Montana’s North Plains

Montana’s North Plains – Nicholas C. Winter © 2003

In the Milk River Valley, Montana’s North Plains

Not far from the border there lie the remains,

Of log walls and sod roof my mother called home

Where antelope played and buffalo roamed.

In 1911 my grandparents came.

They brought all they had and they settled their claim.

The railroad men promised the land would provide,

And they came with high hopes to horizons so wide.

Oh, Charley and Eva, from Iowa soil,

Raised up on farms into lives of hard toil.

With two wagons, nine children, and a few head of stock,

They came with the tide of that immigrant lot.

The first years were hard but the land gave its best.

With crops and with cattle their efforts were blessed.

With a new baby born, and their trust in the Lord,

They bought an old piano and a Model-T Ford.

Then in 1918 on Montana’s North Plains,

They planted their crops and waited for rain.

The rain never came, and the crops all just died.

And all they had left was their hope and their pride.

So, Charley and Eva, from Iowa soil,

Gritted their teeth and they doubled their toil.

With their sons and their daughters, their backs, and their hands,

They somehow survived on that desolate land.

When I was a child my mother would tell,

Stories of that place I remember so well,

About the wind from Alberta blowing forty below,

And of searching for strays that were lost in the snow.

And how in the spring when the thaw had begun,

She and her brothers and sisters would run,

To watch ice on the river break up and flow down,

And to stand on the first open patches of ground.

And on warm summer evenings, when the stars shone bright,

She’d ride on her old horse, out into the night.

The sound of his hoof-steps, and the smell of the sage,

Helped her find peace at so tender an age.

Oh, the soft summer breeze that blows from the west,

Whispers that someday when you leave the nest,

You will find your own way to a land that is mild,

And a much different life than you had as a child.

But on warm summer evenings, when the stars shine bright,

You recall how you rode on the prairie at night.

And remember the pleasures a hard land provides.

On the plains of Montana you ride.

And remember the pleasures a hard land provides.

On the plains… of Montana… you ride.

Nick Winter is my mother’s cousin. His grandparents, Eva and Charles Wilson, homesteaded the ranch where his mother, Olive Wilson and subsequently my mother, Marian Wilson, grew up. Lyrics used by permission of the author.

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