Montana Values

Montana, in my mind, was a place filled with hardcore, God-fearing Republicans, with a gun and a ranch.

Funnily enough, I'm not that far off. People ARE religious, but their church is the wide open spaces of the state. If a man here needs some reflection time etc, he just fucks off into the forest with his bow and hides out with his own thoughts, maybe killing something he will subsequently eat, but not always. I appreciate this concept.

I've met a couple of guys here who have been 'taken to the cleaners' by their ex-wives, but they just go "Oh well," and then rebuild.

When I got divorced, my ex took 'everything', but I came to the understanding that it was only stuff. I'm not going to fight over a car, microwave, set of salad spoons, etc, etc.

What's the point?

They are NOT the important things that need to be worked out in a divorce; your own and your kids mental/physical well-beings are.

I expected people living as families even if it didn't work, cos that's the way it is, but instead I've met a large number of people in Montana who have been divorced, some of them three or four times. Although their relationships didn't work out, all the people I've talked to made sure their children were OK. Their kids meant the world to them, and so they should.

This, I totally appreciate.

Despite being completely jaded by my marriage experience, and never wanting to experience it again (at the moment), I do respect those who are married and make it work. It's certainly not easy, and you ALWAYS have to want it. I know how hard this can be and how it's much easier to believe it will just work, and then before you know it, you end up stuck in a rut.
I realize you have to make sure everyday, that you spend time remembering all the things you love and like about your partner. Talk to them, tell them HOW YOU FEEL, and don't focus on the negative stuff. Let them grow, grow yourself, and grow together.

It's not easy, but why should a great thing be easy to keep?!

This week in York. . . (Bob Marley Story)

On Tuesday Alex and I split wood for Steve all day. At the end of the day Steve came back and we ate whitetail deer for dinner with Julie and Bob(?), who moved to York last year. The deer was amazing! He seared it on both sides then left it to stew all day with onions- it just fell apart when we ate it. The closest thing I can compare it to is lamb, but it's so much better than lamb.

Steve had gone to Kay's house that day to train her dog. While he was there he told her about us and she said that she'd love to have some painting done. I called her that night after dinner and we arranged for me to go down the next day and start painting. After that Alex, Julie, Bob and I all went down to the bar and had a few drinks and a few shots of Alex's new favorite whiskey Early Times. Before we parted I told Julie that I'd come read her tarot cards the next day.

In the morning I was HUNG OVER! Terrible headache, but I pulled myself outta bed and drove out to Helena to start painting for Kay. Turned out I spent the whole day sanding down the porch. Kay was amazingly nice and bought me a latte in the morning and took me out to get crepes in the afternoon. The owner of the crepe shop does all the major catering in Helena, especially for the Democratic Conventions Kay said. Kay's a democrat, difficult to find here in Helena, and we've had some great conversations about the president and healthcare and racial equality.

I went to read Julie's cards that night, and some of the things in the cards really clicked with her. And she told me this great story about how she once met Bob Marley:

Well I was really depressed and I was living in Portland. And there was this guy that was trying to date me and I really wasn't into it. But one day he told me, "Julie I want you to come meet someone, not a date, no boyfriend and girlfriend thing, I just want you to come meet this guy cuz I'm worried about you and I don't like to see you unhappy." So I go with him to this bar. And in the bar there's this big tough looking guy, the kind of guy where if you were walking down the same side of the street you'd cross to the other side. But I looked in his eyes for three seconds, I counted, three seconds and he had the kindest most open eyes of anyone I've ever met. Just so kind.

And he and I became friends, he thought of me like a little sister. He was a music promoter and so we saw a lot of shows. And one time we jumped in his car and drove all the way to Brooklyn, New York to meet his family and I got to meet all his friends back home. We took 2 and a half weeks to get there stopping on the way.

Well one day I'm bored and I give him a call, "What're you up to?"

"What're you up to?"

"Nothin, I'm bored."

"Well, I'm tryin to get some paperwork done but I keep getting interupted." He owned a bar and so I offer to come down and help out. It's illegal cuz I'm only 19 at the time, but I offer to just jump behind the bar and get things when people need them so he can sit down and finish his work.

"You'd really do that? I only need about an hour" he says and I said "Well sure."

Now, I was only there for about 45 minutes, and by that time the old guy reading a paper in the corner had left and the two guys drinking beers were gone. I was alone in the bar and I started to hear this knocking on the bottom door, you know, the door that opens out to where things get delivered from the street. I here this knocking and I remember that he told me that if anybody knocked on that door, not to open it, to go straight to him.

So I go into his office and say, "Hey"

"I just need 10 more minutes!"

"Well there's someone knocking on the bottom door."

"There is?"

"There is."

