Crazy lenticularisSpookily rising above Montana’s Crazy Mountains are particularly spectacular lenti

Crazy lenticularisSpookily rising above Montana’s Crazy Mountains are particularly spectacular lenticular clouds. Lenticular clouds are stationary lens shaped clouds that typically twirl around or above high mountains. Looking at its signature lens shape, one can imagine that lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFO’s. The Crazy Mountains (also known as the Crazies) are an isolated island range in Montana, existing in total isolation of other ranges, in this case the Rocky Mountains. Thus these ranges typically appear as an ‘island’ above the surrounding lowland. No less than thirty of its rugged tops rise between 3000-3400m. Island ranges often contain wildlife not found elsewhere in the area; in the Crazies you find mountain goat and occasionally a wolverine. There are many different stories about how the mountain range got its peculiar name. Stories from the colonists claim that a woman lost her children and husband while travelling past the mountains in a wagon. Searching for them in the steep mountains she lost her mind. Therefore the mountains were first called, the Crazy Woman Mountains. Other variations of the story claim the Blackfeet killed her family after which she went into the mountains to seek revenge, also going crazy. Similar stories of medicine women getting lost in the mountains and losing their mind exist among the Crow (Apsaalooke) tribe.There are, however, also stories that blend the two perspectives. When the colonists and the Crow met they did not speak each other’s language and had to use sign language. When asked for the name of the impressive mountain range the natives pointed to the sky waving around their arms in an effort to explain that these mountains were a place to seek vision. Nevertheless the colonists falsely interpret this as them pointing to a place where one sought to lose oneself.When he was a little boy, famed Crow Chief Plenty Coups went on a vision quest in the Crazy Mountains. It is told that he cut off his finger and had a vision. In his vision he saw himself coming out of a crack at the town of Pryor, about 200km away. While moving through the underworld he saw thousands of buffalo that lived underground. This is why buffalo seem to have a connection to the below world and thus the vision quest. Plenty Coups interpret this vision as the end of the Plains Indian way-of live. To this day the Crazies remain a very important vision quest site to the Crow tribe.-BO-Image: Courtesy of James Woodcock. A large lenticularis cloud is seen above the Crazy Mountains of Montana.References:http://www.umt.edu/this-is-montana/columns/stories/the-crazies.phphttp://www.summitpost.org/crazy-mountains/192817 -- source link

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