that makes no sense.

While seeing a church on every other block was nothing new for this Utahn, it was new to see that each belonged to a different faith.

Seeing nearly as many bars as churches in one small town, was however, very new. In my college town there is but one bar for 50,000 people. And in that bar, they only serve beer.

A special thank you goes out to Sue Frary, dinosaur expert, for showing me why Utah needs more bars.

So it has been an interesting and eye-opening experience to see how the rest of the west lives, and my only judgement is, its kind of nice.

You may all hold different beliefs and have your own favorite bars, but it appears you have one important thing in common: you love your community, you care about your quality of life and want to protect it.

I admire that and say, ‘right on!’ because your community, your way of life, has produced some very friendly, amazing, talented, smart, unique people who have shown me, more than anything, what it means to be in this life together.

I came to Malta with a broken heart and high hopes, and I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t find a cowboy, but I fell in love with many of you. Thank you for making things easy.

In other news, I'm coming home!!!!

why are wednesday's so hard?

So it's my last week in Montana! I am excited to come home. I have recently had many conversations that go like this:
"So how much longer are you here?"
"I'm leaving Friday!"
"But you just got here, you're leaving already?"
"I know! I've been here awhile."
"You don't sound sad about that at all."
"Haha, yeah, I have enjoyed myself, but I'm glad its not forever."
"Well we've been glad to have you here."
And they are glad, very glad. They have been starved for a new perspective on town life, in need of a writer that enjoys her subjects and the people she meets, even if she doesn't agree with them. I have been happy to give them that. I really have met some fascinating, genuine people.

I really think it would be great to work somewhere for a few months and then move on all the time. You can come it and pick up on what people care about, find the unique characters, make your mark and then go before you become complacent and cynical about your location. It would keep things exciting and fresh. But this isn't reality. Even international journalists get stationed in the same place for years. If you work for the middle east bureau, you don't travel, you live in Iraq or Israel. And I get it, the best investigative journalism can only take place when a reporter has become very familiar with her beat, when she's tracked patterns and knows all the ins-and-outs. But I still think it'd be fun to move around a lot.

Anyways, here are some photos I've been hording.

Front page photo from the history museums weekend event. This guy is telling the story of John Ebaugh, a rancher and outlaw from the late 1800s in Phillips County.

Isn't this the most perfect headstone ever? I love George Washington too. Please bury me with one of these things.

Kids, this is called a "lichen," pronounced just like something from a Lord of the Rings book. The orange stuff is extra nitrogen, or bird pooh with algae growing on it.

A weekend trip to Havre. Didn't find Walmart, but I wandered the streets with a camera. I think what's sort of frustrating about wanting to take pictures here, is that there's no people around to capture. So I end up shooting trees and building and signs, and who cares about any of it, I want to see some people.

did a kid write that?

"Smile, you are in God's country"

weather damage at the milk river pavillion

this is the "old gym," there is a new one now.

So Debbie, the newspaper accountant, has this adorable son 9-year-old and she brought him to work yesterday. I took down copy for a clasified ad on the phone and put it on her desk to bill and layout the ad. Her son is sitting at her desk eating lunch and he goes "Mom, look!" pointing at the ad text, "was some kid in here writing that?" She shushes him and says "no, it's okay... stop talking about it." Nope, I am 21 and my handwriting looks so childish and awful that it shocked a 9-year-old into thinking someone even younger had been in the office and left a note for his mom. I even re-wrote the note once to make it more readable. All that time doing extra handwriting assingments in first grade really didn't pay off.

On Tuesday morning, I will talk to Glen Templeton on the phone for 15 minutes because the week after he's performing at the county fair here. I think this may be of significance to country music fans? So far, in my research of this label-described up-and-coming star, I have concluded that he really needs a better PR person and someone to please, proof read his website. Your telling me that with all that country music money, someone can't write him a decent bio?

