Blue Highways: Wolf Point, Montana

Unfolding the Map

As William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) rides a storm out in Wolf Point, Montana, we take time in this post to reflect on storms and their symbolism.  Is LHM trying to use the storm in a symbolic fashion for Wolf Point?  Maybe, maybe not.  But storms are used to emphasize the turmoil within and without.  Where is the location of our stormy weather?  Find some shelter at the map!

Book Quote

"....At Wolf Point, a lightning storm struck the benchland, rain dropped in noisy assaults, and I took refuge in town.

"I had to go back to the highway for dinner at a truck stop.  Something moved in there - I couldn't say what.  Six people sat in the cafe, in the light and warmth, almost assured by the jukebox, and filled their stomachs; yet there was an edge to the voices, to the faces.  From a thousand feet up, the prairie storm, pouring cold water on the little cafe glowing in the blackness, held us all."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 6

Downtown Wolf Point, Montana. Photo by Colin Holloway and seen at City-Data.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Wolf Point, Montana

It's amazing how darkening skies and storms feed into something primal within us.

When I was young, I was afraid of storms.  Where I grew up on the Northern California coast, we would have maybe one to two big storms per year with lightning and thunder, so it wasn't an occurrence that happened often.  What I really hated was the crash of thunder directly overhead.  These were the thunderclaps that happened right as the lightning flashed, or a split second afterward.  When I was young I didn't make the connection between the lightning and the thunder, but as I got older I began to understand that the closer the two went together, the closer the lightning was to me.  I particularly remember a large thunderclap that almost made me pee my pants with fright during my high school years that was associated with a lightning strike near my house that blew the wall outlets out of a number of houses and fried my neighbor's pig where it stood in its sty.

After college, I moved to the Midwest, where in the summer a thunderstorm was almost a daily happening.  Only these thunderstorms were different.  The thunderstorms on the coast where I grew up were usually big, grumbling, growling affairs that seemed to go on for an hour or two.  The thunderstorms in the Midwest, by contrast, were bombastic affairs that would start big, get bigger, and then be gone in the space of 20 minutes.  Except with these storms, there was the tinge of another danger.  Some of them might form tornadoes.  Tornadoes were not an issue on the north coast of California, but in the Midwest there were often warnings posted on local television about thunderstorms that seemed likely to form tornadoes, and even tornado warnings where a tornado had been spotted.  The ticker at the bottom of the screen would urge people in the path of the storm to take shelter immediately, usually a basement or an inside, windowless room.  I developed a love-hate relationship with tornadoes akin to my wife's love-hate relationship with snakes.  I desperately wanted to see one, but I also was desperately afraid of them as they were unknown to me.

I was also aware of the deep impact of storms in our psyches.  Storms are often used in literature to indicate disturbances within systems.  Storms have symbolized harbingers of impending doom, of division, of internal disturbances.  After reading King Lear, where he slowly descends into madness amid the storm on the heath, his rage at the storm...

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!...

"....Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!"

William Shakespeare
King Lear
Act 3, Scene II

...I saw the storm as being both symbolic of the outer storm of his relationship with his family, particularly his daughters, and the inner storms of his madness.  Either way, the storm is a primal element that is echoed within him.  We often refer to the difficult times in our lives as stormy times.  Things strike us like lightning or like a thunderbolt.  People move into and out of our lives like tornadoes and hurricanes.  Love and relationships are often described in meteorological terminology (listen to Thunder and Lightning by the band Chicago, or Stormy Weather by Lena Horne).  Storms are very apt metaphors for hard times either imposed by outside forces or the anger and fury that we nurture within.

LHM seems to relate the storm he experiences in Wolf Point to the town itself.  He writes of the people in the cafe having an edge to them.  Small towns, like the one I grew up in, are unique in that people become close to one another by necessity, yet such towns also harbor horrible secrets and the pent up anger and fury masked and covered from outsiders.  The storm that drenches the cafe where LHM is eating might be symbolic of hidden disturbances in the town.

