ALL ABOARD 2

High Prairie

From Minneapolis west the skies begin to open as do the landscapes. We lose a sense of geography though when the sun goes down.

The next day is full of sweeping skies and unbroken landscapes. It seems like most of Montana rolls by like this.

There is also lots of rail traffic. We've seen many "pig haulers" which is the nickname for trains that pull freight that is piggybacked or stacked as these containers are.

Where there are towns and tracks, there is a terminal or two for farmers. Wolf Point, MT., is one of many small towns that pop up through the day then slowly shrink back into the horizon. Wolf Point is also the largest town (2,621 population) on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Before rail and the passage of time there were many loose clusters of settlers. Most had their own one room schoolhouse. If you want to get a sense of what things were like back then, go find Ivan Doig's "Whistling Season", which is centered around such a schoolhouse as the one above. There few Western writers better than Doig.

We travel through the last of Montana, all of Idaho and much of Eastern Washington in the dark. Overnight in Spokane our train is broken up. All but three or four cars go on to Seattle. By mid morning our much smaller train is crossing the Columbia and headed for its last stop: Portland, Oregon. Against all expectation, we arrive a half hour earlier. Home again.