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Published: August 26th 2020
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If you look for the Impenetrable Mountains on a map of Montana, you will not likely find them labelled. But we can assure you that they exist. We have been in them since we got here.
The phrase comes from Peter Kingsley, a favorite author and guru, as he recounts an old Mongolian myth, about people being stuck in an impossible situation, with no hope of escape, no hope of moving forward, no hope of resolution, and how, at last, a magical wolf appears to bore a hole through the mountains and lead the people out of their stuck place, or a shaman appears and shoots a magical arrow that cuts a hole through the mountains and achieves the same end. We've used this myth, and this phrase, as a way of looking at our present time, our current culture, our collective situation on Earth here at the precipice of what might very well be the dissolution of Western Civilization itself, and the seeding of whatever is to follow.
And I thought of this myth, and this phrase, as I lay in bed in our hotel room this morning, up since 4 or so, waiting for night to slip into pre-dawn, and then dawn, and then the new day. I thought of impenetrable mountains. And wolves. And shamans. And arrows. And the impossible. And I asked for help from whomever or whatever might be listening. It seems we're in a stuck place. It seems we cannot do this on our own. It seems we may have to go home empty-handed, with no clear answer to our question: why were we called here?
Without going into detail, let me say that, just as we seemed to have found our big beautiful place to land, a place that seemed to meet most of our collective wants and needs, a place of beauty and productivity, a place that felt bursting with life, a place we could love, our third partner got "cold feet." That derailed us, sent sparks flying and brakes squealing, and banished us back to the Big Timber KOA, where we spent three days and nights in a tree-covered corner by the creek, cooking sausages over an open fire, talking with each other, talking on the phone, talking with realtors, searching the listings, and trying to figure out our next moves, or to hear the "peculiar travel suggestions" which Kurt Vonnegut said were "dancing lessons from God."
It was hard. It meant more ego shredding. More difficult family processing. More scrabbling for clarity. More boundary-setting. More hours of conversation to achieve mutual understanding. Another f*#(ing growth experience, as they say. And slowly more clarity did surface. And slowly we began to see a path forward. And we put together a new list, the "new possibles," the new places we might explore, the new places we might land. And, because this state is so huge, and because we're open to half the state, at least, and because we didn't want to drag our poor real estate agents hours from their homes to show us places we would never want, we decided to go out on our own and do drive-bys, scoping out towns and properties on our own first, before we scheduled an actual viewing. We did one drive by on Monday, but it was very close to the railway and the Interstate. Then, yesterday morning, we crossed out a number of possibilities we realized wouldn't work, we put together a list of five remaining possibles, and figured out a route to take to see them, and headed off to The Coffee Spot in Big Timber, the sweetest place you can imagine, for two 20-ounce cups of stamina and resolve, and headed westward, determined to see as much as we could.
So often it comes down to proximity and distance. Montana is pretty picked over right now. The urbanites got here before we did and bought up the properties, leaving inventory very low and prices very high. And when we find a property, one that's been on the market for more than a few weeks, our first question now is "what's wrong with it that it's still on the market?" What's wrong is usually a matter of proximity or distance, and that proved to be the case yesterday. The first place was way far out. Miles of gravel roads far out. Miles of unplowed in the winter far out. And we never did find it, exactly. The second place was way far out, as well, up six miles of winding, chatter-bumped gravel we had to drive at 15 mph. The third place was too close to the Interstate. The fourth place was way far out, with ten miles of gravel to get to. The fifth place was far too close to neighboring houses. We didn't drive to all of them. Our realtor was able to do some research on a couple of them and warn us off the fourth place before we drove the two hours to get there. The last one we could cross off the list by finally finding on Google maps.
And so we ended up here in Deer Lodge. Got an unpoisoned room in an old hotel. Got a steak and some fish 'n' chips at a local eatery. Searched more listings. Found a promising one way down at the South end of the Bitterroot valley, only to finally determine, on Maps, that it would not work for us. Finally, after 9, we closed out our real estate tabs, watched a bit of
Alone, got out our bear spray just in case, and went to sleep.
And then 4 AM. And impenetrable mountains and shamans and wolves and prayers. And then I wrote all of these words. And now here I am. Just to the right of my cursor is a big empty white space. And scrolling down, more white space. Blank. The unknown. The what-the-hell-do-we-do-now space? That terrifying place of uncertainty and unknowableness that sometimes terrifies writers into a full-on writer's block.
I guess I'll find out what goes in that white space as the day unfolds. Right now, I have no idea.
T
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