So I had a lot to do these last two weeks. Yesterday's front page content was 95 percent done by me, except the layout, which is sort of disappointing, but all words were mine. However, now things are slow again. So I'm off to chase down random feature stories.

I am very excited to go home soon and attend the twilight concerts in SL, the Decemberist!! Bright Eyes in August!!!! I can't wait. The 14-year-old in me is just thrilled that Bright Eyes has new music out. Also, it wouldn't hurt to see my sisters. Since Monday, I have been doing some early birthday present shopping. If I texted you to ask your shirt size, or some other random thing, that's why.

picture overload

First, pictures from my camping trip on the American Praire Foundation reserve. This organization has bought up an enormous amount of private land with the goal of returnig it all to its natural state and reintroducing buffalo on the land. A lot of people in town hate, underline hate, the APF but a lot of the concerns seem to be unfounded or blown out of proportion. I agree, its problemtic to reintroduce buffalo where cows are also grazing. But the APF is a private land owner and can do what they want. They are not trying to kick ranchers off their land or get it all designated as a national monument or wildness area. Personally, I think this is the way conservation should be done. Government conservation efforts are often inefficient, out of touch, expensive, redundant, etc. Everything that comes to mind when you think of buerocratic waste and mismanagement. The APF is a private funded, privately run organization and I like that. I think conservation is important and can operate in harmony with ranching interests. The APF is relatively small and keeps the community in mind when managing their land. And from what I've seen hasn't actually done a lot to complain about or suffered from the same buerocratic nightmares that occur on national wildlife refuges. Anyways, giant speel, here are the pictures:

Morning view on the prairie from my yurt

An empty horizon

To show you what yurts look like

Sunset on the prairie, well through some non-native trees planted on the prairie

Setting up nets to catch bats with at night

A barn full of bats

It was sort of hard to get good shots of these bats because it was night time and bats are small, but I got a few nice ones I think.

 I walked right up to this owl and it didn't run away or anything.

Bull grazing on the prairie

 

Photo for the paper, a WWF employee attened, caught a rattlesnake and gave an impromtu talk for the little kids in the camp. They were so excited and not scared at all. I don't think they know how dangerous rattlesnakes can be.

Now, time for photos from my fight over the Bittercreek WSA and surrounding area. The flight was put on the Wilderness Society and EcoFlight to promote conservation in Bittercreek. Can't say I like them as much as APF, but I don't know enough about it either. Bittercreek constitute about 1 percent of all BLM land in Montana and doesn't look too special from up high. Current management of Bittercreek is working well as is. They allow grazing and recreation on the land, but don't allow other development or exploration for oil. It will be very interesting to see how things unfold and what kind of arguments are made.

Arial view of Bittercreek WSA

Frenchman creek, this one is an actual creek

Arial view of an unhealthy wheat farm. It should just be one giant plot of green, but the different shades indicate diseased wheat crop. Nearly 40 percent of spring wheat won't be planted in Montana this year, and much of the winter wheat, to be harvested in august is diseased from the rain. Food prices are going up.

 An arial view of flooding along the Milk River just outside Glassgow. Some feilds are completely covered in water still, but it was worse a few weeks ago.

And last, but certaintly not least, a giant and horrifying fly caught in my room. This thing is monstorous and loud, but then it was old or something, because it just fell down on my dresser and didn't move when I snapped a cup over it to catch it.

Up next: Shakespear in the park, a tour of the Landusky Gold Mine and some pretty big 4th of July celebrations.

I am knee deep in conservation issues. The Lockean in me, says the government should stay out of it, just let nature and society take its course. John Locke wrote that the end of government is to protect private property. Should is being buying up its own private property? On the otherhand, the nature lover in me says, hey, why can't we have both? I think the APF model presents a promising solution. I apologize for being so serious, its just whats on my mind. And thankyou if you read this enter post, its quite long. I hate reading long things.

lunch, where are you?

