The family held a reunion outside Harrison, Montana, for three days this month on the ranch that its forebears purchased in 1873. From ¼ section 138 years ago, today the ranch encompasses 7,000 acres of land recumbent beneath the Big Sky.

My favorite planned event of the get‐together was a day‐long tour of the ranch. Even though the family enjoys a century‐old reputation as skilled breeders of Morgan horses, we skipped the horseback rigamarole and toured the civilized way: in air‐conditioned Chevrolet trucks and a motley assortment of SUVs.

I found it really interesting that acreage added to the ranch over the years is referred to by the name of the family from which it was purchased. For example, the answer to the question, Where to next? would be Springer, which meant, Where the Springer family lived. Each such stop featured the buildings — now derelict — erected by that family, who, though long departed, are recalled each day by the family that remained.

The names we give to the places we live all make reference to something derived from our history, even as we utterly disregard the history itself. The large city across the lake from where I am sitting was named after a leader of one of the Native American tribes who lived in the area when it was settled by white pioneers, and my neighborhood bears the name of a neighborhood in Workington, England, of which the man who platted the site of our town in 1890 was reminded — but their ZIP codes are more meaningful to me in my quotidian activities than their toponymy.

I was made mindful of those who had been enticed by the railroads and the government in the early twentieth century to settle ½ sections of Montana further to the southeast of the ranch, ending bitter and impoverished as they discovered they could not wrest even a subsistence living from the land, let alone the cornucopia the promotional brochures had depicted.¹ The imagination boggles at the privations they suffered, and examining the rough‐hewn structures built by their contemporaries made each mark of an axe in the weathered timber more awesome. They are not cautionary as Shelley’s sonnet scolds the vanity of men, they are testimony to the stoic industry of men.

As an avowed urbanite, I am separate from the soil other than as a place where asphalt is laid. On the ranch, identifications of place are more than an expedient means of referring to a flat spot on the Earth. They are names that appear on no Triple–A map, nor can they be found in any GPS device mounted in the dashboard of a car. They are a private geography, born out of respect for those whose sweat helped make the land what it is today, and poignant for its obscurity.

A part of the television miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove was filmed on the ranch (something to do with a gun fight). We circled the wagons in the midst of the old buildings where the scene had been shot and ate lunch. Canopies were raised, and huge cartons full of food were laid out on tables in their shade. These people know how to eat, so of course I fit right in.

My niece, Christine, and I were sitting on a stoop eating our lunch and chatting when two‐year‐old Roman wandered over. He was eating an apple and looked about as adorable as a kid can look.

What’re you doing, Sweetheart? Christine asked. In the same matter‐of‐fact voice with which any of us might answer this informal question, Roman replied, I’m poopin’, took a fresh bite of his apple, and waited for the conversation to continue.

One of many fascinating things I had pointed out to me were several gates that the family maintains blocking the Montana Rail Link tracks that bisect its land. I have traveled extensively through the rangelands of the western United States, and I cannot say I have ever taken note of a ranch’s fence line including gates across railroad tracks — they keep the livestock from wandering off, of course, and during hauling season any train en route to and from Harrison employs someone to open and close the gates. The railroad is said to not be altogether conscientious about closing the gates behind itself.

At the end of that day, I found myself sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree, listening to the tall grass as it bent in the wind. The day had been warm, and I was enjoying closing my eyes against the setting sun and taking draughts of the evening breeze. The atmosphere in the air‐conditioned high rise in which I spend most of my days does not smell the same as the air in Madison County as it flows over the land, and I wanted to commit it to memory. How was it? It was wonderful.