"Well, I guess you better come with me." So I follow him out to the bar and down the stairs and when we get to the bottom there's this big black guy, I mean HUGE, and next to him is this guy with long long dreds wearing a red, yellow and green western shirt. And my jaw drops and I look at him and I reach my had in my pocket where I have a Marley cassette, I pull that out and I point at it, and I point at him and say, "You're Bob Marley? This is you?" and he throws his head back laughing and smiles, "Ja man".

So we all go upstairs and lock up the bar and Bob and me and my friend all sit there in a semicircle and I can't understand a word Bob's saying. I tell my friend and Bob catches on and says emphatically, "You don't understand me?" he smiles and then he pulls out a huge joint, like the size of a quarter at the end, and we all sit there and smoke this huge Bob Marley joint together. And the whole time I'm smiling and absolutely floored.

Now, he only stayed for about twenty minutes. And my friend told me later that he normally wouldn't let anyone be around him and Bob, but that I really needed to meet him. Bob had come to tell my friend that if he didn't already know that he had a brain tumor and he just wanted to let my friend know that everything was gonna be alright. And that's how I met Bob Marley, he just popped up out of a door and then went back down again.

I wanted to share that story cuz I thought it was so cool!

Well today I went back to the porch and got it half painted. Tomorrow I'll finish it and Kay's gonna make dinner for Alex and I! Hope everythings going well for you!

A Dream

When I started out on this adventure I wanted to bring with me as little as possible. Like the religious hermits I wanted to leave everything behind in order to be closer to my source. For the religious that source is God, an exceedingly simple idea for me. Since I have stopped being religious I have gone through many years of uncertainty about what my source is.

First came a refusal of anything but the imperical, for how can one base such an important thing as their source on anything that cannot be proven? I studied many philosophies and found that all lacked a real understanding of the world; by this I mean that every theory about causality, linguistics, religion, reason and more were not exactly right. How? It was as if every person had looked at the world and interpreted it according to their time period and personal influences and none of them were right for my time period and personal influences. For no matter how much we try to remove ourselves and be "objective" we can never get away from those small things that order reality for us. I came to the realization that we can only be aware of what is affecting our thinking.

At some point a woman named Jeda came into my life and had a profound influence on my reconnection with the immaterial. I brought out tarot cards that had been in a closet for five years and we read them together. Through my bond with the cards I realized that there must be something more to existence than what we see. Something tugged at my soul from inside because I have felt my dead grandfather and great grandmother. I have sometimes had to tell ghosts to "go away". I have seen the sun set over the desert and felt totally at peace, like I was an extension of the ground.

After these many years, I have come to think of my source as something within myself. People tell me I am wise, so maybe this approach works for me and won't work for others, but I've decided that the most important thing is to figure out what I want. But what do I want? I wasn't born like some knowing: I want a big house on a hill, I want to be a doctor, I want . . . Much of my life I have decided what to do based upon what it will get me in the future. If I take this class then I can get into college. If I get into college then I can get a job. If I can get a job then I'll be happy. This is how my train of thought went since high school. It's as if the rest of your life doesn't exist until you get out of college and then you're stuck: what do you do?

Well, you're supposed to (a) get married, buy a house, go on vacations and have kids or (b) pay rent on an apartment, date people, go to clubs and go on vacation. Those I realized pretty quickly were not my dreams. But I didn't know the shape of my dream. It includes a man. Hopefully one that will be a good partner for my whole life. It includes a house and kids, though not for some years. It also includes waking up in the morning with useful things to do.

Like when I divested myself of all the theories I could to figure out what really exists, now I have divested myself of all of my stuff to figure out what I want. It's remarkably freeing getting rid of stuff; having as little as possible makes many things a whole lot easier. Most importantly because I love to travel, if I have all my stuff in the car, I can go wherever I want whenever I want. I don't have to sit through a week of work waiting to get out of the city only to have two days before I have to get back again so I can go to work and pay my bills. Now we just have to work until we have enough money to last us until the next place, then we find work again. We had enough to get us to Montana, then we decided to get a job on a ranch. That worked out well. Now, we'll travel until we get to Kentucky or Tennessee and then work at a distillery.

With this ability to move around my dream is starting to take shape. My dream house has four rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and large living room. My dream land has a creek for water and plenty of good soil for growing. Living on the land will be a cow (for milk and cheese), chickens (for eggs) and maybe a pig (for bacon). There is a small orchard with apples, pears, persimmons, lemons, limes and pistachios. There are also many fruits and vegetables growing: tomatoes, avocados, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, lettuce, strawberries, blackberries and pumpkins and squash in the fall. I will make all of the curtains and tableclothes in the house. Alex will make most of the furniture in the house and he and I will build the house, with a porch wrapping around it. When it's cold outside I'll listen to the radio and crochet hats and scarves. If we can, we'll have a piano and I'll play whenever I can. And, if we have kids, Alex and I'll make their toys in the woodshop and on the sewing table. I'd like to also be able to write out on the farm. I'd want to make children's books when I have kids. To write fairy tales about the farm when they get older. To continue to write philosophy and see if anyone wants to read it.

