Springtime in Billings, the pink and white apple blossom is out in spectacular fashion. Today I spent the morning talking about writing song lyrics and it was great fun - especially telling them about the song that took forty years to finish, oh and about the student who gave me the line, 'nobody wants to cry...' (long story). But back to the 'divided by a common language' theme, it was a class just like any other I have taken with undergraduates, the students all sit as far away from you as they can, keeping a secure distance and avoiding eye contact, but slowly warm up and take part, which is always great - and they even got my accent. Later in the early evening I was off to a lecture on an incredible 3,700-mile expedition of the Corps of Discovery led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, which generated a gold mine of information about the West and the all important 'water route' to its coast, circa 1806. There is also the great map of the West that Lewis and Clark produced, which was a charge from the then President, Thomas Jefferson in 1804. The journey is still being felt two centuries later, particularly in the Yellowstone Valley (near to here) where Clark chronicled the exploration along the Yellowstone River. And then as I walked with renewed pioneer spirit, back to my room, in the alumni lodge (which I swear has a bed made for a giant - honestly, when I sit on it my feet don't touch the floor and it could sleep four of me) but back to the story, as I walked back to the lodge, I was accosted by a handful of wild turkeys - nope not the alcoholic booze, but five or six of them all gobbling away. And then a deer nonchalantly strolled by without giving me a second glance. Beautiful it was, a reddy brown with eyes the colour of an eclipsed moon and enough antlers to say, 'I'm not scared o' no turkeys boy...' Well neither am I, I am in an American frame of mind - I love this song and the performance, Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me...
