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Thoughts from Places: The Centennial Valley

2010-08-31 · Hank · watch on YouTube · Science & nature · reflection essay

Recounting a friends' wedding trip to a remote Centennial Valley ranch (a flat tire, outhouses, a sprained ankle 179 miles from a hospital), Hank argues that 'nowhere' is fully a place, with a world going on regardless of what humans see.

What is said

00:00:00 — Waking at 6 am to watch the sunrise at a working ranch in Montana's Centennial Valley

  • ★★ About a week ago Hank woke at 6 am to watch the sunrise, which he had not seen in a while, while he and Katherine stayed at a working ranch in Montana's Centennial Valley. — 00:00:00 · Katherine Green, Montana

00:00:29 — The middle of nowhere: Monida (population two) and a friends' wedding

  • ★★ Hank says Monida, a town on the Montana–Idaho border, has a population of two. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★ Hank says that, as far as he can tell, Monida has only a sagging barn he has seen in many online photos, some closed shops and a distant school-bus graveyard. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank and Katherine were at the ranch, some 40–50 miles from Monida, for the wedding of two of Hank's favourite people; his 'somewhere' had become most people's 'nowhere'. — 00:00:29

00:01:18 — Proof of nowhere: a flat tire, fuel tanks, outhouses and a whistle-pig-hole ankle sprain

  • ★★ A six-inch steel spike punctured their tire; Hank was grateful for a good spare, since otherwise they would wait for a passing car, perhaps once a day. — 00:01:18
  • ★ Hank points to more proof of nowhere: giant gasoline and diesel tanks, because nobody drives a 200-mile round trip for fuel, and outhouses still in use. — 00:01:18
  • ★★ Hank stepped in a whistle pig hole and sprained his ankle; Katherine feared the hospital was 500 miles away (it is 179), and he could not dance at the reception. (playful) — 00:01:47 · Katherine Green

00:02:16 — Every place is a place: the hospital 179 miles away, cows, swans and cranes, and the world beyond our windows

  • ★★★ Hank argues that humans lay grids, imaginary lines and satellites to prove every place is a place, as if the place were not already one without that knowledge. — 00:02:16
  • ★★ Hank cites cows crying for their weaned calves and trumpeter swans and sandhill cranes resting there, away from human insanity, as life going on regardless of human mapping. — 00:02:16
  • ★★★ Hank says that what we see out our windows becomes our idea of the world, but a whole globe exists beyond it, doing its thing and making life possible. — 00:03:01
  • ★★ Hank admits that a place 179 miles from the nearest hospital, at least subconsciously, feels to him like it is not part of his world. — 00:03:01
  • ★★★ Hank feels that at the ranch he got as close to nowhere as he could and found it more of a place than anywhere he had been in a long time. (hedged) — 00:03:01

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