Centennial



4 Inch Bronze Horse Very Common in 1950s.

When I was a little boy, my mom decorated my bedroom in a cowboy theme, including lamp with ceramic cowboy boots for the base and an old west scene on the shade.  My favorite toys were Lincoln Logs and my "little men," mostly cowboys with a few soldiers and Indians, plus their plastic horses.

I also owned several horse statuettes, some of which I would inevitably choose as prizes from carnival games and some bearing a sticker  reading, "Souvenir of Eclectic, Alabama," which I'd purchased at my Uncle Edwin's Five and Dime on family vacations.  I apparently couldn't get enough of them.



Sears Wish Book guitar like I had.

One Christmas, my parents gave me a dark brown guitar with cowboys painted on its body, and I began taking guitar lessons, where I learned to play "Down in the Valley" among other western folk songs, although I cheated myself out of a wonderful opportunity by failing to practice daily.  Years later at a party when I was in college, I launched into one of the few songs I knew, "Don't Pass Me By" from the Beatles' White Album, and received enough positive reinforcement to encourage me to learn a few hundred more songs over the next couple of years.

As a little boy, I also had cowboy hats, plastic chrome six shooters, cap rifles, Zorro swords (rebuilt by my Uncle Bob with black electricians tape), and even a bow with suction cup arrows.  My friends and I would run around play acting scenes from westerns we self-directed.  My friend Jaime Abel, who was three years older and, in retrospect, had darker skin than me, for some reason often chose to be an Indian who died heroically.

Wes and Julie at Sublime Point in Yellowstone Park

Watching "Centennial" on youtube during downtime in Montana brought Jamie's death scenes to mind.

All of us know that the manifest destiny that eventually brought the 48 contiguous United States under one government was a Trail of Tears for the displaced native Americans, and the mini-series based on James Michener's epic novel of the Euro-American settlement of the Rocky Mountains unfolds with one heart-breaking betrayal after another.




Natural Beaver Pond on Hike

When I was attending college classes at night as a young Airman in Wyoming, Ken McPherson, a finance teacher I had for a couple of classes,  said that anyone living in the Rockies should read Michener's book to really understand the area.

Ironically, the mini-series "Centennial" actually began airing shortly thereafter, but college classes, playing guitars with Sergeant Larry Jaramillo and learning to ski with anyone willing to split gas money left little time for television beyond occasional NFL games in the Rec Room of the barracks.  I actually can't remember hearing about the TV show until I looked up the title on youtube a few weeks ago and found the entire series.



Beehive Basin in July, 2015

Watching the movie now, about 35 years later,  the production is obviously from a different era, when movies unfolded in a more leisurely way, taking time to show scenery.



While the open landscapes of the TV show are quite similar to what I remember in Wyoming, which I always appreciated at the time, I have to say the green-scape mountainsides and snow flocked trees (depending on the season), which I see almost everywhere in present day Montana, are far more spectacular.



Deer By the Road in Montana in July, 2015

That really doesn't surprise me, because while stationed near Cheyenne (home of the famous week-long rodeo, Frontier Days), I took a week's leave to drive with my roommate Ricky Harmon for a visit to his family home in Montana.  

Driving north through Wyoming, we saw more white tail deer than people, with hundreds running across the road in front of us at one point, but in Montana, the sepia high plains gave way to thickly forested mountains in countless shades of green.

While I was impressed by Montana's natural beauty, it wasn't until my sister and brother-in-law bought a place in Big Sky about 25 years ago that I returned with my family.  We've been going there pretty regularly ever since, and we always see something new, or at least we see it in a new way. 



Ousel Falls

Even the same Ousel Falls Trail and its offshoots, which we have hiked regularly, changes remarkably depending on the lighting.

When hiking through the fourth largest state in the union (which ranks 44th in population), you can't help but feel blessed to live in this beautiful, free country.  You may feel like Alexander McKeag, the Scottish trapper played by Richard Chamberlain in "Centennial," who proclaims he and his friend, the French Canadian trapper Pasquinel (Robert Conrad), are the freest men in history, roaming this vast wilderness.