Trafton Park and the Milk River:

Abandoned bridge across the Milk River

The Trafton walking trail

The lower portion of the trail has become part of the Milk River.

The water looks gross and milky, get it?



There are so many mosquitoes in this town that the city pays for a truck to drive up and down all the streets every night and spray insecticide on everything. If you're out walking around 9:30 p.m. you're liable to get sprayed! I didn't believe this at first. A kid said to me, "We have to hurry or we're going to get mosquito spray on us" and I thought he was just weird. But it is totally true. Apparently they used to do it with a small plane, but that's sort of dangerous.

Next, for dinner I like to eat crab salad croissats and for supper I get a grilled chicken salad at Dairy Queen. What do I eat for lunch? It doesn't exist here.

What's with guys wearing baseball hats to pose for engagement photos, perform music in country singing competitions or work in a bank? I get that guys like hats and that's fine, wear one on the weekend and at home all you want, but in your engagement pictures? during a talent contest? with your suite at the bank? Sigh.

This place is also home to horrifyingly large flys. The biggest flys I've ever seen in my life flys. They are the size of a bee and they scare me.

 My employers are golfing right now. I'm flying over Bitter Creek tomorrow and this weekend I'm camping at the American Prarie Foundation for the BioBlitz! I like how they try to make inventoring animals sound fun by calling it a "blitz." Maybe we will listen to jazz music?

Live in a house by the roadside and be a friend to man.

I haven't posted anything for a while, but I think I've got some good photos to share.

"Live in a house by the roadside and be a friend to man" -W. Holmes

This is the entrance to the town of Saco. Lovely, right?

Parker King's Ranch, I wonder what he's in the business of farming...

Some cute houses around Malta:

 It's raining sunlight.

 Sleeping Buffalo Rock:

The rock looks like a sleeping buffalo, get it?

I went to the Texaco Country Showdown last Friday and discovered that I really and truely do not like country music. It was more of a guess before, but now it feels pretty clear. People were saying, 'oh, the talent was so outstanind,' really? Come on, teenage girls doing Carry Underwood karaoke is outstanding? If people think that's outstanding, it makes me question their compliments to me, but I don't question it too much. Reporting in a small town really does wonders for a writers ego. People call me to say they liked my articles and my pal Sarah said my writing is "refreshing." One lady said my story on Annie brought her to tears, that was really sweet. I think the last time my writing brought someone to full on tears was a brake-up letter I wrote to my 10th grade boyfriend. I know, or at least think, I won't ever get as many compliments for my writing as I get here. It really is nice. I met a harlequin romance novelist tonight who's married to a syndicated columnist and she likes me writing. As a former journalist herself, she said she used her position as a reporter to do research for her early books. I wonder what that looked like. On this coming Thursday I will be flying over Bitter Creek with the Montana Wilderness Association!! I'm excited for that. According to Curtis, I am "flying with the enemy."

A yellow sunday afternoon

I've had five blog views from Panama and one from Germany. What's up international audience?

Fun fact about Malta: There are as many churches as there are bars, and I've counted around seven bars for a city population of around 2,000 people.

I saw the musical I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change last night and it was hilarious. It's a musical revue about relationships, sort of like How I Met Your Mother X Glee on a stage. What was even funnier though, were the people I went with, well, some of them. I went with a 40-something mom, her bratty teenage daughter (I never stopped being amazed at the way other kids will talk to their parents), teenage daughter's teenage boy friend (not boyfriend) and the cute developmentally disabled woman I'm writing a story on. The teenage boy was like an encyclopedia of musical knowledge and was literally excited during the entire play. It was hard not to be excited sitting next to him. He was leaning forward in anticipation the whole time; legs tapping, singing along with the songs, elbowing you to say "this scene is my favorite...," no wait... "the next one is my favorite." It felt like hanging out with the theater kids from high school, before they go off to college and discover they're gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, interested in bunnies...