{"id":31958,"date":"2018-08-25T14:03:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T14:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31958"},"modified":"2018-08-25T14:04:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T14:04:06","slug":"wondering-about-the-big-sky-label","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=31958","title":{"rendered":"Wondering about the ‘Big Sky’ label"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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INTERSTATE 90, Mont. — <\/strong>I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Big Sky Country” label that someone long ago hung on Montana.<\/p>\n

The sky is ample, I suppose. But as we drove from Missoula through Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Wash., I was struck by the sight of all those tall mountains throughout out trek — especially those that towered next to the highway in Montana.<\/p>\n

The mountains soared seemingly forever into the sky, rising maybe 9,000 or 10,000 feet above sea level.<\/p>\n

The thought occurred to me: Those magnificent mountains impede the volume of sky one would see if we were traveling along more, um, flat terrain.<\/p>\n

Thus, the “big sky” isn’t quite so, um, big … you know?<\/p>\n

I’ve long noted that the Texas Panhandle, where my wife and I lived for 23 years before our move this spring to the Dallas\/Fort Worth Metroplex, is the real big sky country. The sun is in the sky forever. It sets well past 9 p.m. during the peak of the summer.<\/p>\n

It’s huge, man!<\/p>\n

The Montana sky — when it isn’t covered in smoke, as it as today — is pretty enough. It just isn’t nearly as big as the High Plains sky I grew accustomed to seeing daily for more than two decades.<\/p>\n

OK, maybe the Montana sky finds its bigness farther east, where it lacks mountains to jut skyward into the big sky.<\/p>\n

But I find it hard to imagine how its size could compare with the sky with that envelops the vast landscape I used to call “home.”<\/p>\n\n

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INTERSTATE 90, Mont. — I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Big Sky Country” label that someone long ago hung on Montana. The sky is ample, I suppose. But as we drove from Missoula through Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Wash., I was struck by the sight of all those tall mountains throughout out trek — … Continue reading Wondering about the ‘Big Sky’ label<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[7976,3920],"class_list":["post-31958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-news","category-local-news","tag-big-sky-country","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31960,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31958\/revisions\/31960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}