Big Sky Country

I don’t recall being all that impressed with the sky in Big Sky Country. It was a sky, sure, but it didn’t look any bigger to me than any other sky. Some skies are small, there’s no doubt about that. When I lived in Geneva National, that was a small sky. My view was in all directions, but not very far in all directions. There wasn’t much to see there, by way of the sky. The trees made sure I wouldn’t have much sky to view, and the neighboring houses took care of what the towering foliage missed.

Manitoba, now there’s a big sky. You can see rain coming for days there. It’ll first appear on the horizon, at the outer edge of that very big sky. Then, a day or two later, it’ll be closer. Day three, closer still. Day four, a hint of rain in the air, and a bunch some distance away in the sky, not no actual rain. Days five through seven are the same, with rain seemingly near but still not near enough to make the ground wet. The sky, it’s that big out there. Bigger than it is in Montana, where they boast so about the size of their sky.

Monday was, a long time before it arrived, forecast to be a nice day. It was to be so nice, they said, that it would be worth spending the day skiing, if you were able to both take the day off and, you know, ski. So that’s what a friend of mine did, and on Monday morning, around about the time the sky was bright with filtered sunshine, that’s what we set out to do. It was 8:30 when this ski session began, and if it had unfolded as most ski sessions have a tendency to unfold, I would be back to my car and to my work no later than 10 am. At 8:30, the sky was big, hazy, but bright and warm.

By 8:45, the sky began giving way to an approaching storm. The storm must have come from some great distance, but from our view on the North Shore, somewhere around Pebble Point, the storm was coming from Williams Bay. The sky turned foul, dark, and the wind pushed in from one direction and then the next, before finally settling on the original direction and picking up momentum. We rushed back to the safety of the pier, where we stood and watched the storm make its way towards us. First, that wind. Then, the darkness that treated the sun as if it was such a powerless victim. Then, the sheets of rain, though not as much as the dark clouds and their sinister rotation would have suggested. There had yet to be any skiing.

Later, after a hearty breakfast and focused radar watching, the lake went slack again, and we walked to the pier. From the house, the water looked nice, flat, ski worthy. The short walk from house to pier allowed the water to bristle some, and it allowed the clouds to build again. The light gave way, the clouds twisted and churned, the wind shifty at first, then straight from the west and into our pier and our hair and out teeth. The bulk of the darkness went towards Fontana, though it once again came from Williams Bay. Some stayed north, towards Lake Como, maybe, or further, who knows? We watched it from the house, as this wind gathered itself much more capably than did the earlier wind, and it blew and blew, from West to East, with no variation in course. The rain fell, too, and it was once again no longer time to ski.

Time passed. The sky turned lighter again. Sunshine? Some. A glimmer of it, anyway. And the water, once whipped by that stiff gale, now turning softer by the minute, by the moment. Would their be skiing? We would try. Down from the house and onto the lawn, over the stone path and onto the pier. Under the canopy and into the boat. Out of the slip and over that water, now calm and peaceful and beckoning? Yes, beckoning.

But clouds again. Clouds from Williams Bay, clouds over Fontana. Churning and spinning and lifting and rotating, and coming our way. No matter, ski. Just ski. And ski we did. From shore to shore, around and back again. Straight lines, no laziness. Sharp turns, gravity be damned. Pure cuts and sloppy cuts, no matter, they were cuts. The water was calm enough, the sky bright enough, the window just big enough. There was lightening. Was it striking Fontana? Or Sharon? Where is Sharon, really? To the ground and back, pulsing each way. The skier, still in the water, emboldened for one last run. Towards the house. Throttle down, 6.2 liters doing exactly what it was made to do.

The shore passes quickly at a GPS controlled 34 miles per hour. The skier cuts when he can, with the darkness and the lightening and so much thunder so not very far away. The sky, the ski.

That sky on that day took on many, many forms. It was hazy and fun. It was dark and brooding. It was tumultuous and tantrumy. It was beautiful and scary, but above all, it was awfully big. You can miss that enormity when viewing a storm from a normal house window. You can see the storm coming, but you can’t see if coming for long, and you can’t see it linger to the south or the north, with its flickering electrical pulse stinging towns far, far away. At the lake, over the lake, you can take the time to savor a storm. It’s coming, it’s here, and it’s leaving. Either way, it’s best viewed from a lakeside lawn, or a white, sturdy pier. Or the driver’s seat of a very fast boat.