Small-town winter ...

Though the days are slowly starting to get longer as we enter the new year ... we're definitely not out of the winter woods yet, and Montana's small towns have a few more months of looking like this. A little depressing, perhaps, but still better than anyplace else.

(This is downtown Martinsdale, by the way ... a shot I took back in February 2007.)

Rapelje ...

Anyone who photographs the northern plains quickly realizes that grain elevators are among the finest subjects out there, and I'm sure I've taken pictures of hundreds of them over the years. Today's photo is of the old elevators in the little Stillwater County community of Rapelje, perhaps Montana's hardest-to-pronounce town. Here are the notes I took of that morning, a little over four years ago:

"I shouldn’t have been surprised that Rapelje was just exactly like a thousand other dying towns on the Northern Plains: a mostly-empty grid of dirt streets with a few houses scattered here and there; a couple of long-abandoned business buildings and a prefab metal structure housing a tiny cafe; an 85-year-old schoolhouse; and a small horde of vehicles parked in front of a little white church hosting Sunday services. Easily the finest sight in town was a row of old wooden grain elevators lined up beside an abandoned railway grade ... so I pulled the car off into the weeds, let the dog out, and took some pictures."

Two Dot, Montana ...

Here's a photo I took a couple of months ago of downtown Two Dot, Montana. It's got all the quintessential features of a fading western farm town -- a long-abandoned bank building, an ancient and inviting dive bar, a little post office, and not much else. And the bar is for sale, if anyone's interested!

I've always liked Two Dot ... partly because of the name, I suppose. The town is also the subject of a Hank Williams, Jr. song, but I won't hold that against the place.

Misanthropy ...

There's no doubt that many Montanans are at least a little bit misanthropic ... we love living here, at least in part, because we don't have to share the place with very many other people. The Montana author Rick Bass freely admits that trait, as illustrated by the following quote from his book Winter. The passage describes his first visit to his future home in the Yaak valley, up in the state's northwestern corner:

We left Whitefish and drove through the afternoon, seeing no one in the last hour and a half except moose, deer, elk, and grouse, all running across the road in great numbers. White daisies lined the one-lane dirt road. . . .

We kept driving, climbing, and then we came down off the summit and into the little blue valley.

There was nothing but a mercantile and a saloon, one building on either side of the street, and a slow winding river working through the valley (a cow moose and her calf standing in the river behind the mercantile) -- and still no sign of life, no people. It was as if they had all been massacred, I thought happily. We knew immediately that this was where we wanted to live, where we had always wanted to live.

We had never felt such magic.

Elk country ...

Nope ... this isn't a post about hunting, nor is it one about fraternal organizations. The Elks are the high school football team in Augusta, Montana.

High school football is big in Montana, of course ... especially in the smallest towns and schools. Over two-thirds of the state's high schools have fewer than 200 students, though, and nearly half enroll fewer than 100 -- so it can be tough to assemble a football squad. The small schools deal with this by fielding six-man football teams. They play on fields that are only 80 yards long, and it's exciting stuff.

Augusta High is one of the little schools ... it had an enrollment of 36 last winter. Their six-man football team has been a powerhouse in recent years, and in 2008 they got as far as the state semi-finals. I took this shot just outside of Augusta in the fall of 2007, the year the Augusta Elks made it to the state six-man championship game. (They ended up losing to the Hysham Pirates, who managed an undefeated season.)

Used cow lot ...

The little stockyard in Drummond, Montana on a foggy morning in early 2007. With a sign like that, who wouldn't want to buy a used cow?

Montana's best bakery ...

Those of you who've met me in person definitely know that I enjoy experiencing good food of all sorts ... particularly that found in small towns a long ways from anywhere. So I feel qualified to state with some certainty that this photo shows the sales counter of the very best bakery in Montana!

This is the mercantile in the tiny community of Polebridge, Montana, a few miles past the end of the pavement in the remote North Fork country a little west of Glacier National Park. They make exceptional cookies and amazing breads, and the little Northern Lights Saloon next door is one of the tastiest and most atmospheric dinner places I know. Last summer I made a one-day, 600-mile roundtrip drive to Polebridge just to buy some of those cookies, and I'll almost certainly do it again.