Leaky Buckets

  Somewhere in Montana Montana is not mine. Sometimes, I worry that I am the only one who suffers from this delusion, but I doubt it. I am not the only Montanan who uses bumper stickers and t-shirts, flags and rhetoric to proclaim my pride for this state. I am not the only one who tries to wish away the eyes of the world and the natural desires of humans to pursue and claim what is deemed to be valuable. I am not the only one who wishes that the internet couldn’t capture the images of the landscape, or who wishes that the interstates did not import more competitors in the race to claim every last inch of paradise. I hoped that I would be the last one through the gates before this place was frozen in time. In some ways, I think we all hoped for this miracle.  The Eagles, in their Hotel California album, voiced the uncomfortable truth that “if you call someplace Paradise, you can kiss it goodbye.” They were using California in their example, but numerous other locations have popped into

  I didn't have a photo from six months ago or today, but I did find this picture  of a wolf shot nearby town during hunting season last year... It has no bearing on this blog post today besides being startlingly big... Today I was combing through my writings for some reason I now can't recall. I came across this little journal entry from exactly six months ago. It was winter then and it is still winter now. I won't keep harping on this endless winter of 22/23, but it is refreshing to know that I made it through without really going nuts. So anyway, a time machine jump back to six months ago today My house is usually one of the last houses in town to get the morning sun. With the town on the eastern side of the valley, and my house being tucked into a small gulley on the eastern side of town, I often sit at my front window in the frosty shade and watch the fog lift and sun glow on the Antelope Hills.  I have settled into my winter morning routine. Wake around six, walk the

  The Big Hole Valley There aren’t very many people in church today. It’s the Sunday after Easter and I am in church for the first time in a long time. The white steeples of the southern Bitterroot Mountains shine in the early morning sun. I am alone in the front row, sitting on the dented hood of the little Honda that has carried me out to Big Hole Pass for a sunrise service. I haven’t seen a car for nearly forty miles, just the winding two lanes of Highway 38 leading out into the distance. I have all my patron saints guiding me on this journey. Saint George of Strait began my pilgrimage with Amarillo By Morning. Saint David of Ball brought me “There Stands the Glass' ' and now Saint Luke of Bell is singing “Glory and the Grace,” a song about living on the road and looking in the golden windows of people in their cozy cabins. Their gospels are blaring through the windshield as a frigid breeze forces me to snug my Carhart zipper higher. It may be the middle of April, but the Gr

  The Worm Hole In dripping red paint, the arrow pointed towards the windward side of the stone wall, with the words “The Worm Hole” scrawled beneath it. Sam and I rolled our bikes into a little thicket behind the stone wall and set off down the scraggly path with a stiff breeze in our faces. To the west, the Atlantic Ocean stretched into eternity, rippling with whitecaps from the incoming weather.           We were on the western shores of Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, about an hour's boat ride off the west coast of Ireland. Remnants of mountains from an ancient time, the Aran Islands were windswept crags of stone battered from millenia of fending off the waves of the North Atlantic. Huge cliffs lined the west side of the island, while much of the leeward eastern shore was rocky beaches and small coves. Settled by sheepherders centuries ago, the islands were forlorn of trees; everything was built of stone, including the endless stone walls. Over centuries, the sett

  An essay on music... so this is a cool closeup shot of my record player from a photo class in college         The other day, someone asked me what my “guilty pleasure” song is. I replied very seriously that I don’t have any because I don’t listen to any type of music to be cool. “Guilty pleasure” insinuates that I like a song that is “uncool” and listen when no one is around so no one will think me “uncool.” I listen to whatever I want to, whenever I want to. At least that is what I tell myself.  In many ways, I am a contrarian. I listen to whatever music genre I deem to be underappreciated by the shallow trends of pop culture. I pride myself on knowing the obscure artists and lyrics to unpopular music of all genres. As soon as a style of music goes mainstream, I drop it like a hot potato. My general rule of thumb is if I hear a particular song over the speakers in a box store or fast food restaurant, I don’t like it anymore, even if I did like it a year or so ago. It is this unw

The winter that never ends... I guess that's okay It is the winter that never ends. At least it feels that way. Anecdotal evidence from my 14th Montana winter says this one was the longest and coldest of them all. But every winter feels long and cold; this one is just the most recent. Then again, it is April 5th and it is puking snow for the seventh day in a row. It started snowing on Halloween and I have not seen the grass in my yard since then.  Snow in April is not at all unusual. Heck, we have had snow in June four of the last five years. What makes this winter feel longer is that we never had our usual January thaw. The pattern is usually a bitter cold snap in the middle of December followed by a week of sun and forty degrees in mid January, which melts off most of the early season snow. Then, February rolls around and the precipitation starts. At least, in my memory.  The last couple nights, all the local contractors have been gathered at the White Front for their daily waili

