Jane's Montana Blog.

May 1, 2005 - Day 1: 30,000 feet over...let me look…Wyoming? Whoa—that’s snow! I’m on my way to Montana for the research section of a commission for Headwaters Dance Company. I’ll travel around the Boulder Batholith for 9 days, taking in the country, and then let it steep for a month or so before heading back to Missoula in June where I’ll create a work for Headwaters based on the experience. It is a reflection, in a way, of Lewis and Clark’s passage through the area and my take on the current scene.

So far, all I’ve done is nap from NYC to Wyoming, this past week having been party central in New York: great samba band on Thursday night, standard issue cover band on Friday, and fabulous salsa group Saturday. Hopefully, I’ll have caught up by the time we land in Missoula.

Later: Headwaters dancer Linda Parker picked me up in Missoula and had a welcome dinner with a ton of Mexican/Montana food (venison tacos--fabulous) and friends who filled me in on the Batholith area and Montana lore. Before dinner I jogged up Rattlesnake Creek, and it was hello, Montana! 5 minutes from Linda’s house I was in the mountains surrounded by evergreens, rushing water, crystal air and wilderness peaks in the distance. I love my jogging route down Battery Park on the Hudson, but this….. Afterward I read the park signs about how to recognize a grizzly as opposed to a brown bear. Really glad I hadn’t noticed it before I left, because I would have been scared city girl really running. Aren’t they still in their dens?

In my previous visits to Missoula I never saw the sun (winter in a town at the bottom of an ancient lake bed), but I had mapped its compass points internally, and I see now with the sun out that I got it wrong. North is south here. There are several towns where this has happened--usually mountain towns with weird plane maneuverings on the approach and no sun to reorient--and I can never reset the map in my mind. So basically, the sun comes up in the west and sets in the east. Aspen, Colorado and Merida, Venezuela are two other towns where this happens for me. I lived in Merida for a year while the sun rose in the west and set in the east, and when I visited it years later, it was the same. As I drive out to Butte, I hope things will turn themselves around, or the whole area will be topsy-turvy this week.

Day 2: Butte As I left Missoula and rounded a bend, I was happy to see the geography wheel around to its correct alignment, where I hope it will remain for the rest of the trip. I stopped at the Grant Khors cattle ranch on the way to Butte; one of the largest and most successful ranches in the high plains for over 100 years, it is now a museum run by the parks service. My ranger guide, Lyndel, upon learning that I was a dancer, said, "I have a question. I was a figure skater for years, and we always did our turns like this," and she demonstrated an inside turn with her leg whipping out to the side and pulling around the standing leg as skaters initiate those endless turns. "But I just bought a TV, and I see the dancers on it using their leg to turn the other way. How can you get any centrifugal force without your leg whipping in to make it go?" We had a long talk about inside and outside turns and the physics of turns on and off ice. She said as far as she could count, the most we could get was four turns on dry land, which is more or less it.

Down the road I stopped at the town of Anaconda, home of the infamous copper smelting plant. I had heard that no trees grew around the plant, and as I drove in I could see vast sections of the hills where it was true. But more amazing was the mountain of black slag left over from the process. HUGE black mountain. But they are putting that black stuff to use: the Jack Nicholaus-designed golf course in Anaconda is using it for their sand traps instead of regular sand. Could be a trend...

Butte is indeed a strange town. It has an open copper mining pit right in town; in fact, it is just a block from my hotel. It is the largest open pit in the world, and the richest in its day. Before I checked into the hotel, I drove all over, trying to find a place where I could view into it, but no luck. I drove through moonscapes of raw land with discarded industrial equipment strewn about, always stopped by chain link fence. The town is quiet: little traffic, car or pedestrian. From what I had read, I had expected this wild outlaw energy, and maybe if it weren't the miners of old blowing up each other's underground veins and shooting each other in bars, then it would be today's SUVs ramming each other in intersections. But just quiet.

Tomorrow, Ted Antonioli is giving me a mining tour of Butte, so I expect my perspective will change a lot.

Day 3: Butte Oh man, my head is spinning. Today Ted Antonioli, a geologist who grew up in Butte, gave me an all day mining tour of the town. Ted is so filled with knowledge about the area that I was grabbing my Dictaphone-on-loan within 5 minutes of meeting him. He drove me up and up through the hills where we could get a view of the pits, stopping at various head frames, these huge black scaffold structures that are all over Butte. to explain how the miners were lowered down into the underground mines through them. Next to each head frame is a hoisting house, where the enormous cables that lowered the miners and equipment are housed. As all of these houses are abandoned, Butte is filled with huge column-free structures that cry out for performance spaces.

