We got into Bozeman at sunset and killed a couple of hours in one of the bars by the train station. This was the other Montana University college town, and it had a similar feel. There was a buzz by the old freight depot where the "performance" was being rehearsed. I had vague details about the affair. Em's friend the dancer said something about dancing on a train, a ride that was supposed to illustrated the history of Montana.

At the Bozeman station there was a large movie screen broadcasting black-and-white footage from the beginning of the twentieth-century to an ambient-techno soundtrack. There was a group of men dressed in Western clothes pretending to lay track and a group of Indians in full headdress. At ten the train rolled in, a remnant from the not too far back days before passenger service disappeared from the state, now serving out its final days doing leisure excursions.

The train lumbered along on a slow two-hour ride to the gates of the old train station in Yellowstone that used to receive tourists. High power projectors broadcast laser lights in the shape of horses and buffalo and film clips of old westerns on the thousand-foot mountains. In the aisles there were performers, including Em's dancer friend. Along a dining table there were men dressed as cowboys gambling. There were Indian children moving along in ghost like groups, and somebody was giving secret handshakes.

It was an unexpected taste of the avante-guard on my vacation, also a means of travel I hadn't encountered before. It was a slow dark ride illuminated only by the full moon, very different from anything I'd experienced after thousands of miles of night driving along all the highways in America. This was how the first settlers saw the old west, no light except for the stars and dead silence. It was difficult to photograph with the lighting, but I got these shots here of Em shooting the moon.