Thoughts On Montana

Dated 5/31/11



I should start keeping healthy track of all the places I go that inspire me, so I can know where to return to if the need for new, fresh inspiration arises.
Places like Montana. All of Montana.
The entire state makes me quiet, reserved. I feel intrusive, like I've stumbled upon some profound, ancient secret ritual and the surrounding mountains have blessed me with the divine gift of being allowed to enter in and watch, to enter in and partake.

There's so much mystery surrounding every tree, rooted deep in every mountain and cliffside, Every river and every valley. It doesn't make sense to me. I feel like I'm not one who belongs, I'm not one to fit in here.
I silently judge the cowboy hats, the sarsparilla-scented beards. I roll my eyes at the "I Hunt Montana" bumper stickers. I vehemently change the country music stations.
Where are the skyscrapers? Where are the screaming liberals?
The traffic, nightlife, ocean waves, bicyclists, doomsday predictors?
And most of all... What on earth do you mean the nearest Starbucks is almost 3 hours away??
I don't belong here.

And yet, the land penetrates my indignant outer layer. It pierces through my city-born notions. It shatters my ability to judge and renders me in complete awe, and utterly dumbfounded.
It's so ensnaring.
The sky is immense.
I feel so small.
The Rocky Mountains surge electrically on every side. Swollen and smothered in pine trees, white-tipped in ice and snow, they rise and fall for miles and miles and they remind me of violent ocean waves, frozen in place, but never dead.
Surging deep underneath the layers of dirt and topsoil and even below the groundwater, they're throbbing, thriving, pulsating, wildly beating like drums and I am almost frightened by their raw power.

The valleys sing with wild flowers and miles of green fields, precious homesteads and tiny, quaint towns....
The rivers make me cry.
The ever-changing sky makes me tremble.
I want to write it all.
The air, the dirt, the wildlife, the weather, the land, the sky....
It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, and it's absolutely incomparable to anything else.

You don't know why it's beautiful, and I can't explain it to you until you come here for yourself and see it.
I am overwhelmed.
Frightened by the chance of sudden, dramatic change, by the unpredictable nature, enthralled by the purity of the miles of untouched land, and held completely captivated by these violent, vibrant, supernatural mountains.

Sometimes I think I never want to leave, but I could never truly trade the ocean for mountains.
I do love visiting, and I don't think I'll ever tire of the long drive because it's worth every excruciating minute just to spend four astoundingly beautiful hours driving through Montana mountains.