Looking out my backdoor: The future is dark, which is the best …

True Montanans fully understand Virginia Woolf’s expression that “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.”

We are trained from early times to know that sunny days won’t last, that rains likely fall when the hay is down in windrows, that ants infest every picnic. Not necessarily gloomy, but realistic. We are taught thusly.

Here’s a different slant, OK. What I have come to believe, and Woolf’s quote fits perfectly, is that if we could see through the dark into the future, we’d instantly pick out the storms, the soggy hay and the ants. We’d miss all the good stuff,...