Pilgrimage 2 Hogeland, Montana and a Whole Lotta Prairie

Sunset over Chester, Montana at the start of our prairie pilgrimage

Montana is a vast place. What is the chance that a tiny Hi-Line town built to serve the Great Northern Railway connects my family with that of friends whose roots took hold hundreds of miles east of here? Hogeland, Montana is named for Albert Hogeland, chief engineer of the Great Northern and great-grandfather of bosom buddies Nancy and Caro Pemberton. Hogeland is also a childhood home of my sister-in-law Pauline Murray whose father was the last station master. When serendipitous conversation turned up this connection a few years ago, a road trip to Hogeland beckoned.

Fellow travelers with Bill when Hogeland was just a gleam in our eyes
Bill, Jeff, Kit, Nancy, Caro

We were to be six fellow travelers on this long-anticipated pilgrimage. But before we could set off, we lost our dear friend Bill Mitchell to cancer. Bill helped plan this trip and he persuaded us to add a detour south toward the Missouri to visit the American Prairie Reserve in country where he had hunted game birds. Our plans continued to grow until they encompassed a swath of the Montana Hi-Line east of Chester and into southern Canada, Wallace Stegner country. Stegner described this Montana - Saskatchewan border country as "...where the Plains, as an ecology, as a native Indian culture, and as a process of white settlement, came to their climax and their end."

Our journey began on a beautiful day in a Montana as green as I can remember. We set off down the road to the Sons of the Pioneers' "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," part of the soundtrack Jeff made especially for this adventure. Bill was riding shotgun in the sky.

Overlooking the Mighty Missouri just above Ft. Benton
Nancy behind the camera