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| The green cross shows where I shoot my astro and auroral photos. Still dark, thank goodness, although the Bakken oil field over in North Dakota is a real cluster-blight. Hopefully they'll begin to capture the burnoff from those wells — that's what most of that light is from. What an environmental disaster. I seriously worry that the enormous tax and safety and cost of living advantages of living in this region will suddenly penetrate the skulls of the rest of the population, and we'll get inundated by population growth. The town I grew up in, Milford, PA, went from a small, quiet town to an incredible mess in the space of a few years; when I go back now I want to cry. It's part of what drove me to live in Montana. Not all, by any means, but definitely a factor. Right now, we have almost no crime, pure dark skies, a wonderful, huge lake that is almost empty when you go out on it, prairie, a bit of forest, even have an airport and Amtrak running right through town. Just don't tell anyone about it, please. Also, you have to like flat landscapes. This part of Montana is flat, flat, flat. Oh, hey. It also gets to -50f. And we get hail. Hail that can be as big as your fist. Lots of wind. Summer heat can hit 115. Thunderstorms can rip your roof off, don't even need a tornado. But we do have tornados, thank you. It's 300 miles to the nearest city in Montana, and if you try to go east to get to civilization, you run straight into the oil boom, and you won't like that. "Healthcare" means they cart you out of your lonely apartment after you thaw out in the spring and someone begins to smell your thawing... never mind. Did I mention Bentonite? You can walk out into a wet field and be unable to get back, because your boots (you'd better be wearing boots) now weigh more than you do, and you can't get the stuff off. Not kidding. Doesn't affect the rattlesnakes, though, they just slide along on top of it. Cellphone coverage is... spotty, lol. And your Internet connection will cost you about three times what it does anywhere civilized in the US. You will want an Internet connection. Unless your idea of high entertainment is to discuss the moisture content of the soil with the farmers and ranchers at the local McDonald's, over the blare of Fox News in the background, while the rest of the locals peer at you through narrowed eyes. While hovering over a cup of just about the worst coffee ever served with an expectation of receiving payment. Ok, maybe I'm not that worried after all.
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