Leaky Buckets

  Margaritaville Encore 12/29/22           We are standing in the “green room” of the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish, Montana. Through the wall, the house music is thumping like a heartbeat and you can hear the crowd getting louder and louder as people funnel into the old ski bum bar. They aren’t here to see us play, they are here to see our friends, the headliners play after us. But that doesn’t change what we are about to do. We are about to put on the best hour-long show of our lives. This is the biggest stage we have ever stood on as a young band. Whether the stages get bigger or smaller from now on is meaningless. For tonight, we have decided to make this our best show ever, for our family and friends who drove five hours to see us play, for the couple hundred paying strangers who are here to dance and drink, for our own love of music that we put so much time and effort into, for the fact that there is a stage with our name on it for the next hour.  The green room is a closet r

  The outlook is gray for Pinochle today I sit across the table from my future father-in-law attempting to read his mind. He squints back at me, trying to ascertain my intentions. To my left, my fiance squares off with her mother on my right. A couple people clear their throats, hem and haw, look around the table and back at their hands. It is the moment of truth; I raise my hands and make a bet. Audible sighs from around the table, some of agreement, others of dismay. The pinochle table cements the newbie’s place in the family.  It is Black Friday, we are gathered at the kitchen table as the Red Lodge sun squeaks between the curtains, cutting a sharp line across the playing surface. The FIFA World Cup squawks from the television in the next room. I have positioned myself so that I cannot see the TV because I have to focus. This is a family tradition and I feel pressure to acquit myself well.  The stories fly back and forth across the room from various family members as Thanksgiving le

  “Years are just moments in a great big pile” I tugged that lyric out of a Zach Bryan song on this sentimental snowy morning. Wood stove fires do that to me; watching the sky brighten from gunmetal to blonde and back to silver, listening to a random mix of morning songs, a toasted English muffin with peanut butter molten on top, a quart of orange juice and the dogs claiming as much of the couch as their furry bodies can cover, paws outstretched towards the crack of the caboose stove. Sentimental indeed.  Not all things are good. The Check engine light is on in the car. Snow on the roads means an extra hour of driving. Power company wants to replace a couple poles and I am worried they are going to tear up the not yet frozen ground of my driveway with their trucks. My wrist is bothering me again, lumps of scar tissue don’t want to stretch. The tile project at work was not my best work; I was impatient and the walls were out of square.  But most things are good. Warm house, a truck that

  A monument, national flags, Anytime Fitness and Rancho Grande Mexican food... perfect We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. So says the preamble of the Constitution. I read it on the back window of a passing pickup truck. Well actually, the sticker that stretched across the entire back window only said “We the People” in large curvy font, followed by a lot of tiny scribbles meant to imitate the remainder of the Constitution. As it passed, I had to think for a second what document it was that they were referencing. I won’t claim to have the Bill of Rights or the extensive remainder of the Constitution memorized but I understand the gist. I have since re-read them numerous times, and researched the me

  Making Vegan Food... It was early summer of 2021 and I felt like a garbage pile. I felt bleh. I assume that most people know that feeling. Every day felt the same. I had a feeling of wanting to do something exciting but not having that much motivation. I needed to shake things up. When I feel this way, I get very angsty. I act like a grump until I come up with some wild idea to chase.  In a fit of anger, a self-delusion of self-betterment, I decided to try something radical. I turned to Sam, riding in the passenger seat of the truck and blurted, “I want to go Vegan.” Yeah, I know, huh? To my surprise, she agreed without hesitation. To me, veganism was a personal challenge. I was not doing it for any social justice or crusade. I was not doing it because I believed the animal products were bad for the planet or unhealthy. I just wanted to see if I could do it; if I could control my appetite and achieve a personal goal. We set a length of six months for our experiment. Short enough to b

  Cue Alan Jackson's Livin' On Love as we build our house... I’ll admit I found the gospel of Alan later in life. My first forays into country music canon were slightly more alternative. The outside lanes; the Western and Texas scenes of country music. Corb Lund. Turnpike Troubadours. What got played on the mainstream radio always seemed too much like pop, even in the so-called glory days of country music. It was impossible not to know who the greats of country radio were, and their songs rotated through my iPod playlists. George, Garth, Reba, etc. But it was not until my late twenties that I found my patron saint of country music. His name was Alan Jackson.  One snowy day at work, I was hanging drywall and pondering my feelings for the lady who is now my fiance. Livin’ on Love came on the radio. Hearing Alan’s words about the endurance of a life-long love grabbed onto me. While I knew the song wasn’t about me and my love, it felt like it could be. The song spoke to me in the m

  Just another family of moose trying to beat the cold snap I live for this weather. I take some sort of sick pride in my thermometer reading -30 when I wake up. Neighbors posted photos of -40. Farmers in central Montana shared pics of -71 with wind chill. One of the best parts of the internet is commiserating about the frigid weather. Everyone is saying the same thing below their picture of a thermometer; maybe this will drive out the so-called invaders from California and elsewhere. It might kill a few pine beetles too.  Alas, I found two pine beetles crawling across my living room this morning. Like anything smart, they found a warm place indoors. It occurred to me that anyone moving here from California can afford to heat their houses. Their houses are also big enough that they won’t go insane sitting inside for a couple days. That’s why the Californians invented the internet, so that they wouldn’t get bored indoors. They literally invented Facebook where all these tough Montanans