I finally got my peek into the Berkeley pit, the open copper pit that is eating up the mountain (with the Continental Divide running on top) east of town. It is filled with acid water that, unless ARCO figures out a solution, will enter the water table in 2017. Down on this immense lake was a tiny boat testing the water; it cast the scale of lake into scary relief. Ted showed me a map of the 2,700 miles of underground mines running under the town, and I saw that a huge vein ran right under my hotel.

By the end of the day, I began to see the gaunt beauty of this vast abandoned industry: the huge coiled cables and combines inside the hoisting house of the Orphan Girl mine, the silver light coming into the structure halfway up the head frame, the abandoned and rusting equipment lying in the sere landscape--all silent artifacts of a tumultuous history. And it continues into the architecture of town: beautiful buildings, but empty, kind of quietly screaming a history gone by.

In the evening I gave a talk about my work at Silver Bow Arts Center, run by Glenn Bodish, a man with a dream about an arts community in Butte. And the artists are here, renting studios for $75 a month, gathering in the coffee houses and bars, making their work and building a tight and brash arts community. For those of you near Missoula, check out Marcie James' haunting photos of the abandoned buildings of Butte captured with her hand-made cameras. The show is at the art gallery on campus.

After the talk, we repaired to the Silver Dollar bar across the street, where owner Lulu lives upstairs in her 4,000 sq. ft. studio. Ed Shaw (classmate of Kenneth King's at Antioch) filled me in on the meth problem in Butte, which is eating up the young here, just like in so many other towns across the mainland. He later took me by the bar where most of it is trafficked, and it was pretty hard-core. From there we visited the famous M & M Bar, which for 100 years has hosted a bar down one side of the interior and a 24/7 cafe down the other. When the bar had to close at 2:00AM, patrons would simply walk five feet across the room to the cafe with their drinks in hand. When we entered, we were told there was a private party, which turned out to be a funeral for a 23 year old who had died following the path of drugs.

Day 4: Butte/ Boulder There are casinos all over Butte, and probably Montana, but I didn't notice them before. There's the Lucky Charm Casino, the Gold Rush, Jokers Wild, Party Palace, Copper City, Suds and Fun, Chances R, Magic Diamond, Crazee Carol's and Gamers, where I eat breakfast. Well, I eat breakfast in the cafe section of Gamers, but if I want, I can pass through a door in the cafe and play video poker for the rest of the day. This morning I passed through the door, and at 10:00AM the place was almost full. You can even eat your breakfast on a stool next to your chair while you play the machines. The casino games seem to be exclusively video poker and Keno, and according to the folks around here, they pay out very badly. The majority of people who play them are poor. Even the gas stations are casinos; the sign on my last station said, "Gas, Casino, Liquor Store, Food Store, Deli, Tobacco Outlet."

This morning Glenn Bodish gave me a tour of The Arts Chateau, a mansion built by Charles Clark, the son of copper baron William Clark. Clark only got to live in it for four years, because he was caught buying votes for his dad's election and had to take all his fabulous furniture and artifacts and move to California. After a studio visit at a building (former bowling alley) now full of artists, Glenn and I drove into the hills and found a view of the tailings pond of the Berkeley pit. That would be the trash left over from the smelting process. The lake is enormous and very beautiful, if you don't know it's tailings. It is fed by the headwaters of the Columbia River.

I headed out to Boulder in the afternoon, through green mountains with huge extruded granite boulders of the batholith, a much different landscape from Butte's dry surroundings. NPR's Montana Edition reported that Butte's Museum of Prostitution was in disrepair from lack of funds. When I arrived in Boulder (Lucky Lil's Casino and Gas), I thought, uh oh, but I kept on driving, past the Juvenile Correction Institute, past Boulder Cash Grocery, and through a gorgeous valley to the Boulder Hot Springs Hotel, where I thought, oh yes, just fine, thank you God. This is a funky 150-year-old hotel/spa that over the years has taken on a Spanish mission look. Half of it is in disuse, the other half is a spa/ B & B/ retreat. It looks out forever across valleys to mountains, and all you hear is the sound of birds. Within minutes of my arrival, I was in a hot springs pool, and later on a massage table. This is going to be fine.

Day 5: Boulder/Basin I spent the day with M J Williams and Nancy Owens, who gave me the town tour of Basin, pop. 250. We visited the Basin Art Refuge, where I met artist in residence Rebecca Roush, and the local bar, where some folks were have a morning nightcap, and where the owner, when told that I was studying the Boulder Batholith, said, "What's a batholith?" M J said, "You're standing on it." M J asked her what her son was doing with the giant boulders (batholith boulders, by the way) across the street, and she said he was widening the parking lot. Just then, a huge truck rotated its cylindrical back and dumped tons of boulders in the lot, jolting the bar. Our last stop was the Christian bookstore, where I picked up a stack of pamphlets like "Why You Shouldn't Marry Or Date An Unbeliever," "I Want Your Gun," which explains how the right to bear arms goes way beyond the second amendment, and how certain officials want you unarmed, and "The Kings and Queens of the Jury," which teaches jurors how to keep activist judges from dictating law and stay the Christian course in trial deliberations. All these establishments in a town of about 15 public buildings.

