Distinctly Montana Magazine

82 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 6 grain the mouse had stolen would never have been missed, and that he, the poet, will still make a profit on what's left. The only consolation he can offer the mouse, which isn't much, is that "the best laid schemes of mice and men" often go awry in like manner. At least, he tells the mouse at the poem's conclusion, she's not able to dwell on the past or fret about the future as he can, and we do. A hundred and fifty or so years later, Steinbeck would depict a turtle crossing a road in The Grapes of Wrath, offering up a portrait in miniature of the modern human's relationship with minifauna: "A sedan driven by a forty-year-old woman approached. She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up. Two wheels lifted for a moment and then settled. The car skidded back onto the road, and went on, but more slowly. The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot… And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tid- dly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. The truck went back to its course along the right side." We might turn again to Robert Burns, contemplating his poor mouse victim: "I 'm truly sorry man's dominion,/ Has broken nature's social union." The human body, by the way, is worth about $1 or $2 in raw materials, or somewhere north of $150 if you ordered those same materials from pricier chemical supply catalogs. III. You're at the wheel of the car, and you can't wait to get there. You've got a beautiful spring day at the lake planned, and the sooner you get there the sooner you can relax. Work is, as ever, annoying. You've got kids in the backseat, and a cooler in the trunk. The dog is looking out the window, tongue lolling as it watches the scenery of the Mission Val- ley roll by outside. You're an animal lover. The road bends and you follow it, listening to your music, or to your podcast, and you think about all the stuff you still have to stop and get—some steaks from the grocery store, a bottle of wine, maybe a jar of huckleberry preserves or some huckleberry coffee. Maybe you're a tourist, or maybe you're a Montanan playing tourist. As you're having fun with your family, you're trying not to think about anything that will spoil the mood, like the price of gas, or how you deserve a raise, or how you've got a doctor's appointment coming up that you don't relish the thought of. Or you're trying not to

• Cover