I am sipping an Americano in Great Falls in the brick and stone historic downtown. Tater lays at my feet on a sidewalk that is warming in the late morning sun. Everyone walking past me pauses to pet him and they lift his face to meet his eyes with their own and they declare, “He is beautiful!” And it’s true.
Every woman I’ve seen on this city sidewalk looks lovely and put-together in skirts and heels, make-up on and hair smoothed. I look like a tangle of Provence and hippy in a beautiful pocketed linen skirt, a sloppy tank top, layers of wild jewelry and bed head. I did sleep in a tent last night.
I slept in a tent last night alongside an easy curve of the Missouri River beside the shadows of the cottonwoods that grow so wide and resplendent in this part of the state. I like this part of Montana, beneath the High Line in the Missouri River Breaks where the land looks like deflated lungs and the deer grow big. It’s my sort of country, scrappy but secretly tender; true to itself to such a degree that it is entirely unfettered and free as the wind.
In the morning, I stepped out of my tent and felt the sun on my face. I stretched my arms out wide and found myself suddenly surprised by my wingspan. It is wide. It is wider than ever. I slid my feet into my shoes and began walking.
When I pass through, when I slip through the golden grass beneath the cottonwoods alongside the river, I imagine myself quadruped and fat on summer. It is late in the season now and the fresh shoots have to be sought out thoughtfully and teased up out of the dry earth so that the simple action of feeding myself the richest things resembles a kiss.
