My body is finally relaxed.
It’s hard to find that peace during the school year, even at home during the Christmas Break. There are all the school assignments hanging over me, along with having to get things done and plan for the new year at school.
But the boy, wife, and I are finally in Montana. We can’t stay for long, but we needed to get things done at our place before new renters come. 12 hours yesterday to Idaho Falls was easy. Today was the scariest driving day I’ve ever encountered–from Idaho Falls, up through the mountains, to Bozeman. Weather reports and Google apps had no issues on our journey. However, my wife has reminded me kindly that we need a living will because I lost sight of the road at points today. At one juncture, in a kind of white out, after almost getting stuck in a snowbank on the right-hand side of the road, I ended up pulling the car out of that situation, skidded across the road into the oncoming lane (luckily no cars were coming), and had a car pass me on the right of a two-lane.
Scary. I almost bit my kid’s head off when he informed me he had to use the bathroom during one of the white-out moments. My wife and I are convinced our whole bodies will be sore tomorrow from tensing our muscles the whole time.
But Montana is amazing, as is our house and property. We met the new tenants of our guest house–they seem nice and have a big old dog, as does everyone here. The driveway is long and needs to be plowed, but someone will do that today. We’ve already bought enough beer and meat product to get us through the rest of the days we’re here, and then some.
It’s hard to tell people about Montana, so I’ll let John Steinbeck do it for me. Hit it–The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it. Once, when I raptured in a violet glow given off by the Queen of the World, my father asked me why, and I thought he was crazy not to see. Of course I know now she was a mouse-haired, freckle-nosed, scabby-kneed little girl with a voice like a bat and the loving kindness of a gila monster, but then she lighted up the landscape and me. It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Here for the first time I heard a definite regional accent unaffected by TV-ese, a slow-paced warm speech. It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana. Its people did not seem afraid of shadows in a John Birch Society sense. The calm of the mountains and the rolling grasslands had got into the inhabitants. It was hunting season when I drove through the state. The men I talked to seemed to me not moved to a riot of seasonal slaughter but simply to be going out to kill edible meat. Again my attitude may be informed by love, but it seemed to me that the towns were places to live in rather than nervous hives. People had time to pause in their occupations to undertake the passing art of neighborliness.
He says more. You have the Internet and can look it up. As for me, the sun just shot through the clouds so I’m going outside to take a picture.
I’ll return to California too soon. This time, I think the Interstate is in order.