meadowlarks and opera

Where there are trees, at one time there were settlers. Meadowlarks sing the same songs today they sang seventy years ago. This is what my parents remember and so I believe it to be true. But what about the meadowlark song  from a time before planks were planed and carted off to build a homestead, before Montana was a state?

Our songs remain the same. This might not be true, even still I like the idea of walking out into these fields that once felt my great-grandmother's footsteps, whistling the meadowlark song she might have once whistled as well.

 On the other side of Birdtail Butte are the remains of an orphanage from the late 1800's and early 1900's. This is where she grew up. Notice the Opera House. Montana is the land of nowhere, and yet -- here in the middle of nowhere, an Opera House was built for the orphans.

Great-Grandmother Nellie never knew me and it's doubtful she knew my father or  his brothers. But still, we come back and whistle.