We crossed the border!
For two days we are travelling through the USA. After Manitoba, Saskatchewan and a little piece of Alberta, we are entering in Montana.
Crossing the border is always scary. I once met the Russian border police and they were pretty intimidating.. the Americans are even scarier. I always think they will know something, find something why we can’t pass.. So there we were, sat in the normal clean car, like a normal clean family, passports ready, stamped proofs of good behaviour with us for you never know.. But everything went smooth, no drama, no fuss. They even waved us goodbye and we can stay here for three months (but not a day longer!)
In the past months I have started to love Canada. I have seen, felt and smelled more of it. I liked everybody we met along the way, even the people I didn’t like at first. Canada is a little bit like the Netherlands, in it’s ease and tolerance. And then I mean the Netherlands like they ought to be, although it may be isn’t like that anymore. And it’s such a vast country.. there is space for everything. Enough water, land, trees, lakes and stories for everybody. A big, slow, sweet country.
But now we are driving through America.. and that is something different. America isn’t very nice or very easy, but this is the place where everything ACTUALLY IS. Where everything took place, all cowboy movies, all Indian things: Lucky Luke, Arendsoog, Billy the Kid, Winnetou, Once upon a time in the West, Palladin, the Lone Ranger, I was a cowboy and BANG, you’re dead.. that was all really HERE.
We drive through the Rocky Mountains, we drive through prairies and reservates, alongside farms and ghost towns, through Wild West-villages, with real saloons and everything. I look, I am looking, I am sucking everything in. In Browning there’s a Blackfoot-museum where Jonas and me go have a look while Tom had a little nap. The Blackfeet were very Indian-like Indians, with feathers and beads, tipi’s and mocassins. Jonas and me especially like a buffalo-fur coat. So very soft, we would like to have one of those. But no buffalo roam here anymore.. A real live Indian with real braids strokes Jonas over his head. He whispers something, an old Indian blessing may be.. He has very bad teeth, most native’s have those. But his smile is sweet. Everybody here does think that Jonas is a girl. It’s worse then in Canada. Boys in America don’t wear orange T-shirts or long golden curls..
The road curves through hills, prairies and woods. Always the Rocky’s on the right. Big vast cloudy skies. I don’t have enough eyes.
We are staying at different kind of camping sites than we were used to in Canada. Tom once showed me a Dvd of the series Trailerparkboys. They’re worse than the Dutch series ‘Flodder’, full of stupidities, broken down cars, booze and gratuitous sex. The first camping in Montana could come from those series: old broken down trailers, rusty tractors, dogs, radio’s and girls in too small T-shirts. But Jonas thinks it’s the best camping ever, because we have swings right in front of our door. And riding the swing is Jonas’s new mission in life. There are mostly three of them and he wants to go from swing to swing to swing. Be pushed on this one for a time and then the other. And again. It’s a serious business, riding the swing. He doesn’t smile or show any pleasure. But it has to be done, time and time again. This park has a swing I fit in too, so we swing together for a long time. The ropes go squeek squeek. Behind the dirty old caravans and the rusty picknick tables the hills begin and behind them the blue snowy Rocky’s.
O mother what a view!