Friday, November 29, 2013

Travels with Charley.

When people quote John Steinbeck and Montana, this is what you get 99% of the time:

"The next passage of my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you are in it."

But there's a better quote, I think, a few sentences after it. It'll make the Texans angry, but there's something that to me is much more interesting and perhaps even more true than the first quote:

"Montana seems to me what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans."

Better than both, though, is this one from Norman Maclean:

“The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.”

Here's a picture taken Sunday about 10 miles from Missoula:

 photo DSC01485.jpg

1 comment:

Shawna said...

Nice, Jeff. Have you read the short story in the "A River Runs Through It" collection about working in the woods with lumberjacks? It's not poetic or beautiful, but plenty interesting, and pretty identifiable for a Montana girl raised in a timber town.