Without Caution

Caution

Part II

I drove the rain-wet highway down drive from Great Falls, leaving behind the open plains, with the whole expanse behind me pressed flat by a vast azure sky filled with scudding clouds—their shadows cast down hard against the pale earth and all probing in a single direction. At some point, the landscape grew wild and tousled. The Missouri River flung itself free from a crooked cage of dark, volcanic mountains and lashed out across the open expanse. The mountains soon tipped themselves upright against the highway and closed in around the roadway. Rocks teetered just above the endless loops and climbs as I drove directly into the pop-up mountain range. Inside the mountain drive, the blonde grass turned into honey pouring downslope between spines of stone. The Missouri river kept swinging back and forth all around me, under the highway, through openings between shadowy thrusts of stone, beside the occasional hayfield patterned with rows of freshly baled hay, the water shimmering.

This is the landscape I love most. This is the place I love most. Give me a landscape the rises and falls without caution. Give me rock spires that are unafraid of reaching for the sky and a curious river that never settles for a single direction.

--Mitchell Hegman