More Montana

Shadowboxing

There is only one fear I have (outside of some unimaginable catastrophe) that gives me any pause. Just a single, solitary cause of the heebie jeebies. And I’m talking about normal everyday fears like spiders, public speaking, the ocean, or the dark. I’ll eat a spider while swimming in the ocean at night and speaking to whoever, those things don’t bother me, but one thing does – roaches. And not some wussy German cockroach or something like that, no no no. I’m talking about one and a half inch long, sleek, glossy black, lightning fast, flying grotesqueries. All my people south of Columbia know what I’m talking about. We call them Palmetto Bugs. They’re like the bad guy from the original Men In Black movie and almost as large. I hate them. If I see one in a room, it dies or I die, and that game is played until completion. However, if I had to pick a number two fear, its driving in the mountains. Did I mention I thought Montana was a prairie state?

It’s around 2008 and Duffie and I just finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. We are both swept away by the book and its momentum carries us to Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina, where we attempt to climb the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi. We Succeed. And fail. We get to the top, but it takes us around 9 hours. We start back down and realize we have gone down the opposite side of the mountain. We keep hiking hoping to encounter someone to help us because this is early March and its freaking cold. And we clearly saw bear tracks on the ice close to the top. We were unprepared and under-informed.

We come to a Ranger’s station and decide to huddle up and sleep for the night on the wooden deck. To our great fortune, a Ranger shows up after only a few minutes. He is an extremely nice guy, tells us this happens all the time, and offers to drive us to my car. We’re saved, but we’re about to have one of the most frightening moments of our lives.

We get into the Ranger’s truck, and he puts his foot on the accelerator like he’s trying to stomp a cockroach on the floorboard. We blast down the fucking mountain, down some gravel road with no guardrails and nothing but air and finality on either side of us. I feel the grab handle of the door bending as I freak the hell out. In a crazed moment, I think about hitting him, but realize he’s driving and we will all die if I knock him out. We seem on the edge of out of control, and I think he may be trying to scare us. Then he calmly points out my window and says, “Grouse.” Grouse? I don’t care about some half-assed chicken. I’m going to kill this guy. Grouse? I don’t give shit if a pterodactyl is sitting on the mountain. Get me out of this damned truck now!

He manages to get us to my car safely. I stagger out and look at Duffie who is equally pale and shaky. The Ranger pulls off and yells out his window, “You guys have a good ride home!” He gets the double birdie. Two grouse for you.

I don’t know if any of you have ever driven up Going to the Sun Road at Glacier National Park, but its mesmerizing and terrifying beyond measure at the same time. It’s a bright tincture of fear and exhilaration. It’s like the North Carolina mountain road we went down with the Ranger times eleventy-billion. It was by far the scariest road I have ever seen in my life. Planes fly at lower altitudes. It’s a road filled with sharp turns, sheer cliff faces, barely any guard rails, and cars coming from the other direction. It’s in the sky! It’s like driving on clouds. Hell, you can actually see clouds below you! The only thing that made it doable for me was that no one is really going over 15 -20 miles an hour, but outside of the pace, it was as fear inducing as anything I have ever experienced. Thank God I didn’t look down and see a cockroach on the floor. There would be no more Facebook posts from Ward to ignore.

So, my palms are still a little sweaty as I park the Forerunner outside of Loop Trail at Glacier National Park and hop out, grabbing my pack and locking the door. I’m pissed I keep forgetting chapstick. It feels like my lips are so dry and cracked they may fall off.

I am proud of myself for making it to the top and back down to the trailhead. I’m buzzing with coffee, fear, adrenaline, and adventure as I make my way onto the trail. The pictures I posted speak for themselves. Let me be honest – the park borders on unbelievable. It’s something out of Tolkien’s imagination. It almost can’t be real. It is no doubt the most stunning thing I have seen in my life outside of three newborn little Cochran girls. It’s consistently ranked one of the ten most beautiful places in the US, beaten out only by scenic juggernauts like Yosemite and Yellowstone. Again, man cannot make what I saw, it can only copy it. Something larger is at play.

