Hello friends! I've been on the road since April 19. I'm in full-on gathering mode, which means instead of making, assembling or writing, I'm oriented more toward collecting material and footage and photos and interviews and thinking through some ideas about what's next. And doing a bunch of book events! So my sense of time has gotten a little woozy. I'm also finding it challenging to toggle between these modes of being while traveling. For now, a short dispatch from a stop in Montana. I'll be back to my regular newsletter schedule next week!
Last week I was just south of Great Falls, Montana, when I saw a sign for a place I'd never visited: the First Peoples Buffalo Jump. I was making my way the next day to an important appointment, a long-sought interview with an Assiniboine elder on the Fort Peck Reservation. And then after that, to a series of six book events in North Dakota. But that day in Montana, I had enough time. So I veered off Interstate 15 and drove six miles to the bison jump, considered to be the largest such site in North America.
Already that morning, I'd hiked up Mount Helena to take in the view of Last Chance Gulch and the state capital below. Normally, I wouldn't have minded another four-mile hike in such beautiful country, but I wanted to get to my destination before it was too dark. I've driven Hwy. 2 often enough to know that as night approaches, the risk grows of hitting deer crossing the road. So I was relieved to learn from one of the rangers that I could drive to the top of the escarpment.
The buffalo jump is a sandstone cliff about a mile long — technically an escarpment that separates the Missouri River valley below from the plain above. It's not that high, maybe 30- to 50 feet. But imagine a herd of bison stampeding toward the cliff! You can picture that here, wind in your face while you walk along the edge of the cliff. It's possible to imagine the sound of hoofbeats, and even the smell of the carcasses.
Jumps like this one and others in Canada and other parts of Montana fell out of use after horses were introduced to the Great Plains, so it hasn't been active for more than 350 years. Nonetheless, it is possible to feel the presence here of thousands of years of human history. There atop that cliff, I felt the connection to people through time who used this place for sustenance—food, shelter and clothing and spiritual meaning. It was a timely reminder that what we think of as emptiness or wilderness often has a lengthy history of human intervention and habitation.
All along this trip at events and interviews and interviews and the meetings I've had, people have been asking me what I'll be doing next. I know the short term answer: Returning to North Dakota in early August to show my film and to assist with some memoir-writing workshops. Continue working on the promises I made at the end of Windfall. Writing about it, if it all works out.
But then what? I don't know.
While driving away from the buffalo jump, I listened on repeat to a new cover by Margo Price of the Willie Nelson classic "Hands on the Wheel." The song, a waltz from “Red Headed Stranger,” dates to 1975. It opens with this line: "At a time when the world seems to be spinnin' hopelessly out of control. There's deceivers, and believers, and old in-betweeners, that seem to have no place to go."
It's a masterful piece of songwriting—the statement in the opening line about the world spinning out of control isn't completed until the very last line of the song. There's a journey first before the payoff of the final line. But when that last line hits, it completes the circle of the song. Driving and listening, it felt as though the song contained some wisdom I am seeking: "Now my hand's on the wheel, I've something that's real, and I feel like I'm going home."
Yours,
Erika
P.S. If you're looking for a Mother's Day gift, may I suggest Windfall? Here's a link to where you can find signed copies.
THE NEWS
All the links…
I was in Montana outside the state capitol the same day that Republican lawmakers in Montana censured Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr for objecting to restrictions to gender-affirming health care. My presence was coincidental—I wish I’d been in the position to write about it, but I was there to photograph and video a few odds and ends. However, I've included a bunch of links below if you want to know more about what happened and is happening in Montana and other state capitols right now.
Family politics. More on how the son of Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte made an appointment to lobby his own father to reject anti-trans legislation. “I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights.”
The new playbook. How what happened in Montana and Tennessee represents a new, sinister form of silencing people who represent constituencies that supermajority-led legislatures don’t want to hear from.
A Stateline colleague on the pattern of anti-trans legislation around the country.
Another review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. This one’s in Texas Monthly by FOTWD Susan Elizabeth Shepard.
This dress! Love this story about NPR’s Tamara Keith and the dress she had made for the White House Correspondent’s dinner, based on Holly Hunter’s character in the film Broadcast News. (Ask me in person sometime about the role of this and other D.C.-based movies in my online dating profile circa 2011.)