  Cookie, Paddy and Paul and me, Ireland 2019 As we tottered out the front door of Hegarty’s Pub and Hotel well after midnight to slurp down some fresh Irish air, Sam was like an anchor on my shoulder. For the past eight hours, she had downed round after round, sacrificing her health for mine, surreptitiously swapping her empty glass for my full one so that I could keep singing country music classics to our new Irish relatives. We were both completely pickled and managed only one lap of the park before stumbling into our room above the pub.  Both of us fell asleep instantly, proud that we had lived up to the title of being from Butte, America, even though we weren’t.  We had pulled into the village of Carrick, in County Donegal, Ireland, in the late afternoon. Like everywhere else we went in Ireland that week, it was a comfortably sixty five degrees and breezy. I have never encountered such consistently pleasant weather anywhere else in the world. Sam firmly decided that it was time to

  Heli-golfing New Zealand with new friends           It was spring of 2016 in the USA, autumn on the South Island of New Zealand and I was taking a break from hitchhiking. I had been recruited by a wealthy family to help with their elaborate gardens in return for lodging and food. When I say recruited, I mean “accidentally employed,” but that is a story for a different time. For the past month, I had been spending a few hours every day revitalizing the fifteen foot wooden boat for the neighbors of my hosts. After a morning of songwriting and gardening, I would ride my bike down the hill to the shore of Lake Hayes, where I would grind, sand, caulk and repaint the inside and outside of this antique boat in return for grocery money. When I needed sanding discs, I would climb in their jet black Maserati, and cruise down to the New Zealand version of Home Depot. Clad in a respirator and safety glasses, life was good. One day, I arrived like I always did in the early afternoon to find the

  Actual Hawaiian Waves, Maui, 2015 I have an elaborate bedtime routine in the winter months. When darkness lingers for extra hours at both ends of the day, I need a routine to tell my body when to wake and when to sleep. There is no set time for the routine to begin, it all depends on when my creative brain is tired. Some nights it is barely 6:30 and I find my eyes drooping. Other nights, 1am will slide onto the clock dial as I look up from my typing in astonishment.  I stand up carefully, making my way towards the bathroom trying to step on the less creaky spots on the floor. Toothbrush in my mouth, I return to the kitchen, tidying for morning, putting away any leftovers from dinner that remain on the stove. I tiptoe across the living room carpet and grab a few chunks of firewood for the stove then throttle down the damper, taking a moment to bask in the warmth of the cast iron. I slip on muck boots and let the old dog out, careful to not let him wander too far. Too much time in the

  Cooking kangaroo meatballs on Thanksgiving 2015, Melbourne, Australia I am on a quest this morning. Sitting here at my kitchen table, firmly planted in my chair with a box of peanut butter pretzels and a cup of tea, I am going on an adventure through time to find a lost piece of writing. I woke up this morning with a wriggling thought in my head about an idea that I had back in 2015 while camping in Tasmania. My sleepy brain thought that it would be a great idea to write today’s column about this really cool idea, except my awake brain demands more accurate information. What I meant to be a thirty second trip down memory lane has become a full fledged archaeological expedition into my distant past.   Cue the hurtling credits of Indiana Jones as I plug my external hard drive into my computer. I have opened a portal to the past and there is no telling when I may return to the present. This hard drive is my Holy Grail of memories; telling the tales of all my great adventures; hitchhikin

XC Ski Mission w/ dogs   I set off on a cross country ski mission to clear my mind, but I forgot my ski boots. So now I am walking on the side of the groomed trail. I’ve got my late 90’s pop punk blasting from my jacket pocket and a belly full of candy from the Yule Night parade last night. I found the perfect spot in the parade at the first turn where every float would throw candy. But the majority of the spectators were waiting a block down, including all the children that would be my competition for gathering candy. Seeing all the candy thrown and laying on the street like litter, I reckoned it was a public service to clean up Main Street in my designated area and no one complained. When I put on my jacket to go skiing, both pockets brimmed with candy and I have very little self control. So here I am, My Chemical Romance screaming in one pocket and a pile of Hershey kiss wrappers in the other, plodding my way through lodgepole forest under a leaden sky. Not that it matters what colo

  A few years ago, I was wandering through Tasmania using my thumb as a bus ticket. Some days were incredible; meeting wild haired strangers, going on insane adventures and living in the way that motivational speakers tell you to dream. Many of those stories found their way into my book Never Homeless ; all night jam sessions with instant friends, wilderness explorations full of joy and sleeping under the stars on the white sandy beaches.  But in between those postcard moments were just as many days when nothing exciting happened and I questioned my life choices constantly. Days when I was so exhausted that I lay in my tent and stared at the ceiling. Days when I sat alone for hours and waited impatiently for more amazing stuff to fall out of the sky so that I might find distraction from inner demons. Days when I was fired up and ready to go and then all I encountered was the doldrums of a normal life. On those days, my confidence waned and my viewpoints soured.  Sometime in this Tasman