I hiked around 9 miles, with the first 4.5 miles rising 2500 feet. I’m in fairly good shape and it was still brutal. I only saw one other person going up the mountain; most people were headed down. You park all the way at the top at Logan Pass, hike down, then buses take you back to your car at the top. Pfffft. Cheating. I hike up and back down like a real pain glutton.

I stopped and took pictures until I realized there is no end to that process. As soon as you put your phone away, another of God’s pastorals appears and you need more pictures. At some point you have to abandon the notion of a ‘perfect’ picture. They’re all perfect in some way.

I cracked open the trail mix and ate some jerky. I drank a bunch of wadder and said “How y’all doing” to every single person I passed. I wore a Gamecock t-shirt proudly and was exceedingly happy that I saw zero Clemson attire during my whole trip. I was alone, free, and at peace.

And I kept thinking about some things Crystal had said to me the day before.

Meet my Airbnb host, Crystal, who has given me permission to write about her. Big mistake.

I knew I would like her before I ever made it out to the RV because when I sent her a message about hoping to have a Walden Pond moment out there in Montana, she immediately texted back, “I think my RV will afford a few opportunities to ‘live deliberately.’” Quoting Thoreau off the top of your head is something I find terribly endearing.

When we met, we found out quickly that we had some commonalities, but none regional. She grew up in Southern California, then went to art school at Queen’s College in New York (I believe). A New York artist - this bodes well for me, lol (if you know, you know.) She lived in Paris, Germany, and recently returned from Egypt. We talked about some recovery stuff, then I listened as she talked about metaphysics, spirituality, mediums, actual physics, and Egyptology. She is a certified aromatherapist and had (or has) plans to open an alchemical kitchen. We talked about identity politics, corporate evils, elitism, and how to best train dogs. She urged me to eat organic food and frowned when I said I drank diet soda. It was hard for me to keep up. I’m rarely out of my league when it comes to breadth of knowledge or references, but she was outpacing me.

She spoke smartly about money and investing and her business model with Airbnb. At one point, she let me use her washer and dryer to do some clothes and I went into her house, where she is framing off another room. She is framing, not some contractor. She is doing the work. I looked at her and was like, “Who the hell are you? You are really, really impressive.” She had a sense of humor and easy nature, although she told me she had a temper at times. She offered to transfer my laundry while I went kayaking and then laughed when I said I had my little black panties in there (I really did.) She said she had been married before and could handle it. I like it when people don’t take things so seriously and have a sense of humor. She used some frankincense and myrrh on my laundry. I think that smell will always remind me of her and her home now. I love the memory of smells.

We talked about our pasts and how we get better as people. She told at me one point that I didn’t have three daughters, I chose them. Some inner desire of mine made that happen. She said we forge our own realities because of our beliefs, and that deep inside, inside ourselves, lay the underlying causation of all that happens to us (Crystal, if I’m butchering this, I apologize. I tried to take notes). What solidifies into our reality starts within us, what is important to us deep down. She called figuring all of that out ‘shadow work.’ She gave me a book by Seth called ‘The Unknown Reality.’ I read the preface and first six pages while writing this post. It delves into precognition and unconscious choices we make before we knew we were making choices, and projections we made to suit ends we may not even be aware of now, today, consciously.

Crystal is a creative in every sense of the word, and at time when I had lost some faith in that persona archetype, she has breathed new life into my own creative life. My reality is what I focus on. I think I agree.

As I traipse up the mountain, I do my shadow work. I am trying to figure out where I am and why. How has my focus and inner workings created the reality where I now find myself? What underlying truths to Ward can I pinpoint? I come up with some things - one certainty and one I am still trying to convince myself is true. I reach the Granite Chateau which is the midpoint of my hike and start back. It’s just as beautiful going down as up.

