Mountain Musings

“I believe that a man gets closer to God out there in the big, free West,”  ~  William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody.

There’s something both invigorating and spiritual in sitting on a porch in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, listening to the gurgle of a creek not 10 yards away. Aside from that creek the only sounds are the wind and the occasional screech of a circling hawk.  I’m alternately reading and glancing up from my book at the red cliffs that overlook the cabin.  Bighorn sheep clamor on those cliffs.  Downstream the green, yellow and orange leaves on young aspens shiver in the cooling autumn wind.  They shine and shimmer like colored coins. 

Wow I guess I didn’t fully appreciate the quiet until I got back home to the San Francisco Bay Area and went to my gym a week later.  The noise was like getting whacked in the face with a baseball bat; clanging steel, grunting and shouting and of course the dreck and cacophony that the tone deaf call music.  Walking in I hunched over from the sheer weight of the din.

             Ante Up! Yap that fool!

Ante Up! Kidnap that fool!

It's the perfect timing, you see the man shining

Get up off them god damn diamonds! Huh!

Ante Up! Yap that fool!

Ante Up! Kidnap that fool!

In the locker room I got ready for my work out and said to myself in disgust that “I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics.”  Maybe a little too loud as the guy a few lockers down shot me a look.

High mountain valley

Gridlock

                                                            

The creek is a spawning stream for Montana’s cutthroat trout and there’s a temptation to get out my fishing gear and work the creek.  Well, I don’t even know that it’s legal so I suppose that I’ll simply err on the side of not poaching.  Besides I’ve already fished the Yellowstone, down the mountain and up the main highway.  No luck; but at a magnificent spot on a bend in the Yellowstone you don’t have to catch fish to be rewarded.  I’m going to miss this.  Bears, coyotes, deer and mountain lions inhabit the area. We’ve been told that on a lucky evening you can hear wolves howl.  Every night late in the evening I get up and step out onto the front porch, leaving all the lights off and I look and listen.  Autumn chill has set in and the air is sharp pricking the skin still warm from the cozy indoors. The moon above is so big and bright that it seems to be dangling inches from my nose.   The sky teems with all of the stars that in suburbia we only see in books or our imagination.

Standing on the banks of the Yellowstone, it becomes clear why they call Montana, The Big Sky Country.  Deep sapphire skies spattered with pillows of clouds look down on the Paradise Valley a table of green and autumn gold grasses cradled by the Gallatin Mountain Range to the West and the Absaroka Range to the East.  The Yellowstone follows the length of the Paradise Valley, alternating between calm green pools and shimmering rapids. 

A few days after I got back I took the dog for a pre-dawn walk, passing through Fernandez Park in nearby Pinole. On an early morning it can be a pleasant walk along Pinole Creek down to the beach of San Pablo Bay.  Of course you have to negotiate the dog poop that people can't be bothered to pick up and you sort of have to tune out the sirens.  On this particular morning I exchanged pleasantries with a couple of friendly guys in one of the picnic areas setting up early for a barbecue party.  The next morning the dog and I walked through the same section of the park.  Trash was strewn from the picnic area, across the path and down the slope into the creek.  Some meat had been left on the grill and most of a huge birthday cake sat smashed on one of the tables.  Balloons were caught in tree branches and gift wrap blew about in the breeze.  I guess those old boys weren’t so nice after all. Back in suburbia. 

