Monthly Archives: June 2025

Cowboy Clay made this observation recently: “Montanans don’t get outraged. They get bothered.”

This was in response to my query about how I should feel about the latest documentary on the frontier called Kevin Costner’s ‘The West'”. The chapter on the Lewis and Clark expedition didn’t look like around here which is in the middle of Montana along the Yellowstone River. From the ranch, I can almost see where the expedition overnighted. They wrote that they had to use two trees to make one canoe, the trees being pretty scrawny and there weren’t that many of them. But in this retelling, the expedition seemed to be traveling through a lot of greenery and whole bunch of trees. It’s not like that here. So I tried to ask an AI where the locations were and couldn’t get an answer. I casually mentioned to rancher husband that I was rather outraged as a Montanan of thirty years that they didn’t get “where the plains meet the mountains” right. I was quite proud of my observation. That’s when he reminded me that Montanans are never outraged. They are bothered. And he added “Pilgrim” at the end to also remind me that I still had a bit of midwestern Puritan harumphing in me and that I had a ways to go to understand that Tao of Cow.