As leave the park, I pull over and soak my feet and legs in the chilly river. I splash the water on my face and neck. I taste the water and it’s clean, and crisp, and delicious. The clearest water I’ve ever seen. Clearer than any river, ocean, gulf, or lake I’ve ever seen by a magnitude. I pilfer a handful of rainbow-hued rocks that line the bottom of the riverbed for the girls. I wonder how long it would take the river to float me back to Flatbead Lake.

I arrive at the RV exhausted, then eat, and sleep. I wake up the next day, call a friend, text some others, nap, then decide to go out and play more for my last day. After kayaking, hiking, and running (my old guy Montana triathlon), I say goodbye to Crystal. We talk anthropology, physics, and she tells me that we base our reality on our beliefs. Smoke is rising behind us in a massive cloud. I told her that the people who rented me the kayak said it was from a kid throwing a rattlesnake on an electric fence. Sheesh, Montana sounds like South Carolina.

We talked more; I talked about growing up. Then I told her all about the women in my life. I looked behind me at the big, billowing cloud of smoke and said, “That’s Dad back there, looming, casting his shadow, and here,” I point the opposite way into the sunset, ”Here are the women of my life, my mom, grandmas, aunts, daughters, and friends. It’s a clear dichotomy.”

She looks at me, “Some physicists now believe there are many dimensions, many realities, and all the things and scenarios and lives you can imagine are happening at once. Your dad is there, so is your mom and grandparents. In different worlds. When you do the shadow work of healing yourself, you are healing your father, too. He is somewhere and he feels it.”

I look at her, more than a little emotional, and say with warmth, “Seriously, who the fuck are you?” Her commentary is one of the more moving and hopeful things I have ever heard. I write it down right then so I never forget the words, “Healing him, too.” She goes on to tell me I should record my dreams in a voice recorder when I wake up, and I should write down my impressions of my writing while I am writing - two excellent ideas. She accepts me for a writer like its just a fact. Just because I say I am. She tells me she is very happy I came to Montana and that it feels like I belong there. I tell her it has been utter magic. I promise to return next summer, hopefully with the girls, and she seems really pleased at the idea. We embrace, take some pictures, and I say, “You’re not losing me. I have your phone number and we are friends on Facebook. I think we will see each other again” She smiles and walks off. If we focus on it, it will be our reality. I know she agrees.

I go run around the path that wraps around the lake one last time and say my goodbyes to the mountains and water. I stop by a tree and shadowbox, working up a sweat. Some men loading a boat stop and stare at me, and I feel like a dumbass, but keep boxing anyway. While I shadowbox, I also keep doing the shadow work. Rehashing my conclusions I came to on the mountain. It’s simple what I figured out, what the reality I create is about – being a dad. Its what I focus on and what is important to me. I’m ready to be back to it. The thing I am trying to convince myself of is that I’m a writer. I feel like an imposter sometimes. I need to project my own worthiness and ability to tell a story.

I walk outside the RV around 1:00am and think about the closing lines of The Prince of Tides by Conroy. Where Tom Wingo wishes that all men were apportioned two lives, so he could love both women he had fallen in love with during his lifetime. I look at the Milky Way, at the infinite stars, and feel astounded yet again. At that moment, I hope that Crystal is right. I wish for infinite lives, and all the possibility I see if all the scenarios I could imagine were true. Lives where the people I loved were still healthy, alive, and present. Where we didn’t hurt each other or leave each other or use each other to heal ourselves.

I look up and see a shooting star zig-zag through the night sky and evaporate. I’m so blown away by the spectacle I say out loud to no one, “What the fuck . . .!” I turn around scanning the skies when on the opposite side of the heavens i see another comet. I freak out a little over the rarity and the beauty of the celestial display. I remember something else I thought to be true while up on the mountain - I will never stop being amazed at being alive. I love the mystery and magic and unanswerable questions.

“But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now. I look to the [south], and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man - and every woman.” Goodbye, Montana, and goodnight. Goodbye, Crystal, and thank you. My journey continues tomorrow as I fly to Chicago and look for deep dish pizza. And wonder if it’s possible to die from chapped lips. Godspeed.