Everyone knows that water is scarce in America and everywhere now. Countries are failing due to desert incursion and Florida is experiencing salt water incursion. With more people moving in, who knows when Florida will get giant holes from soil erosion from underneath and salt water incursion? I realize this is rather grim to start with while I sit on the banks of a mighty river that has been dammed 5 times to provide electric power for a great deal of Montana. The Great River, the Missouri, flows out of the mountains of Glacier National Park. From the west she flows, dammed 5 times here in Great Falls alone, she flows into the Mississippi. The town we are currently visiting, Great Falls, marks in her history the words of the Missouri’s greetings to Lewis and Clark… Lewis said, “the river is too big, we have to find a way around it!” It is big and the land around it is glorious and huge. Today we drove out to the 5th dam and the land stretched out all around us – wheat fields for miles! As we drove, I wrote: “Wheat fields. How big! Plowed fields, stubble fields. Light brown for as far as I can see, and blue sky! Wind blowing cool in 83 degree mild heat. Open the windows and let the wind in!” “I wonder what this land was like 150 years ago before people dammed this river. It looks to me like another case of glacier water gouging out giant crevasses that now are filled with the Missouri river and those brilliant wheat fields. Were the roads horse tracks?”
I have to share my glee at driving through the beauties of America. For my friends who have never left home, or who weren’t blessed to be able to drive through Glacier National Park for example, I would like to describe America. On Sunday we left Stevensville, near Missoula Montana where I visited my student from Assumption Academy. We hugged goodbye and promised to keep reading and to keep singing! Then we entered Glacier National Park where … well, I can’t keep from singing! “O! my goodness! The rugged landscape is raggedy/aggedy. (There isn’t a word for it!!!! ) Awesome, beautiful, rugged, high mountains. All this used to belong to the Native Americans. They lived on the land, thanking their God… Then, the tiny United States bought the land from Louisiana. Yes, the Louisiana Purchase. And the Americans moved in. Now, the Continental Divide is just is a line between America and … America. We took it. Every Native American monument I see hurts my heart. O what we did. There isn’t any reparation and I’m not suggesting it. All I suggest is that we look at at our great land, and we try to keep her beautiful. She belongs to no one except to her God, our God who created. Be loving to our land, and Thank God.