June 7, 2014

The Good Old Days Highway 191, Montana 2014

Nothing spectacular about this particular scene, just a shot of a lonely highway (my favorite kind) across some wide open country on a warm spring day in Montana. With nothing else on the agenda over Memorial Day weekend, we took a little day trip to Lewistown, Montana. We didn’t do much of anything except wander around and enjoy the fine day. Sometimes that’s all you need to do to be content. By coincidence yesterday I happened to leaf through a novel I read recently, By the Lake by  John McGahern, and came across a passage I had marked that seemed apropos to this feeling:

The days were quiet. They did not feel particularly quiet or happy but through them ran the sense, like an underground river, that there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness, all that life could give of contentment and peace.

That in turn reminded me of the line from the Carly Simon song Anticipation: “stay right here ’cause these are the good old days.” Here’s a video of her singing that song back in 1971. (I had some good old days back then too–wonder if I thought so then.)

]]>