It also might symbolize something more.  LHM tells a disturbing story about Wolf Point.  In his words...

"One November in another century, before Wolf Point had a name, the citizens complained of wolves.  They got together and set out poison, and the varmints died all over the prairie, and townsmen stacked a thousand frozen carcasses into high mounds that stood all winter.  When spring came, the mounds thawed and rotted.  One man thought the stink drove away the remaining wolves.  Whatever it was, nobody saw a wolf alive, and nobody since has seen one here.  On my night in Wolf Point, Montana, I couldn't imagine man or beast contending for the place."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 6

Perhaps the massacre of the longtime denizens of the area is also symbolized in the storm.  What stands out to me is the hypocrisy of the name given the crime against nature.  If literature and historical experience tells us anything, it's that nature tampered with or defiled can lead to its vengeance, either slowly or quickly.  Perhaps, if this story is true, Wolf Point is destined to be a stormy place, subject either to the raging elements or the awful disturbance to the natural balance occasioned by the slaughter of the wolves.  I have heard, though I am not sure how heavily I believe this, that traumatic happenings at places can leave bad energy that manifests itself in subtle ways over many years.  Maybe Wolf Point is still working through its bad energy, embodied in a raging storm over this small town on the benchlands of Montana.

Musical Interlude

I must say that I never really was a fan of REO Speedwagon.  I kind of found them sappy (though, in the spirit of full disclosure, I did own an album of theirs).  But, I always kind of liked their Ridin' the Storm Out.  So here it is for you:

If you want to know more about Wolf Point

City of Wolf Point
Montana Pictures: Wolf Point
Wikipedia: Wolf Point
Wolf Point, Montana

Next up:  Poplar, Montana

Blue Highways: Greenville, North Carolina

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) drops in on Greenville, North Carolina and reflects on weather and what he must listen to in order to get a shower.  I won't say that we will shower with him, but we will reflect on weather and on religion.  To see where we are, click on the map.  Comments always welcome and encouraged.

Book Quote

"At Greenville, I stopped for the night on the campus of East Carolina University.  Out of the west, with suddenness, a nimbo-stratus cloudbank like a precipice obscured the sun, and a ferocious wind pulled the fine sandy soil into a corrosive blast.  Then the wind ceased, raindrops pelted the sand back into place, the temperature dropped from eighty degrees to sixty-five, the clouds blew on toward the sea, and the low sun shone again.  The whole demonstration lasted twenty minutes.

"That evening, I bought a hot shower in a dormitory.  It cost a dollar contribution and a thirty-minute I FOUND IT bumper-sticker talk intended to drive the infidel from my red heart and bring me safely unto the Great White Bosom.  Take the land, take the old ways, Christian soldiers, but please, goddamnit, leave me my soul."

Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 5

Downtown Greenville, North Carolina in sunny times

Greenville, North Carolina

Weather and religion subtly and forcefully influence how we look at life, and their effects on us sometimes aren't too far apart, in my experience.  For example, I wake up in the morning and look outside.  If the sky is blue and the day is temperate, it immediately affects my mood and I make choices based on what I might be able to do.  I can ride my bike to work instead of taking the car.  I might schedule more outdoor activities for myself.  If it's a work day, I can eat my lunch outside.  If not, my activities on my day off can be focused more on the outdoors.  A sunny day can certainly affect my mood as well.  Usually I will feel more buoyant and alive. 

But if the day is dark and stormy, or even overcast, my mood will be much different.  I might be put in a more reflective mood, or perhaps even if I am in some kind of emotional distress or despair, the weather can amplify my feelings.  Activities might be confined indoors.

Religion can leave me with similar feelings and reflections.  I am nominally a Catholic, though I am pretty open to all religious views (except maybe for the ones that try to make me out to be somehow misguided or even evil because I don't accept their particular narrow focus).  There are days when I feel that my individual spirituality is a great boon and support in my life.  The effects on me can be pretty noticeable, especially on my mood and on my outlook for myself and how I feel about those arouund me.

