By Kathy Hughes
Contributing Writer
Leaving Montana, one carries many impressions, all of them grandiose. There are times when you are surrounded on all sides by imposing mountains, which are mammoth slabs of rock, dropped and upended 45 degrees by ancient and unimaginable forces.
Montana is where dinosaurs, tiny as well as towering giants of beasts, seemed to have thrived leaving a graveyard of the most plentiful dinosaur fossils on our continent. Much of what we know about that prehistoric era has been researched by scientists affiliated with the University of Montana, whether it was unearthing humongous but fragile fossilized remains, or extracting DNA from blood found in dinosaur bones.
These scientists have used fragmentary evidence not only to reconstruct and assemble formidable skeletal figures, but also to hypothesize how they ate, reproduced and died eons ago. Evidence for their coloration, feathers and mighty sounds is included in exhibits featured at the University’s Museum of the Rockies (MOR), which is home to an extensive collection of fossils and ongoing research.
Fast forward thousands of eons for another archeological exhibit at the museum, the excavation of Pompeii, Italy, which was led in part by teams from the University of Montana. In terms of continuity, the leap from exhibits of bones to gleaming jewels and intricate frescos unearthed at Pompeii is well neigh impossible.
Yet another vast leap into time is an exhibit on Indian tribes in Montana, followed by pioneers and their early exploitation of Montana’s vast resources. Although the buffalo, lumber and mineral ores must have seemed inexhaustible, such was not the case. The near extermination of the buffalo by pioneer hunters, led to the decimation of the Indian tribes who also suffered massacres, disease and suppression in the decades that followed.
Upon exiting the Museum, my brother revealed our familial dark and wry sense of humor by commenting, “What a depressing place! Everything is a story of death and destruction.” I had to laugh as well as agree. The jumps from millions of years to thousands of years, then to decades left one feeling at odds and dismayed.
The lesson is that Montana’s incredible vastness and richness, and its place in time and space, is difficult, if not impossible to capture in a museum or even on film. I almost brought home a suitcase full of rocks, as they alone seemed to represent the seeming eternal permanence and indestructibility of the Rocky Mountains and Montana; however, I returned my rocks to nature as it were, to live out their fate as intended.
