A Mongolian yurt. I expect it's probably American; on a grassy slope just over the mountains from Jackson, Wyoming. There was nothing left to book in Jackson when Marion was looking online. Well it is 4th July tomorrow and J is a big tourist centre. All the buildings are wooden Wild West and very neat Some of them have plaques assuring us they are at least 50 years old. We missed the shootout staged by the Dramatic Society this evening. It's a beautiful town to which we will return tomorrow for their Independence parade ('tractors and fire engines' promised the lady in the Chamber of Commerce). There are pristine monuments to the past like this in China.
Anyway, we are in Idaho, just over the pass. We drove across a corner of Wyoming today, crossing the continental divide, where in theory raindrops which fall on opposite sides of the line will flow either to the Pacific or the Atlantic. For many miles, the only human interventions were fences corralling deer, cylindrical tanks capturing natural gas and the sinuous road which traversed wide open spaces studded with brush and stripy mesas. When you drive 500 miles in one day, the scenery changes many times; each filmic vision blurring into the next. The human habitation is spread very thinly and it is easy to understand why there may be a less urgent attitude to our denuding of the earths resources. It really seems like there is so much to go around.
The American landscape is very amenable to a soundtrack. Orchestral music mirrors the sweeps and stunning surprises; and of course the homespun life-lessons of Wyoming Country Gold ('you're easy on the eye but hard on the heart').
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