Clean and Sparkly Montana

When I was in Montana this summer and I was posting, Sunita, who lives in Mumbai, India commented that Montana seems so pure and clean.

Well, I have to admit, the air is pure and for the most part, the water is clean as well. The vast space with sparse population kind of allows for that....but up until the mid to late 1970s or so, and maybe in some respects now, man has left his mark in piles of trash.

There's a reason for this. Since there are so few people and since the attitude of getting rid of your trash has changed from "let's fill in the land that has no use" --gullies and other areas which couldn't be tilled, the method of getting rid of trash, old farm implements and worn out vehicles was to just drive them to the edge and heave them in.

Presently, that has been changing somewhat as people now take their trash into the landfills or transfer stations and when the cost of scrap metals rises, then people start raiding their dumps and bring in literally tons of scrap iron.


Indeed, my sister-in-law has made short work of some of the piles of discards on the land immediately around her house.


What is left, often leaves good fodder for photos. :0