{"id":1897,"date":"2009-08-02T18:22:17","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T01:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2023-01-15T06:35:08","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T14:35:08","slug":"fort-belknap-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/02\/fort-belknap-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Belknap, Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2479\/3782687787_856e0ffa7b.jpg\" alt=\"Harlem_Church\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\"\/><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>It&#8217;s not completely abandoned. Even though the arched windows and doors of the church are covered with plywood, there&#8217;s a hand written cardboard sign nailed to the fence. &#8220;Please keep the cemetery neat. Garbage pickup is on [too blurry from water damage to read].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The air is cold and the sky is blue. There wind is coming from everywhere and it carries a bite. I go back to the car to get my jacket. The gate is slapping against a post and creaking at the same time &#8212; I want to laugh because it all looks so much like a scene from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, only it isn&#8217;t funny. It&#8217;s sad. The boarded up church, the dilapidated scaffolding for the bell out back, the wind, the slap of the gate. It&#8217;s all sad.<\/p>\n<p>The graves are marked with wooden crosses, there are only a few carved granite stones. There&#8217;s a monumental marker in the middle of the graveyard &#8212; Saint Francis, it tells me, but not a whole lot more. The names on the markers are Indian names, the First Raised family, the Yellow Robe family, and there are some other family names too, Romero, Azure. The plots are surrounded with rails made from painted two by fours, with gathered stones, the earth is piled gray and dry in mounds. Plastic flowers tumble around in the wind, fading pastel colors held in place by heavy dust. Behind one incomplete marker sits a pink stroller. A mark of recognition? The death of a baby girl? Or just forgotten?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of noise, the squeaking of the gate, the wind, and a clack clack clack &#8212; I finally locate the source, it&#8217;s a plastic angel with sparkly wings on hinges, the wind flaps the angel&#8217;s wings, clack clack clack. Cars rush by on the highway below. I think about winter, what must it be like to die in winter here?<\/p>\n<p>There is no one around to ask about the church. The farmstead across the highway is for sale, there is no village in sight. I stand at the side of the church, at my feet lies a wreath of blue satin roses, coated in dust. I want to put them back where they belong, but it is impossible to know where that would be. The crosses are faded, the names hard to read. When I turn to go back to the car, I see more fabric flowers scattered across the rise, blown off the grave sites by the wind. They are everywhere, stuck in the barbed wire fence, pressed up against the scrappy sage, bleaching their artificial petals in the sharp Montana light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not completely abandoned. Even though the arched windows and doors of the church are covered with plywood, there&#8217;s a hand written cardboard sign nailed to the fence. &#8220;Please keep the cemetery neat. Garbage pickup is on [too blurry from water damage to read].&#8221; The air is cold and the sky is blue. There wind &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Fort Belknap, Montana\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/02\/fort-belknap-montana\/#more-1897\" aria-label=\"Read more about Fort Belknap, Montana\"><br \/>&#8230;read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,790],"tags":[556,555,557,549,550],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elsewhere","category-790","tag-church","tag-fort-belknap","tag-graveyard","tag-montana","tag-tbexrt","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13604,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/13604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}