Life In Four Directions

The low angled sun
Rises each day, as if for the first time, over Lion Mountain,
Glancing the surface of black water.
Tamarack needles gather on one shore
Glint gold for just a moment,
Sometimes circling
As they rise, then fall
With each breath.
The lake transforms to mercury,
Thick and viscous,
Toughening in anticipation of
The difficult seasons to come.
I struggle to see
Through its hematite depths
As if there, I might find my future.

Instead, images dancing on the surface
Distract me.
Dried reeds echo the water’s rhythm.
Mergansers fish in a rippling, iridescent forest
Of white-barked birch,
Golden Larch,
Ponderosa jade.
Thirsty dogs enter,
Create rings that, circling outward,
Fracture branches
Until the ducks scramble and soar
Away---

The sun’s filtered light diffuses, soon hidden
As it continues its climb toward noon,
Yet my body holds
Its vague memory as
Something I once knew,
But now recognize only as
Glittering light
Dancing through frozen air.

The roiling hematite has stilled.
As I watched,
Each wave,
A gentle drumbeat,
Lapped over the one before,
Freezing while still in motion,
Until all was still.

I can now create a path,
Walk from shore to shore,
And I see what I could not see before.
This path is not mine alone,
Others have come before me,
Their presence recorded here.
And as I notice,
I begin to learn the world.

Tiny tracks of voles cross,
Circling, perhaps playing
As they make their long journey,
Often safely.
Sharp, thin hooves of deer
Break the surface,
Each step sinking deep into the snow.
Once in a great while,
A conquest is recorded
Around those deep tracks
Feathers of fur encased in ice,
A clean rib cage,
A jaw bone,
Wing beats of eagle and raven,
A few splashes of blood,
Tracks of coyote or wolf,
And I still feel the celebration
Of this hard-won moment.

The sun peeks below thick clouds
Just before it sets this day.
It is the perfect time for walking.
A drumbeat begins,
A steady drip, drip, drip.
Snow fleas hold their circus in our footprints
And balls of snow appear at the bottoms of each hill,
Perfect spirals
Marking a trail from top to bottom.


The ice, once solid, reliable, sturdy,
Passage to other shores,
Begins to thin, wither, threatens to buckle,
Forcing me to choose a different path.
My feet touch earth once again
The crunchy beat of each snowy step
Instead muted by soft soil.

A flash of gold
Just before green emerges and settles in to stay,
Marking places I will soon find
Glacier Lilies, Spring Beauties, Calypso Orchids.
The scent of pine, rich earth, pollen,
Fill my lungs with each breath.

I am aware of the silence
Only as it ends,
Replaced by nesting calls of grey jays, nuthatches, bald eagles.
Eggs laid in tree trunks, branches, fields,
Bask in body warmth.

Soon mountain grouse will drum
Their mating songs on hollow logs,
And robins will sing each evening
Their honor song to the setting sun

Until darkness descends.
The day’s heat dissipates.
A fire
At lake’s edge
Creates a glow,
Reaching the rock ring’s perimeter.

I stare into the flames
Leaping into the surrounding darkness.
My eyes follow a spark
As heated air carries it far above our heads.
It becomes a meteorite
Soaring rather than descending
Becoming one of millions of stars
Lighting a sky trail,
Pulsing a steady beat--
The rhythm of the earth,
The rhythm of our hearts
That carries me along to sleep.
I dream, there by the fire,
Throughout whatever time it takes
To become refreshed
And rise to greet a new day.

The Clouds of February

When the clouds of February descend almost to the valley floor, people ask us how we survive the winter. The answer is fairly simple. We walk. It’s not that Bob and I are so virtuous, so self-disciplined to get ourselves out there every day because it’s good for us, although it is good for us. You see, we have two dogs--two big Samoyeds--who are wonderful housemates as long as the profusion of energy has been walked out of them. And this habit has, for me, become my strategy for surviving not only the hardships of winter, but of life.

When I first moved to Montana, a test-drive for reconciling with Bob, he insisted that I buy a pair of Sorrels before the first winter hit. I took it as an act of love. He knew my circulatory system didn’t ever seem to pump quite enough blood to my hands and feet. He knew if I was cold, I was miserable. He knew frigid air sometimes descended on Big Sky, our ski-bum paradise, for weeks at a time. He wanted me to stay.

