Scattered

7:28 a.m.

St. Patrick's Day was nice. Even the dog wore green, and I had enough beer to think spelling the word "POOP" on the fridge with the magnets was HILARIOUS. Hilarious enough to photograph.

























































































Friday we got up at four a.m. to drive to the opposite side of the state, in order to check out the town/college where Justin has his phone interview at the end of the month. It was also the end of spring break, and we both needed to get out of town for a day. I'd never been up there, up close to the Montana border.

I always feel an urgent need to try to capture how this state looks on film, but it's just not possible. It's not possible to show the massive expanse, the miles and miles of nothing. I can't show how the sky looks like it will fall in on you, and I can't express the strange isolated but wonderful feeling that grips your mind. Miles in, I start to forget I've known anything else, and these brown basins and crags and plains are all there is in the whole world. Miles away from it, I forget how it is here, and it doesn't really exist to me. All that remains is a tiny bright speck of desolation in the back of my brain.

I want to hate how it is here, which I think is because I didn't want to spend more than two years here. But I can't deny that every now and then, as we pass the miles of cloud and rolling earth, I feel something for it. It's completely different from the swelling-of-the-soul feeling I'd feel when I'd drive around home, in Missouri. I can't compare it to the feeling of overwhelming pride or happiness as I'd pass the warm green fields and thick forests. I felt, there, I could lie my body down on those gentle slopes of green and become part of them, that my body would melt into all the wet growing things and I could house them, I would be them. I knew all those things, I knew all those slopes and hills and rivers.

Here, I felt if I laid my body down, it would be swept away with the never ending wind. It would not melt and grow, it would be dry and scatter away with the tumbleweeds instead.

My words are clumsy and I can not tell you how it is, and I can not really show you how it is.































































These are the Bighorns. The town is nestled at the bottom of them. It's a much lower elevation there--our town is over 7000 feet, and this is around 3000, I think. Therefore it felt moister and the grass was greener. It didn't look hard to grow trees, which was exciting.
















Cute downtown. Justin and I have a animal-statue-photo tradition.































This is the view of the mountains right before the town.
















We liked the town better than the one we currently live in. It was a bit smaller, but they had a wider variety of stores. The community college looked nice, and we poked around downtown. We also drove around neighborhoods to check out housing and schools. We were fairly impressed, which was good, because, well. We had no idea what to expect. I was afraid it would be an even more terrible version of here, and I already dislike it here a ton. But it was cute, and seemed much nicer. So if Justin gets a job there, I wouldn't be dismayed. I would probably be very happy. How about that? Not dismayed! Happy! And if doesn't get the job, we're glad we got to see it, and we had a fun day. Lots of quality Justin and Kara time in the car (eleven hours) which is always a ridiculous time. Our conversations should be recorded for future generations to enjoy. This includes an awesome conversation about how I couldn't poop at a certain gas station because a woman in the stall next to me was PRAYING OUT LOUD as she peed, and it seemed sort of disrespectful to be crapping while someone was having a weird religious moment. We saw six bald eagles, a herd of mule deer, and about fifty bajillion antelope (which is no big deal, since I've seen them in the grocery store parking lot here). But bald eagles seemed fairly fancy.

I got a lot of stuff done this weekend.

Now I have to go to work.

Love,
black sheep