the end

This is it for summer 2012 from Two Dot (posts begin on June 6th). I will let you know when I am back in Two Dot and the adventure picks up again.

8.19.2012...

Stopping in Deep Creek Canyon, I dipped my feet in the cool clear water. Was I washing something away or being baptized into something new? We say goodbye to each landmark as we pass through this transition. We will return, but the farewells are a way of holding. Last night John told me he liked the way I look in Montana. Today as we drove away from our last tearful Two Dot good-byes I realized that I like who I am in Montana. What kind of hold can a location have that it alters how we view ourselves? Does that view remain rooted to the soil, the rocks, the people and plants of that place? Or can it be carried with you? As we drove away from Two Dot and the beautiful rolling Rockies and big sky, I thought of all the doors and windows I was passing… hundreds and hundreds, but none of them containing the faces of those I choose, non of them situated in the landscape I call my own. Finally we wound into the Cascades with their jagged peaks green even in this dry summer. Once on the other side, we turned into a developed community with similar looking homes, but only one door beckoned to us. Our son opened to our ringing and took us upstairs where his wife was reading to our grandson. I caressed his pudgy feet and was glad to be back. Because of this, all of this, we will drive back and forth and back and forth between the two places and people we love. And I will continue to see how much of each place I can carry with me.

8.18.2012... cloudless, windless

A few days ago clouds at the horizon made mountain shapes looking like another range. Center stage from where I sat in my Two Dot bed, the sun worked itself into the sky over a cloud looking a little like Mount Rainier. My second home is calling me back in cloud shapes.This last day in the schoolhouse will be full of finishings. The studio work that feels like it is just beginning will be packed and wrapped. The bedding will be washed and stored. The food we didn’t eat passed along to the cousins who live here year around. This stay has been long and short. I am ready to go and not ready. How can you wrap up a summer when you are still so close you can only see the fur? Who knows what kind of animal it is.

8.17.2012…

Walking down the hill yesterday, turning my back on Daisy Peak, Dad’s mountain, I had to turn and look back… couldn’t keep walking away. The place where his marker sits looked small. I didn’t want to leave. I’d kissed my fingers and touched his brass plaque. I’d left a little bouquet of drought flowers and re-placed the rock stack, but it didn’t seem enough. I let the others keep walking and stood still, assuring Dad I would come back as often as I could. I assured him that I carried him with me too, that he was always with me. Who needed assurance? Who needed the reminder? In that moment I was thinking of Dad as he was at the end of his life: his body wasting, the medications compromising his mind, his future gone. I was the strong one then and yet… he assured me. Finally I was able to turn toward the trail down, but not without the desire to bend down and kiss every rock. This is his place, where his body was strong, where he was happy, and where he has become part of the rocks and crags and dirt.

8.16.2012... few clouds, moderate wind

The rocky crag I am sitting on is only 50 yards from my dad’s marker. I can see all the way around me, the Big Belts to the Crazies to the Snowies, from this perch on Daisy Peak. I have a drop off to my back and each time I move a little, I feel un-ease from my calves through my entire torso. Of course the danger is all in my head. I am a yard from the edge. But the internal fear lends to the effort of having climbed up here… of having made this trip to be with Dad. I still sense Dad after 16 years. He loved this place and introduced it to me in his death. Would he be surprised at me sitting here year after year? It is nice to think of his ashes having made their way into the stones here, filling pores and perhaps becoming geologically part of the stone, like petro glyphs. I am newly thinking of post death being a time you actually become part of the land…. Dad part of these rocks.

8.15.2012… total cloud cover, no wind

8.14.2012… few clouds, no wind

The sun didn’t clear a strip of haze at the horizon until 6:40, and it was dark before 9 last night. The seasons do change. This is the last week, but it is full. Noah and his mother stayed with us on their way home from Seattle to Minneapolis/St. Paul. Noah moved about the schoolhouse easily playing his concertina or the bad piano downstairs. We will be going home soon too. But we will leave feeling more part of this place. Down the road from Harlowton, Shawmut is another small town with cafe, church, school and post office. Arville and Elaine Lammers live on the Lammers family ranch 9 miles to the north. They are the first true locals to invite us to eat with them without the cover of our local cousins. There were others there that we have met, but didn’t really know. We ate Arville’s special BBQ and talked with ease. We are not exactly like these locals, but we are not exactly different either.