After lunch, the three of us hiked way up into the mountains, where the extruded granite batholith showed itself in all its glory. We found several prospector's collapsed homesteads, mine shafts and tailings piles. It looked as if a giant woodchuck had been gnawing at the earth, with his left over dirt piled up outside his hole. After the gargantuan corporate mines of Butte, it was fascinating to see a tiny operation hidden in the hills. The air was incredibly soft, filled with the sounds of rushing water and birds. Nancy and M J recognized the scat signs of elk, moose and coyote. No bear--I guess they really are still sleeping.

On my way back to Boulder, I stopped by the Merry Widow Health Mine, which is a radon mine. Radon is a byproduct of naturally deteriorating uranium in granite and has caused lots of panic throughout the US where high levels of it have been discovered in people's basements. Years ago, miners discovered that in certain mines their arthritis disappeared as well as other health problems. After the mines were depleted, people came to sit in them. Now they are full-on businesses where people come from all over for treatments. I walked 450 feet into the mine to the sitting area, which was bus seats along the walls. There was a picnic table with a cribbage game, people sitting with their feet in a stream, and others lined up along the walls. They told me that their arthritis, diabetes, migraines and auto-immune illnesses had all been relieved. I don't know. I never thought I would ever go near one of these mines, but I did. And later it seemed like I could breathe better.

Back home at the Boulder Hot Springs Hotel, I did the non-radon cure: hot pool, cold plunge, steam room with evergreen branch whip, cold, hot, cold, nap on table, dinner. Later I sat on a terrace and listened to the multitude of birds (sandhill cranes are here) that gather in this peaceful valley. I watched part of the Lewis and Clark documentary in the enormous empty lobby in the unused section of the hotel. Could have been The Shining, but it was fine.

Day 6: Boulder It's a small world. When I was in Butte, Glenn handed me a note from Michael Haykin, a painter I had known in New York twenty years ago. He said that he was living near Boulder, and if I were nearby to call. So today I visited him at his house just over the hill from my hotel. He showed me his new work, which derives from the land, and then his land, which goes on forever. Then he showed me things he had found on his land, the most amazing being a vertebra from a large animal pierced through with an arrowhead.

He joined me on my day trip, driving with me through the southern Boulder valley to the headwaters of the Missouri, pointing out the snow-covered Bull, Elkhorn and Tobacco Root Mountains, as well as antelope, deer (they weren't playing), cranes, a heron, magpies, etc. This was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever taken; every bend made me want to stop the car and gape. The high valleys of Montana really are God's country, with grassland folding up to hills dotted with evergreens and then snow covered mountains. The space and amplitude of the land with the, yes, big sky above, is magnified by the sparseness of people. As you drive or hike through, you are acutely aware of your relationship to the immensity of the earth. It's Live Free or Die, even though that is New Hampshire's state motto.

At the headwaters, Forest Service ranger Julie Kleine met us and gave us some history of the convergence of the Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison Rivers. We then headed over to the Madison Buffalo Jump, where for thousands of years native peoples used the landscape as a hunting tool: they herded buffalo over the cliff. The meat, skins and bones from these jumps assured their winter survival. We hiked up the face of the cliff--sea level girl here was sucking hard on the air-- and then way back behind it. As we moved up the face, Michael quietly put ancient buffalo bone shards in my pocket. At the top you could see 60 miles in all directions, and not a building in site.

We drove home through the Jefferson River Valley during golden hour with the sun glinting off every roadside grass blade and fence line as mountains leapt up from the road. In this whole day we never encountered another person, and rarely passed another car.

There being no dinner at the hotel tonight, I went to the Elkhorn Cafe and Supper Club in Boulder. When I asked the waitress if they served wine, she said no, but I could get some next door and bring it over. I said I didn't need a bottle, but she said I could buy a glass and bring it over. "Walk down the street with a glass of wine?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "this is Montana." So I headed over to Sig's Bar, which sports a large wall mural outside of some gentlemen on horseback and the heading "Take a swig at Sig's." Walking in, I saw a bride sitting with a bottle of beer, along with her brand new husband and a bridesmaid. (Note to self: never go anywhere without your camera.) I did buy a glass of wine ($2.00) and walked back to the Elkhorn with it, feeling like a total outlaw.

Day 7: Boulder/Helena I've come to realize that this is a hotel and not a hotel. It is also a retreat for psychic healing and growth based on the works of Anne Wilson Schaef, who is an owner. There are perhaps 25 permanent residents who live in the unrenovated part of the building and work with her, plus people who come for various workshops. When I arrived, there was a writers' workshop; now they have gone and some acupuncturists are here. I'm not sure if the people who work in the hotel are residents or outside employees. It has been like a floating reality that was up to me to absorb in my time.

