Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A s FA L L 2 0 1 5 34 34 As the miles unroll through the harsh barrenness, I slow down and roll up the windows in a nearly useless effort to conserve gas. When the next town turns out to be nothing but a crossroads with a long-closed store and a couple of barns, I know I'm in trouble. As my needle dips below E, I start wondering if one of the very sporadic ranches I pass would have any gas I could buy, but I realize if they did, it would only be diesel. I'm looking at a long, very hot walk on an empty road to find gas and a long, very hot walk back. is also means finding a place to crash for the night as it will then be too late to make it to my cousin Doug's place outside of Livingston. Finally, with the engine sputtering in near defeat, I begin a thank- ful descent into the town of Broadus and coast on fumes into a gas station. And even though I'd gladly pay anything, they're only charging $3.13. I fill up my tank and begin to breathe again. e next hitchhiker I see is going to get a ride right to his front door. I'll even carry him across the threshold and tuck him into bed. With the stress of an empty tank gone, the drive is beauti- ful again, rising through the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow Reservations, the latter home of the Little Bighorn. e last time I came this way, I stopped so I could dance on the spot where Custer died for his sins, but there was an entrance fee so I turned back. A few years later, I would go to the monument, but it was all just too tragic and stupid and pathetic to dance. I stared at the markers for a while then left with nothing to say. Eventually I drop onto the interstate at Billings. In a quick two hours, I'm entering Livingston, home of Michael Earl Craig, who wrote, "It's a poet's job to be dragged by an ankle through town." I make a stop to grab a bottle of wine for Doug and a six-pack of PBR for me, then head south into Paradise Val- ley where, on the east side of the Yellowstone River, tucked in the shadow of the Absaroka Mountains, is the "Grizfork," my cousin Doug Peacock's place, and a small writing cabin that will be my home for the next month. Clyde crawls up the gravel road and swings into a spot in the tall grass between an alumi- num canoe and an upside-down johnboat. I jump from the cab calling out the words of Whitman to the surrounding mountains and willows: "Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived." AUTHOR WALTER KIRN SAYS, "THESE FREEWHEELING TRIP LOGS ARE CHARGED WITH THE POETRY OF MOTION." Excerpted from Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, Elk River Books, 2015; includes sketches by Montana artist Edd Enders

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