Spring comes later in the High Country of Montana. Some mountain passes won’t open until mid-June. While much of the rural U.S. already has crops planted, bounteous snows still linger on the higher mountainsides of Big Sky Country.
And that’s good because it keeps the creeks and rivers flowing longer into the hot summer for plants and trees, creatures and people down below. You get the strong sense there that some kind of unseen grand plan is running pretty much every big and little thing in life.
When I was very young, my family moved from a city to the countryside of northeast Ohio. My father grew up in the hard-rock life of early 20th-century western Canada before electricity. His morning chores included breaking ice in the wash basin.
As my father, he worked in the city, but he was drawn back to the rural rhythms of life. Over the years, I came to understand why.
In our Ohio…
