Landscapes

Notes from the Artist:

The Lower Valley of the Flathead in Montana lies north of the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The land is patterned with tri-color fields: green from crops of hay, gold of grain, and rich brown of bare earth.

Alongside one of the wheat fields sits an old International truck. Once it hauled loads of straw and hay, baled into a size that could be bucked by hand.These days automation comes even to rural life and mammoth round bales are handled by lifts on a tractor.

Now harvest is over and the late summer mountains are dimmed by the smoke of a distant forest fire. A sliver of the great Flathead Lake is visible beyond the stubble field, and the truck has forever stopped, rusting away by the road.

   hand colored etching by Barbara Coppock                    Return to map