We had breakfast in Gardiner this morning.  It’s a small community on highway 89 literally a stone’s throw from Yellowstone Park’s Northwest gate.  The highway enters straight into the downtown which is about two blocks of shops, some kitschy tourist shops, a few outfitters and a café or two.  The shops are on one side of the road only, giving them an open view of Yellowstone.  The highway fishhooks around the downtown and then continues north, deeper into Montana past some motels, more outfitters and a few restaurants.  It’s October and summer is done and gone along with most of the tourists.  The holdouts are those like the wife and I; older with no kids in school and the relative freedom to travel when we wish. The town is literally closing up shop for the season.  All of the outfitters are closed save one that is selling outdoor gear and clothing at 50% off.  The little burger shack that offers bison burgers is shuttered.  The front door of the ice cream/candy store bears the sign; See you next year.  The paunchy middle aged men who window shopped the stores wearing Bermudas and flip flops are all gone.  They’ve been replaced by the local men who stand about in little knots outside the taverns wearing the local uniforms of camo jackets or plaid outdoorsman’s coats.  No flip flops for those ol’ boys.  The wife and I shop for our groceries at The Gardiner Market, a little institution that’s been there since 1904.  It’s a neighborly, welcoming place. Folks know each other, stop to catch up or simply exchange greetings and go about their business.  There is no hurry, no impatience, no bellowing “THREE’S A CROWD.”  The market's employees engage with customers instead of leaning against a counter scrolling on the cell phone (hey someone's gotta hold up that counter).  It seems natural for me to throttle down and not worry about getting to where I think I really have to be but don't.  Since we’ve left California the stomach ache that’s paid me regular visits has disappeared. 

Gardiner Montana

I was shopping at the local Toys R Us in Pinole and noticed a young woman just leaving the store.  She may very well have been asked to leave the store because her black t-shirt was emblazoned with FUCK  FUCK  FUCK.  How appropriate in a toy store.

Just about to step into the checkout line at the local supermarket with my two items when a woman shoves her full cart in front of me because.  I don’t know because.  Because she was in such a hurry that she couldn’t wait for my two items?  Because I was invisible?  Because she was rude?  I don’t say anything.  What’s the point anymore?  There are some things that are just incurable.

The wife and are strolling down Shattuck in Berkeley headed for her birthday dinner when a young black woman, hands on hips, stairs me in the eye and says in a confrontational tone, “Let’s talk about white people.”  I felt my jaw set and some verbal bile develop in my gut but I just resisted the urge and rolled my eyes, and walking past her responded, “How about let’s not.” 

I miss being in places where the senses and sensibilities aren’t under assault; where people know you but don’t intrude on you.  I miss the manners that bloom and thrive and I miss being in a place where there isn’t a constant rush to be somewhere or do the next thing.  And I miss being able to go about my business without being accosted, panhandled or jostled.    

Being connected has been something of a bone of contention between the wife and I.  On the first night in our little cabin she tried to connect to the puny little wi fi signal.  She walked around the kitchen and living room trying to get a bar or two.  In the meantime I’d turned my phone off and tossed it on the kitchen table, “Won’t be needing that.”  We don’t understand each other on this point.  I looked forward to abandoning the grid (Hell I could leave the grid forever) while she seemed a bit lost.  She’s a news hound and wants news and if she can’t have that in a place like this then she wants something to tell her that civilization is still going strong – or going at least.  So as she was preparing dinner she plugged in a small radio that she’d stashed away just for this occasion.  She got a fuzzy station that soon disappeared into nothing and then she scanned the band for another fuzzy station that soon disappeared.  We had a few words until I got disgusted and retreated to the bedroom to read.  She tried again the next night and a short argument retired the radio for good.  She’s done well since.  She found a book on the history of Montana and has been reading it during down times and then regaling me with the history that she’s learned while I’m driving.  It’s pretty cool.  I hope it sticks.

I brought my work laptop with me on the trip.  Not necessarily because I was going to work but because we left directly from my office.  There’s a reason why us non-hourly workers all have laptops.  We’re expected to work at home “when necessary” or work when we phone in sick because the investors might lose a fucking dime (those yacht payment aren't cheap) if you malinger at home with the flu.  It isn’t a unique situation.  When my daughter visits she often plugs in her computer and works.  That’s how work works in America.  Why should the job creators create jobs and all that troublesome expense when they can wring the very blood out of an undermanned staff.  The laptop was bothersome on the trip.  I had to schlep it here and there around the car to get it out of the way.  A dumpster often seemed like a good option.  I think I"d rather clean stables, toss bales of hay and patch fences - honest work. 

I know people who are lost when not connected.  They can’t keep their hands off their phones and go into a small panic when a phone is lost or broken.  I've had a running debate with a friend who says his cell phone is liberating while I call it a leash.  Slaves to the technology we created.   