For those of you in warmer climes, let me explain. Sorrels are boots made for arctic living. They are made of thick rubber, have two inch treads, and thick woolen liners. I put on my first pair and laughed. My feet had just grown into monsters. They were the ugliest things I had ever seen. But oh, they were warm. I still have my first pair, although the rubber is cracking on the sides now, an indication of overuse. Yes, I stayed. And the Sorrels get part of the credit. And while I walk in a different pair of almost worn out not-for-style-only-for-warmth boots now, those first ugly, enormous Sorrels hold a place in my heart.

In those carefree, ski-bum days, our winter walking consisted mostly of picking our way through the woods between our tiny place at Hill Condos and our work at Huntley Lodge, on what was aptly named “The Treacherous Trail.” You see, Big Sky gets many, many feet of snow every winter, and as the snow piles up, the places people walk day after day get packed down into a hard path. All around this particular narrow trail through the woods is bottomless snow. The unlucky soul who steps off the trail instantly sinks to her armpits. Even Sorrels are of little use then. As you walked, watching each step, you would sometimes see huge holes in the snow at the side of the trail where someone had wallowed around, trying to extract themselves. So, you learned to balance.

When our days of living at a ski area ended and we no longer walked to work, we got a dog. Little did I know that this dog, and the subsequent dogs thereafter, would teach me the key to my salvation—in Montana or anywhere. They made me walk. Outside. Every day. In all weather.

I can’t name exactly what this does for my soul. Maybe it has something to do with the exercise. Maybe it’s the relative quiet of the outdoors. Maybe it’s fresh air. But especially since we’ve moved to the cabin and my feet make a direct connection with the soil and snow of the earth when I walk, I’ve come to realize that this—surrounding me—all of this--is the real world, and all the buildings and pavement and parking lots—are simply figments of human imagination. And fortunately for us, not all humans have imagined the world the way Europeans have—an image they then exported to all the lands they colonized, or I’m convinced there would be no soil left to stand on. All I need to do it visit the Blackfeet Reservation, just over the mount ains from the Flathead Valley where I live, and compare the beauty of the vast, open spaces wit h the subdivisions and box stores that now fill our valley, to see the possibility of different choices.

So, maybe this, then, is the salvation of my walks. My boots are on the soil, my soul absorbs the silence, my mind focuses on the living beings with whom I share this space. This is what’s real. It’s so easy, in this imaginary world where money rules, to forget—to disconnect from this, the earth, the only thing that sustains us.

Living another life, a world of commuters and graduate school in Wisconsin and longing for Montana, I heard a song that left me in tears each time I listened. Chuck Powell sang of looking at the world from a mountaintop he had climbed. “Out there my heart is speaking so loud and clear. Here it only whispers and it’s so hard to hear.” My dad taught me that tears are the signal that truth had touched your heart. The truth of that song has stayed with me. And what at the time I attributed to a longing for Montana, I now realize as something much larger. It’s not so much the place I longed for, but the lessons I learned here. Living in our small condo in Big Sky, we were outdoors as much as we could be. When there is little space inside, you go out. When we moved to larger houses, created our own artificial spaces, we spent more time in them—surrounded by so much false reality that we come to believe in it. We even purposefully piped the messages of this untruth into our homes and into our minds, as we watched T.V. and listened to the radio rather than to the sounds of the birds circling outside our encasement.

Now we once again live in a small house. It is purposefully not airtight; we open and close doors constantly as we walk to the outhouse and let our pets in and out. We have no cement walkway and no outside light to artificially illuminate the night. The external messages we consume are of our own choosing, rather than that of a T.V. producer or radio announcer. We no longer work to keep the real world outside our door; in fact, we welcome it in. And while that means we have dirt and insects, slight breezes and the occasional small animal entering our home, my perspective on all that has changed. Since the bald headed, white clothed Mr. Clean no longer has a standing invitation to enter my living room, I have come to see the folly of striving for a “bacteria free” environment—as if such a thing were possible. Even bacteria have a purpose in the world that is real; it is only in the world of our own creation that we try to convince ourselves it isn’t so.