Later: In the afternoon, I drove to Helena, where I am staying with ceramicists Penny and Richard Swanson. They gave me a tour of the Archie Bray Foundation, an old brick factory that long ago became a celebrated ceramics center. It reminded me of a rich and verdant version of Butte's mines: piles of abandoned bricks everywhere, often fashioned into some fanciful brick sculpture by a resident artist, plus the rusted and discarded equipment of the brick factory, all intertwined with grass and bushes. Magpies darted about, jabbering at us as freight trains lumbered by. Dotting the landscape were old kilns filled with weeds and debris as well as newer ones glazed with salt inside. Throughout all were ceramic works installed by artists during their residencies: huge Japanese urns, animals, ceramic envronments held together with bailing wire, pathways and sculptures as well as ceramic offerings placed in piles. Richard has 40 ceramic dervishes installed on the grounds, and we could spot them high up, peeking out from an exhaust stack or on top of a kiln, there and not there, depending on how well you see.

In the evening I saw a local theater production of "The Full Monty," which is doing for the Myrna Loy Theater what the production originally did for the men in the movie. The run was doubled to a month with sold-out houses of Helena patrons. It was great being back in the Myrna Loy, where my company performed ten years ago. It's an old town jail converted to a theater, with the house and stage being the old cellblock.

Day 8: Helena/Garnet Ghost Town Last night I was pretty fried—I had so many images from the last several days that my brain couldn’t download them all, so I lay awake for most of the night as it slowly absorbed them. In the morning, Richard made Penny and me a Mother’s Day breakfast, after which I had a studio visit of their beautiful works.

And then it was goodbye to Helena—it was a Cliffs Notes tour—and on to my last stop, Garnet Ghost Town. Garnet was a gold mining community of about 1,000 people hidden high in the Garnet Mountain Range that had thrived around 1895. I had heard back in Boulder that the road up to it was seriously challenging, but it didn’t register until I was on the last three miles of the ten-mile assent and it turned into a mud pit with 180 switchbacks and sheer drops off to the side. Trees were gouged out by cars that had slid into them, and my Jeep was surfing around the road. I had to accelerate enough to make it up the grade through the mud, yet not enough to blow the switchback, plus NEVER look down below. Talk about being in the moment! And it’s a moment I never want to repeat.

When I arrived, Amy Colson, a videographer who was going to film an interview with me, was there shaking in her boots. She had come to Garnet through the northern route, which was even worse than mine, with snow, ice and sheer drops. She said it had taken her 20 minutes to calm down after she arrived. A little later, Lois Schlyer from Headwaters arrived from the north, also in disbelief. We did our interview and wandered around the abandoned buildings with their rooms furnished with rusty mattress frames, chairs, empty pantries and discarded shoes. There was lots of snow on the ground, and a raven circled, calling.

We slowly skied our cars back down through the mud in a caravan and returned to Missoula, which was in full blown spring. It seemed like a different planet from Boulder, which didn’t have a green leaf anywhere, just a subtext of spring to come, and Garnet, which was still in winter. I had a wonderful dinner with the Headwaters folks and passed out.

Day 9: Helena/NYC I had an early breakfast with Charles Nichols, the composer for this project and talked about all the sounds I had heard or heard about on this trip as well as my attempt to record the pulsing levels of water in the steam room at Boulder Hot Springs: steam, water rushing through pipes along the floor and a two-toned rhythmic song of water in some deep ethereal place that could be heard almost subliminally. It was like a ghostly rave and my favorite sound on the whole trip. Knowing that I could never really describe it to Charles, I took my Dictaphone into the steam room one night and attempted to capture it. The results were like trying to catch the wind in your hand, at which he had a laugh upon hearing the recording. The other sound I couldn’t describe was that of a power line we had walked under in our Basin hike: electricity that sounded like rain drops, but must have been influenced by the rain drops that were hitting it. Terrifying and sweet at the same time.

I was asked several times during this trip what the piece will look like—I have no idea; I’m just on the receiving part of the journey right now. After my talk in Butte, an artist, Eben, said to me, “Your work is so human, and now you are making a piece about a landscape; how do you see yourself doing that?” That caught me--I don’t have an answer. Yet. But I hope, as we artists always do as we head blindly forward with a thought, or a shred of a thought propelling the next work, that all the things I saw and people I met on this trip will mingle in my head over the next six weeks and present themselves to me (probably in the middle of the night) with a structure—a great structure—that I can take back to Missoula in June and begin painting in with the dancers.

PS: Everyone in Montana says “You bet,” or “You betcha.” After two days of it, I was betting with myself about when I would join them, but I never did. Leaving the plane in New York, when the crew said goodbye and thanks, I replied, “You betcha."