As good a place as any

We're in a bit of a kerfuffle over here.  That's right, a kerfuffle.  See, we've got this baby coming, and we've responded to the new member of the family with a barrage of improvements to the EHPT (Eureka Horse Pasture Trailer), ready to get settled into for the long haul.  A long desktop and three sets of spacious shelves were built and have been settled on and into.  Books have congregated all in one place for the first time in our relationship, a monster king size bed welcomes us for almost everything except bathing, and a softly colored nursery has been ready for almost a month.  Everything has taken its natural angle of repose, and it's perfect.

Both in and out, I see this as the place where It's gonna happen.. For each day of growing green or louder buzzing of bees, shortening of shadows or vanishing of snow in the mountains, life is growing into what it will be when it meets this Big Thing of a new life form in a few weeks.  I see now that this Big Thing, this momentous, dreamed-about moment, will happen in a place I never imagined... in a small town, a beaver board trailer, surrounded by more animals and trees than humans.  And here's as good a place as any.


Driving along the windy back road home and seeing my students walking in the ditches cleaning up garbage (voluntarily, not as court-mandated community service, though I teach those kids, too) sent me wondering for the next mile or so how many years they have known each other, been in the same groups together, doing this service project.  Then, how long have teachers been teaching these same families, teaching sons and daughters, then grandkids... and on and on.  As someone born into the relative anonymity of a large city, you don't have much of that here.  The people come, a lot of them leave, and a few stay to be rooted, and everything and everyone becomes familiar.  Borrowing from Kathleen Norris' book Dakota and her thoughts on staying put in a not-so-flourishing region, I can see how stability comes more from the land than the people, and the stories of that people's success and struggle form most of what others usually think of the town itself.

Gratitude abounds when you look at everyone as a gift, but few strangers stay in towns like this long enough to see and value those gifts.  You don't understand a place going highway speeds just passing through with eyes on the road ahead. You also can't really understand anything about a place until you've sat and stared out from its front porches.  Illinois, Tennessee, Washington, and now Montana, we've gravitated to the country our whole lives.

Turning into my driveway, I feel the pull of a possible third year here, realizing we have become familiar trees here now.  With that in mind, eyes pause on the sun pouring onto the front porch and warmly resting its light on the pillows of the chairs.  The dog greets the open door and backs up into a  living room now lined with homemade furniture.  I set my keys there.  The groceries go there. And that's how roots plant, whether deep for generations or just in the topsoil while we keep one foot out the door of a place.  But to plant roots seems to really be all about planting your foot more firmly on top of the memories you are creating daily.  Like moss.  You can pick it up and move it all you want, but it flourishes when stepped on and pushed into the ground a little more, then left alone.  Transplanted moss takes time and care, but it can become permanent.


We've taken the unusually long winter as a sign we need to suck the marrow from spring and summer.  Deep cold and pregnancy allowed us to slow down lately, emerging like a deciduous tree blossoming from the cold, and we've seen some notably quiet moments in and around the EHPT.  A tree blooming once more and the wind not taking away all its blooms.  The birdfeeder that stays full because it's not sunflower-eating time, but then there's the woodpecker with an insatiable appetite for creamy suet blocks and the way it braces its large self on the tiny feeder.  Grass that grows a half foot every couple of days mowed by a balding and grunting feller on a riding mower who appreciates how I've pruned the trees around the yard because those branches used to slap him on his bald head after they pushed his cap off.  The frisbee golf course that's sprung up, and how the dog runs after the frisbee knowing full well that I know full well he will never bring the frisbee back, making him a perfect golfing buddy.  Hummingbirds buzz around the cherry blossoms knowing the bees arrive just before the lilac bushes bloom their golden tubes of nectar.  Birds and bees compete for blossoms in nearby bushes until the bees win and settle into the lilacs and trees, then make nests.  The first light gets earlier -- now it's at 4:00 -- so that you're fully awake by 6:00, ready for the second part of the morning.  Paint-shipped porches with morning sun only, enveloping hammocks under fruit trees, regal lounge chairs hovering over dandelion grass.  Deer roaming game trails in our backyard.  The ever-present mountains greeting us at the driveway, silence all around you save the blowing wind you can hear miles away and the bird calls bouncing around the valley every five seconds.

We've borrowed this place and called it ours for almost two years, and now we're looking at having to give it back after a final green and blue summer here, heading back down the road for a new teaching opportunity.  It's only sixty miles away, barely an hour's drive.  You can bridge that gap with people you miss, but we're struggling most with leaving this place, particularly the wide open silent expanses that we claim as ours.  I know I'm too new a resident of these drumlins to write anything about this Eureka and the Tobacco Valley, but I can speak to what it's like to be travelling through here at 65 mph, then 45, then 35 and 25, and to stop and sit a while on a few front porches, then prepare to drive away a little slower.