We’re driving North out of Gardiner through the Paradise Valley and I’m having trouble with the traffic.  It’s going too damn fast.  Cars with Wyoming and Montana plates are whizzing by me and I realize that the posted limit is 80. There are no jams here unless a herd of bison or elk decide to meander across the road.

It’s Saturday and we’re planning on going to San Francisco.  My rule is if we’re not out of the house by 10 we ain’t goin.  You see if you want to go anywhere in the Bay Area and you leave after noon, yes even on Sunday, you might as well factor in the wasted hours sitting in traffic.  A friend of mine lives in Vacaville, east of me.  Traffic is so bad out there that she doesn’t even bother leaving the house on weekends.  Stays home and avoids the frustration.
 

The concrete jungle 

I’ve run into a few people who opted out of city life.  One young blonde girl who works the night shift at the Cody Best Western we stayed at is a Seattle expatriate.  Another fellow who works at a gallery in Jackson also left Seattle.  The proprietor of a Native American gift shop in Cody escaped Dallas.  The proprietor of jewelry store a few doors up had migrated from Connecticut.  A woman at a gas station in Yellowstone saw my California plates.

“Where in California are you from?” she asked. 

“Bay Area.”

“I used to live in San Rafael.  I live in Powell (Wyoming) now.”

They all had the same story to tell.  They were tired of the congestion; tired of having to live life at a million miles an hour without pause; tired of traffic; tired of the violence; just plain sick and tired.  They were all happier in their new lives.

"You won't be happy there," I've been told. "Those are red states.  Dick Cheney lives in Wyoming."  I don't care a fig about red and blue states.  Sure I'm a liberal but unlike most of the liberals I know I've outgrown the condescending notion that we hold the patent on right and reason. I'm often as much turned off by liberal pomposity as conservative rhetoric.  I get along quite well with the conservatives that I know.  We just know enough to stay out of each other's face.  And I don't give a shit where Dick Cheney lives.  I doubt that I'd ever run into him.  Hell when it comes to encountering dicks there are plenty right here in the Bay Area that I come in contact with all the time. 

My daughter often says wistfully that she was born in the wrong era; that she should have been a child of the sixties.  Actually my dear daughter the sixties weren't all that but I know where you're coming from.  I’ve often responded that I was born in the wrong century.  A co-worker of mine often says to me with a wry grin that I must have been a cowboy in my past life. "You probably drove the buck board into town, went to the feed store and had some whiskey in the saloon."  I wonder, did I have a two gun rig or just a single?  Maybe I was just a "sod buster."

At the Museum of the West in Cody we sit and watch a brief film that displays the grandeur of the mountains and plains.  A few minutes in and a sadness begins to creep in and finally I have to walk away.  The sadness is overwhelming.  It’s at this point that I’m certain down to my core that the mountains and plains are where I really belong.  Certainly something went terribly wrong that I should spend my life and likely end up dying in the prison of metropolitan America.  I recalled the times that I’ve hiked, fished and camped in pine forests and felt at home. The wife comes out from the little theatre and I compose myself.  Not the time to bring this up.

I’ve tried six ways from Sunday to get the wife to move out to the country and she won’t have it.  I could up and leave and there have been numerous times when I’ve threatened. We’ve fought over it, slammed doors over it and angrily slept in separate rooms over it.  In the end I won’t leave.  I love my wife and my family.  But for them I wouldn’t even take the time to pack; hey neighbors take what you want and leave some for others, I’m outta here.  I can’t for the life of me understand what people see in this life.  It’s harried, rushed, stressed, overcrowded, rude, smelly, noisy, devoid of decency and self respect and downright violent.  At this writing I learn on the news that metropolitan America is a place where a 9 year old boy is targeted and killed by a gang and the boy’s father, a banger himself,  flat out refuses to cooperate with police.  Here is your civilization for you America.  A place that simply sucks out whatever peace and tranquility that might have been left in your soul and offers nothing worthwhile in return.  I stay for my family and nothing else and all the while I feel the yearning for the mountains.  It's a pull that will never cease.