On Tuesday morning we passed back through Missoula so that Em could pick up a camcorder. As a new documentary film MFA student at the University, she was eager to get in some practice. One of her friends, a dancer, was participating in a performance art piece. All I knew at the time was that it had something to do with a train leaving out of Bozeman, a couple of hundred miles east.

Em said that whenever she moved away, she missed the gold color of the mountains and plains of Montana. It wasn't brown like Nebraska, or desert sandy yellow, but indeed golden with sparse bits of jagged rock and green trees here and there. As the day went on and we fell behind schedule, Em pushed the Jetta close to 100 MPH. This was , after all, the state once known for the "reasonable and prudent" speed limit.