There are times, however, when I can feel that my religion and spirituality isn't helping me at all.  This is usually when I'm hurting for some reason.  I might wish that there was something or someone out there that would hear and see my pain and ease my troubles, but nothing happens and I continue to hurt.  I might question whether it is any use to even be religious.

I find that weather and religion can be very similar in that when times are good, and days are sunny, we take it for granted.  We don't think about the possibility that we might eventually hurt or that the clouds, wind and rain will roll in because we want to live in the moment and enjoy our blue skies and the peacefulness we feel in our hearts.

I'm focusing on these two things because LHM touches on both of these phenomenon in his back-to-back paragraphs set in Greenville.  He highlights how a storm roars through, blocking the sun and dropping rain along with the temperature.  Eventually the storm passes, and the sun shines again.  He then must endure a 30 minute talk on faith in order to get a shower.  I have to think that he intentionally placed these two passages about a storm and his experience together, but maybe not.

Once, when I lived in Milwaukee, I watched a sunny day with 80 degree weather turn into a cloudy, windy 40 degree day with snowflakes dotting the air, all in the space of 30 minutes.  The violence of the atmospheric turmoil that turned such a nice day into something so different made a huge impression on me.  Similarly, while driving up to Colorado from New Mexico, my wife and I passed beneath a storm front.  A huge wall of clouds loomed ahead of us, and it almost seemed like the "mother ship" from a different planet, sort of like those huge ships that hovered over major cities in Independence Day, had appeared to wreak devastation and destruction in the form of highly torrential rains.  We moved from New Orleans a year before Katrina hit, but hurricanes are the most bizarre form of violent weather I have ever seen.  One knows that the hurricane is out there, ready to slam ashore and wreak violence, yet while skies are blue and the wind is calm the radio and television are urging people to get out.  It's almost hard to be serious about it when the weather is so nice, even if the hurricane is only a day away.

Religion can also be violent and stormy.  In the U.S., we are currently in a great debate about religion, particularly Christianity, and its proper place in American society.  Is it pre-eminent, or one religion among many in a diverse country?  The debate has been particularly stormy, as thundering commentators send barbs at each other like lightning through the media.  While some, myself included, think that religion is a private matter that we can indulge in public with our particular religious communities, what you worship and how you worship has become a huge public debate.  Lately, the storm is over the proposed site of an Islamic community center in Manhattan. 

Of course, a great number of people have died fighting for, or defending, their religion and their beliefs.  Like the weather, religious and anti-religious sentiment can get whipped up and move through the landscape, and people can die just as in the aftermath of a particularly violent hurricane or a powerful tornado.  In my experience, I saw such stormy religious sentiment in Northern Ireland, when the Protestant Orangemen of Portadown and Belfast marched toward police and army barriers protecting the (nominally) Catholic areas.  The clash between Protestant traditions and Catholic fears and fortitude resembled a thunderstorm, with the Lambegh drums of the Orangemen providing the thunder.

More and more, I hope for calm skies and sunny weather, and peace in my heart and soul.  I want to try to live a life that keeps drama to a minimum, and satisfaction and happiness to a maximum.  If a sunny day will do that for me, I'm all for it.  If I can gather together with friends and acquaintances and enjoy their company and know they enjoy mine, then I don't care what they believe or don't believe.  In my particular religious tradition, acceptance and forgiveness are the tenets that should be followed.  I don't want to create storms, but I do want people, no matter what their religious convictions, to help me weather any that come my way.

If you want to know more about Greenville

Blog Greenville
City of Greenville
The Daily Reflector (newspaper)
Dine Greenville
East Carolina University
The East Carolinian (campus newspaper)
Greenville Convention and Visitors Bureau
Greenville Times (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Greenville

Next up: Plymouth, North Carolina