By Kevin S. Giles

It’s dawn in oil country. Workers leave the motels early in oversized trucks, heading to the rigs. There was a time when they rented every sleeping room within 100 miles of Williston. Travelers heading west through North Dakota ought to plan ahead.

We pack up and cross the border into Montana through some of the emptiest land in America. A fair bit of driving takes us to Glendive, situated prominently enough that it resembles an oasis in the middle of a great prairie desert. It’s a small city, really, but population is relative in eastern Montana where Glendive’s 4,000 folks outnumber residents in some entire counties.

We turn north to Circle on Highway 200. The road, a narrow two-lane affair, meanders into nothingness. Our car bucks and swerves over weathered pavement. We pass occasional pickup trucks muddied and loaded with gear. Out here, a drive for gas or groceries amounts to an expedition. Occasional ranch houses, specks of civilization in a human-less terrain, appear in the distance.

Oranges, reds, and great emptiness

Sunlight filters over the buttes, turning them orange and red. Skittish antelope watch our car in bunches of threes and fours. We see few cattle. We know they’re out there, grazing beyond our ability to see them. The emptiness clears our minds. What a transformation from city driving, this foray into the lonely sprawling canvas of rural life.

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The city of Circle appears quiet to a fault, possibly content with its isolation, maybe sleeping off Saturday night. It’s a respectable little town of barely 600 residents abiding by the synonymous slogan, “A Great Place to be Around.” It was a shame not to stop in Circle — bearing the distinction of being the community farthest from a Starbucks coffee shop in the lower 48 states — but long trips are made with plans in mind.

We follow Highway 200 south and west through McCone County. Near the border with Garfield County, we head north on Highway 24 toward the legendary Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River. This stretch in Missouri Breaks country might be among the most beautiful drives anywhere with water on one side and miles of unfolding broken land on the other.

A big lake that the CCC built

It’s difficult to understate the grandeur of Fort Peck Dam and the miles of water it holds back. The lake stretches to the horizon. Thousands of workers built that dam during Franklin Roosevelt’s tenure in the White House. It was a massive Civilian Conservation Corps undertaking like no other.

The novel ‘Summer of the Black Chevy’ by Kevin S. Giles grew from memories of his hometown. The novel also takes place there, in Deer Lodge, Montana.

From Fort Peck we drove northwest to Glasgow, the city the Air Force abandoned. It twice was a Strategic Air Command site.

We head west on US Highway 2. Montanans know this stretch as the “High Line,” where a ruler on a state map lines up a chain of small cities such as Chinook, Havre and Shelby along a railroad route. We drive steadily, realizing that our intention to traverse all of far-flung Montana in a single day was a big bite. We push into the sunset.

Ahead of us is my first home. My birthplace, my growing-up years. Being a native Montanan means something special to those of us who carry that badge of distinction. My spirit awaits in those mountains.

And to the north, Glacier Park

We pass Browning on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. Highway 2 begins its winding climb over Marias Pass. Two entrances to Glacier National Park come and go. Our destination, our daughter’s house in Columbia Falls, approaches.

Fatigue takes its toll. We’ve driven more than 500 miles over rough two-lane roads. Our full appreciation of western Montana’s heavenly gates will wait until morning.

Content as I am with every return visit to the land that’s in my blood, I should stop here. In fairness, there’s more to this story.

On our drive back to Minnesota, we chose a route through central Montana on Highway 200, also known as US Highway 87. We traveled through Great Falls, no longer Montana’s largest city but still the busiest in the northern portion of the state. Eventually along came Lewistown, a tidy town that commands influence as the Fergus County seat.

Eastward from there, animals outnumbered humans all the way to Circle. Nobody stirred at the hamlets of Winnett and Jordan. We consulted a map. Fewer than 100 people lived in Petroleum County.

Rugged beauty, endless vistas

We drove for hours, passing but a handful of vehicles going the other way, when we reached a stoplight at a bridge.

We’re conditioned not to drive through red lights. This one took its time. No traffic was visible either direction — for miles. And so, as you would guess, we blatantly broke the law and marauded across that bridge.

Circle, Montana, is a long drive from anywhere but it’s a small town of big civic pride.

It was somewhere in that stretch when, as I turned to admire the landscape’s rugged beauty, a wild mustang herd charged into view. A white horse led. The mustangs poured over a ridge like water, following the lead horse in perfect synchronization. They appeared to number in the hundreds, the force of them swaying this way and that, thundering their freedom in the distance.

It occurred to me that heaven wasn’t reserved only for western Montana, blessed with its majestic mountain ranges bowing one to the other, but also in the expanse of infinite beauty known as the “eastside” to the westerners.

Especially under a rising or fading sun, it’s a beholding sight. If heaven is a place in the heart, you’ll find that place anywhere in Montana.

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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.