If the Earth has Bones, it was the Black Marrow

17 March, 2026

I received a phone call in January of last year that seemed ordinary. The same phone call also came in February this year. Both went something like this. "How would you feel about a Regional Manager role taking on responsibility for the Billings branch?” Never one to pass up a chance to over-program myself or accept a promotion, I affirmed my willingness.

   The call last year was followed a short time later by a second call from that same manager, noticeably less comfortable, saying they also offered the position to another manager that they didn’t think would accept which was why they spoke with me, but he accepted. Sorry, maybe next time.

   Some might have taken umbrage at this, but {{Manager}} was closer to Montana and more involved with the oil and gas customers, so it wasn't a big deal. I had my hands full in Salt Lake and didn’t really need another source of stress. Fast forward one year, he is gone, and I received the same phone call.

   The next week was our national sales conference where I would have a chance to meet with {{Salesrep}}, a seasoned guy who would need more support and coaching than close management. My plan was to discuss my first trip to Billings in a few weeks. Anytime thirty salespeople get together, it’s chaos, so we barely had a chance to even chat.

   It's now over a month later and as I reflect on the past four weeks as my flight descends into Billings, I cannot help but see a pattern that seemed like just a busy first quarter in the world of industrial sales, but could be something else.

   In the two days after I drove back from Denver, my schedule for the next four weeks went from clear to completely filled up with obligations that kept me in Utah. We looked at the calendar, and the week of March 16 was the next free week, so I sent out my calendar invites. Why does this matter? Part of me feels like these mundane details are a waste of the Noodlers EL Lawrence ink and the paper I’m writing on.

   Why it matters, and why I write it, is that the next day {{Ops Coordinator}} apologized that she forgot to put her vacation on the calendar, and it was for that week. Was it still ok? Yes, fine. Then I found out {{Supervisor}} would be gone that week, chaperoning a high school band trip. After that came a phone call from {{VP Sales Ops}} asking if it was a good idea to go that week. I didn’t want to delay any longer, so I made it work.

   I'll skip the next few weeks except to mention that I had to fire {{Bad salesrep}}. The fallout from all of it means I need to cover all his accounts while still doing everything else and finding his replacement. A year ago, this would have stressed me out, but now it doesn’t feel like a big deal.

   I arrived at the gate this morning only to discover the flight was delayed. The explanation they gave was that scheduling double-booked the flight attendant while she was in the air on another flight, which they said was odd and never happens, and the replacement they called in was not answering her phone. They finally found someone to work, so I will land just in time to make our first lunch appointment.

   All this activity sounds normal to me now, but I can't ignore the feeling that ever since that second phone call, a surprising amount of friction has crossed my path on the way to Montana.

8:45PM

   Our lunch meeting today was with {{Construction}} from {{Oil Production Company}}. He is over all operations and the planning and execution of their drilling schedule. What we did for them last year was a huge success, so they plan on drilling much larger pads this year with many more wells. These big pads look like a fungal spiders sending tendrils deep underground then branching out in all directions for miles.

Although I’ve dealt with plenty of people in the oil and gas industry, and in spite of the twelve years I’ve spent in this job, this was the first time I’d been part of a conversation with an executive. My takeaway from that lunch was that rarely do companies spend their own money when launching large projects. I was mostly reading between the lines and didn’t get more detail.

After spending so much time in Utah, it was refreshing to see a different landscape. Visitors to Utah marvel at the closeness of the Wasatch mountains, and fawn over the spectacular red rock landscape of central/southern Utah. Although they are right to do so, what is left out are the hours in between of nothing but low hills and scrub oak.

I didn’t consider this until now, but traveling for sales is different from vacation. On vacation, you are usually with your family, destined for a location that provides an escape from your normal routine. The memories taken away from these places are the anchors we associate with them. Jumping from highlight to highlight, as typically happens on vacation, it is easy to overlook the dull in-between bits. But when your destination is a power plant or mine hours away from civilization on a road you’ve been on a hundred times, the highlights become the unusual things that happen to you along the way.

That was a long-winded way of saying the character of the landscape reminded me of the starkness of the desert, but instead of life struggling to exist, on the winter plains, life was simply dormant. I look forward to future trips this summer when everything will be green and alive. My previous trips here have always been in the dead of winter with -28F temperatures and white drifts of snow. 

Our next call was at {{specific coal mine}}. I’m not familiar enough with local geography and history to know if this area was among where the Bison roamed, but as the miles passed behind us on our way to the site, instead of the solitary animal roaming around Antelope Island I’m used to, I imagined the ground shaking from the hooves of thousands of giant beasts roaming free.

Our call at the mine was a bust, but what stood out were the building-sized piles of coal lining the road everywhere. If the earth has bones, it was the black marrow from inside them we passed.

The evening was free, so I had a delicious calzone at Old Chicago. The bartender offered a selection of beers, and not being a connoisseur, the last one he mentioned was a red, which I chose. It was quite good, and apparently it came from a local brewery that had a swag table across the restaurant. I was sent over to spin their wheel, where I won a cheap pair of sunglasses that will stay in my suitcase and likely be used on trips here. Next was the ritual for any new place; find a bookstore. By this time, all the small independent locations were closed, so I reverted to, Barnes & Noble. It was one of the old ones built in the late 1990s and early 2000s, like the old Murray location I worked at back in the late 90s, and the 4th South location in Salt Lake before they moved it to the Gateway, now closed. RIP.

{{daughter}} latched onto an early reader graphic novel series by Dora Wang about some animal called Pocket Peaches, so I picked up the first one we didn’t have yet. I didn’t really even look at anything for myself, since my backlog of physical books is already deep enough. Overall, it was a great day. The only thing that would have made it better would have been having my family with me.

19 March, 2026

We had meetings at several refineries, which brought back memories of 2015 when I did the steam survey at {{SLC REFINERY}}. Specifically, the smell. Not unpleasant exactly but not refreshing. A metallic chemical aura embedded inside a hint of sulphur.

The highlight of the trip was the second night exploring the trails and red rock bluffs of Zimmerman Park. The sunset was inspiring and brilliant. I’ll definitely be going back with my tripod on future trips when I’ll have more daylight to find interesting spots.

My least favorite part of the trip was my return flight being delayed by almost five hours. If I’d looked at my phone earlier, I might have seen the notifications and been able to run around town, but I was already through security before I saw it. I considered leaving the airport, renting another car and just driving home, but that would have been stupid and wasteful. So instead, I ordered a Bison burger, fries, and read from Remains of the Day. My original plan was to hang out in the cafe area for most of the time and get endless refills of soda, but after I finished my food, the place felt claustrophobic, so I went and sat in front of the giant wall of picture windows that look out on the open plain.

I talked with {{WIFE}} for a while, then {{DAUGHTER}} wanted to play Minecraft, which we did for maybe an hour until the neighborhood girl squad came over and they went to play. The sun went down and they called back after a while for bedtime routine, which consists of me watching tooth brushing and then listening to readings from the DK Animal book we got for Christmas. They turned off the light just as my flight was called for boarding. I looked at the clock, and it was 10:40 PM. I’d been in the airport for six hours.