Parker Palmer, an author and teacher I greatly admire, writes of the importance of striving to live a life of integrity—which occurs when our inner and outer lives merge. That is when our heart speaks. This new/old lifestyle Bob and I have chosen is a physical manifestation of this personal goal I strive for. This way of life feels familiar; as if we are reminding ourselves of something humans once knew—and in many places still know. The strange thing is, when we talk publicly about our choices, many people laugh and shake their heads, thinking we’re a little bit off. Perhaps they think of our lifestyle as a digression—as “civilization” marches onward, we are choosing to go backward.

As we continue to create the life path we walk, I realize that it really is a treacherous trail. Surrounded by a world that purports itself to be real, it takes concentration and constant reminders to stay balanced on a trail that grows narrower by the day. At times, I begin to believe that we really must be the crazy ones, as we find ourselves increasingly out of sync with the world around us. That’s when I know it’s time to look up, to watch the grey jays chase each other between tree branches or a dragonfly larvae make its way along a reed as it emerges from the lake-- touch my boots to the soil, and remember what’s real. And now I know this lesson is transferable. It doesn’t depend on a place; it’s a matter of the mind and of the heart. Funny thing is, to me this feels like progress.

Ode to Our Outhouse

Almost fifteen years ago, my husband Bob and I paved paradise to put up a house in a wooded area outside of Creston, Montana. We didn’t think about it that way at the time, of course. We thought we had found the place of our dreams—with gorgeous views of the mountains and ten acres of rolling glacial scree to call our own. The first time we walked the lot, tears streamed down my cheeks to have found a place of such perfection. It was silent but for the sounds of the birds. And while there were other houses in the neighborhood, we couldn’t see them from our hilltop hideaway. Small trees packed tightly together made up this third-growth forest. Our first task was cutting enough of those trees to make room for our house, shop and driveway—irrevocably altering paradise. Yes, the land had already been subdivided, roads and driveways put in. Yes, houses would inevitably be built around us, and if we hadn’t built on that site, someone else would. But this wasn’t someone else. This was us.

Looking back, I didn’t consciously come to realize I had any problem with the decision we made to build this house in this place almost up until the point we decided to move away from it. Something buzzed in my head from early on, though, and the buzz eventually grew to a roar I could no longer ignore. My increasing disturbance by the conspicuous consumption that surrounded me and my own participation in it all came to be symbolized by, of all things, my refrigerator. The source of the buzz. All the while the house was being built, as we sanded and cut trim boards, stained and varnished, as soon as the power tools were turned off, the silence returned. The sounds of paradise seeped in through the not yet tight windows and doors. As we neared completion and more purposefully tried to shut out the elements, those sounds diminished. By the time the appliances were in and functional, we might as well have been living in downtown Detroit. Not that there was suddenly the sound of traffic or anything, no, that was just the issue. We heard nothing of the outside. What we heard was the almost constant buzz of the refrigerator—the buzz that eventually drove me to realize what we had done. The paving of paradise was complete.

Bob and I lived happily in that house for eight years. Happily, that is, meaning we really liked the house, it’s location, and our neighbors. We had to work hard to make ends meet financially, though, at jobs we were increasingly unhappy with, and as the refrigerator continued to buzz, we came to see that by choosing this house we had chosen a lifestyle. We were homeowners, we had every material possession we could want; we were supposed to be happy. But we came to recognize symptoms of stress—in ourselves and in each other. We were both working at least fifty hour weeks. Bob had become a partner in his own company. I was teaching in a self contained classroom with ever-increasing numbers of wounded students, zapping every ounce of my emotional energy. Our work was taking its toll. The refrigerator’s buzz became more irritating than ever. Maybe this is what happens when you pave paradise.

We talked over our options constantly. We’ve always been dreamers, moving from one adventure to another with little hesitation. We play a game I call “alternative reality”—envisioning different lives for ourselves in places all over the country—and then all over the world. We by books about living in Costa Rica, read about expat Americans taking up new lives. We talk of the possibility of moving even farther away from “civilization,” at which my mother laughs. “How can you get further away than this?” she asks, not meaning to issue a challenge. We continually seek our next adventure.