  Surfing at sunrise The instructions to the secret beach were simple. Too simple, considering the beach was three thousand miles away in another country. Four brief scribbles with some approximate distances attached. The worrying part was a tiny building and the instructions to ask Raul, the supposed resident of said shack, where to find El Pingüino. These were not exactly details that our parents wanted to hear when they were told that we were going surfing in Baja for a month, so we conveniently didn’t tell them. Anyway, we trusted our surf guru, so with a napkin scribble, we set off from Montana on New Years Day, Baja bound.  Four days and one international border after leaving home, we were hurtling down Baja’s Highway 1. The lanes were awkwardly narrow and full of truck-eating potholes. The shoulder of the road consisted of about three inches of crumbling asphalt and a steep ditch filled with blooming cacti. Semi trucks rigged up like Mad Max were racing northwards around blind t

  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Gran Canaria at sunset This hike wasn’t a jaunt, or a stroll or an amble. It was more like a trudge. Silly us, thinking that a thirty mile hike across an ancient volcano was going to be a nice mosey, a pleasant journey across Gran Canaria over three days. We should have known that we were hiking a traditional pilgrimage and pilgrims never had it easy.  It was early November, but in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, it is almost always summer. I found a mini pilgrimage across the largest of the Canary Islands, from the north side of the island to the south. It was a miniature version of the famous Camino De Santiago in mainland Spain, between the two churches of St James. It was also supposed to be a gorgeous hike. But as we trudged up the mountain, all we could see was pea soup mist. When we left the spectacular sea port of Agaete that morning on the bus, the Atlantic Ocean shone like a gemstone and the white washed stucco glittered in the humid autumn air

  Wearing my earthquake clothes in Newfoundland The earth shook as I stood in front of the mirror in the changing room at the Red Cross thrift store in Christchurch, New Zealand. I had just discovered the joy of merino wool for the first time, in the form of a blue long-sleeve shirt that said Elusiv in faint gray letters across the front. And at that exact moment, there had been a small earthquake. I stepped out of the changing room and all the clothes racks were swaying slightly, coat hangers tinkling as they gently drifted back to stationary positions.  It was my first earthquake, and it was very minor, but my fellow shoppers had more experience than they wanted with earthquakes. Many of them were standing in doorways with their hands braced against the frames, preparing for the worst. We were only four years removed from the massive 2011 Christchurch earthquake that had toppled numerous buildings and killed 185 people. Rubble was still strewn around the city and many of the historic

  Car Barn... 66 GTO and 62 Impala         The clock in the kitchen is making a funny noise. I wrack my brain trying to remember which engine is revving. It must be the 69 Plymouth Roadrunner with the 383 engine in it. There is a throaty choke, and the clock revs aggressively and zooms off into the ten o'clock hour. In an hour, my favorite car, the Pontiac GTO will be revving its engine to tell me the hour is up. Every sixty minutes, a different muscle car will growl to life through a tiny speaker in the heart of the clock, scaring the bejesus out of the house cat and reminding whoever is nearby that time passes us by.  I used to know all the cars on the Muscle Car clock by heart. It is an old analog clock that I got when I was nine or ten years old and obsessed with Camaros and Chevelles. Recently, while searching for some old paperwork in the attic, I spooked like Captain Hook in Peter Pan when I heard a strange ticking sound emanating from a box in the corner. The clock had been

  Heddal Church My brother and I had been walking for hours along a two lane Norwegian highway when the Heddal Stave Church appeared like a mirage in the rain. Rural Norway didn’t have a taxi service. We were both too young to rent a car. We were too shy to ask for help, and we couldn’t read Norwegian road signs. So we were left to walk the five miles from the bus stop to the largest of the 28 remaining Norwegian Stave churches.  Out in the middle of a large field, the majestic wooden church loomed like a mysterious fortress. Built sometime in the 12th Century, Heddal was the largest of historic wooden churches scattered across the fjords and rolling hills of Norway. Our mission was to visit as many churches as we could and learn how these wooden buildings had lasted nearly a millennium in the harsh, wet climate of Norway. The small scholarship from Montana State University barely budgeted for one person, but on a diet of refried beans and crackers, I managed to fit my brother into the

Ahhhhhhh         “The way is shut.” The stuffy lady in a park ranger’s uniform stood in the middle of the road and quoted Gandalf at us. I put the truck in park and got out to reason with her. It was the day after Christmas 2018 and the federal government was shut down. Over a foot of snow had fallen in the last couple hours on the mountains outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico and none of the roads had been plowed. This lady clearly did not want to be outside, but someone had buried their SUV in a snowbank and she had been called out to help clean it up.  This was the only road going where we wanted to go; which was the middle of nowhere. Sam and I had had enough of traffic and people and our wasteful consumerist society and were headed out into the mountains to camp for a couple days. But the Park Ranger was adamant that no one was going any further. She didn’t want to “come clean up our mess,” which she had clearly been doing all day with unprepared tourists. She was worried we would g