Our current adventure came unexpectedly, on a Sunday afternoon. As part of this game, I had taken to regularly reading the Classifieds, just for fun. For a few years, I had seen an ad with a terrible photo of this funky looking cabin on a state land lease north of Whitefish. For years, Bob had dismissed it as being too much money for a questionable looking house on land you had to continually pay for. We looked at ads for land in other areas north of Whitefish, too, and one beautiful spring day we decided to take a drive up there. Since we were going right by the turnoff to Beaver Lake, where this funky cabin was located, we decided to finally go and take a look.

We pulled onto Beaver Lake Road, and drove the four increasingly bumpy dirt-road miles that led to the cabin sites. We turned down the first driveway—Lot 18—and saw a cabin that could not possibly be the one in the ad’s photo. Huge beautiful logs in a half-timber design, this cabin was anything but funky. This cabin was adorable. Most Americans would think of it as being too small for two people and two dogs, with its not quite 700 feet of floor space, but it seemed plenty big to us. And then we walked around to the back of the house and saw the lake. Beaver Lake--reflecting a deep, milky green that instantly brought to mind the glacial blue of Many Glacier’s Grinnell Lake. Now this, we thought, is paradise.

And so begins our next adventure—life on the shores of Beaver Lake. There are no buzzing refrigerators here, because there is no electricity. No running water. No plumbing. No snowplows clearing the three miles of road at the end of the county road. Let me back up just a minute: no plumbing. That means we have an outhouse. We’re one of the lucky ones; our outhouse is grandfathered in. Other cabin owners have to have porta-potties brought in, or composting toilets, or some other creative solution when there are no septic fields for miles around.

Bob, the initial skeptic, was sold from the moment he saw the place. I was not so sure. For every problem, he had a solution. For each of my doubts, he cited a benefit. I was fast approaching burnout in my almost twenty years as a full time teacher, and I knew it. If we moved to this cabin, our expenses would be reduced to the point that I could work part-time. Bob could pursue his latest passion—building artistic, beautiful wooden kayaks. We would shed the mantra currently espoused in this country—that bigger is better and a life spent working at a job that stresses you out is par for the course. Everyone does it, so what’s the big deal?

So we made the move, anticipating working hard, but consciously trading Bob’s job, which had become boring and unfulfilling, for a full-time job maintaining our lives here, hopefully with a little time to build kayaks . And for me, teaching part time would clear a space in my life for writing projects I hoped to pursue, a chance to slow down and take a breath, reflecting on the many paths before me.

As soon as we made the move, we knew it was right. In so many ways, our outward lives now reflect more closely the values we hold. I don’t know many people who feel that way. It is worth everything. We work harder than ever, but it is work that sustains us—work we have chosen. Will we stay here forever? I’m sure we won’t. Because alternate reality continues to be our favorite game, and there are many adventures left to be had. But our decision to move to Beaver Lake has been a turning point, one from which, in so many ways, there is no turning back. Once you have freed yourself, found your balance and a way to live deliberately, nothing else is ever quite the same.

My work has evolved in ways I never would have dreamed of when this latest adventure began, and Bob has become chief chef and bottle washer, and has moved on from kayak-building to a newly rekindled passion for photography. Life is good. And as the sound of the refrigerator dies away, this goodness has a new symbol—of all things, the outhouse. We moved in anticipating that one of our first “improvements” would be to put in a septic field and indoor plumbing. This time, though, we waited before pouring the concrete. And in the meantime, we’ve discovered that an outhouse isn’t so bad. In fact, I kind of like it. I spend at least a few moments each day walking the well-worn path from the cabin to the outhouse, noticing how much a person’s perspective can change. In fact, things I used to think of as “normal,” don’t always seem normal to me anymore. The thought of someone deliberately putting a toilet inside their house seems more than odd—it’s really kind of gross, when you think about it. And now I have time to think—about this and many other things. As old patterns break, I can see with new eyes. Our next adventure will look different because of what we’ve learned from this one. A person can live well with very little electricity. Water is our most valuable resource. Two people really don’t need much space to live. Material possessions—including home ownership—are never more valuable than our time. Paradise is really much better unpaved—above or below the ground. The outhouse stays.