Now, the overwhelming question, why? Why a simple country life instead of city glamour? Why a life working land instead of offices? Why make toys instead of buy them? Why make cheese? Why sustainable? So many questions to ask, and so many answers but the most accurate is that I'll be nearer to the things that are real. I'll be with trees and plants, making the things I need to sustain myself. If I want water, I'll go get it. If I want sunflowers, I'll grow them. We'll be at the whim of nature; some years will be good and some will be bad. At times we might have nothing. But I've done my best work improvising and I have all the womanly and some of the manly skills needed for working on a farm. Looking back on my life, I realize I unwittingly cultivated the skills I need: sewing, building, cooking, preserving, gardening, astronomy, hiking. . . And this is a good dream, because most of all I want to have a welcoming home.

The cities and suburbs are not places for me to live. They crowd people in and box them out from the world. I had to live in the city to realize that I wanted the country. This is not to say that I don't enjoy a club, ballet, museum or art show. I do, but that is not my life. And when my kids are growing up, even though they're in the country, Ill make sure that they have good experiences in museums and ballets. I'll make sure my land isn't too far outside a major city.

Now, for the neighbors, I'd prefer them to be kind; not that they do or say the right thing at the right time, but that they're genuinely kind people. People who give because they like to give, not because they expect something in return. People who throw a party just to have a good time together. People who come to see you just because they want to talk.

What is your dream? And why do you want it?

First Week of York

1st Week In York.

This has been a pretty random week. Right now, as I sit here writing this blog, Candice is baking an apple pie while we listen to people waltz on the radio. Quite how you are supposed to work out what is going on whilst two people waltz on the radio, I do not know, but if I find out I will share it.

Tuesday, we sat down and stared at our VERY last dollar. (below)



















But! Not a problem!

We were sitting in a trailer on Bill's land. Bill, an awesome guy whose family have been on the land pretty much 200 years, has given us some work for a few weeks and a place to stay. The license plate reads: "DA SLUM". Sweet trailer: lots of space, large bed, kitchen, fridge, shower; all life's luxuries!

Spent the day collecting large branches off the floor. [Note: Willows are awesome trees. If you like firewood, have a few. If you hate branches scattered all over the ground, don't]
The next day I was moving bails of hay. 200+ bails of hay. Stops being fun and starts to feel like a workout/work really quickly!

On Thursday I learnt how a hay bailing machine works, mainly cos Bill's bailer is busted, and we had to work out how to fix it in the 'duct tape and a hammer fixes all' kind of way, to save spending unnecessary money on it.

A bailer is pulled along a line of hay on the ground by a tractor. The machine picks up the hay and pushes it down into a box shaped section that squashes the hay into the required size/weight box. Twine is wrapped around the bail by large feeding pins and these funky little plier shaped chrome pincers make a knot out of the two ends of the twine. The bailer keeps pushing more hay in, and this pushes the completed bail out the back. Simple. But as all the working parts are powered from one cog turning to three cogs, turning to eight cogs, etc, etc; it's simplicity is amazingly complicated.

Bill had needed to weld the twine feeding pins back together (them snapping in half being the main reason why the machine didn't work in the first place). Replacement pins for this bailer cost $125 each. With the pins welded just off centre, one of them broke again the minute we kicked the bailer into life. No progress that day.

Friday, with the pin re-welded, we made sure they would fit, using a hammer to aline the bracket. It was a lovely, sweet, tight fit. Perfect. We started up the machine, and pulled it with a tractor, over the hay.

PING!

A brace bolt snaps on the cogs that lead on to it making a knot, and we don't have any the right size to replace it. A brace bolt is like an electrical fuze. It holds two main cogs together and if any part of the machine is jammed and under pressure, the bolt snaps, severing the connection to the motor, rather than the machine causing itself thousands of dollars damage.

No worries, we fix this using a nail that we bend on each side of the cogs to hold them in place. Breaking up this fun escapade was filled with a little bit of cow herding in a pickup truck. [Note: Cows in a herd are easy to control and maneuver, but an individual is a really large, fucking stupid animal]

We start the machine back up and watch everything move and spin without anything breaking. Progress. Hay goes in, pieces whirr, hay forms a box shape with twine wrapped round it, but no knot in the twine. The timing is off; the second piece of twine was reaching the first piece after the knot had been tied. We decided to go back and look at the ancient instruction booklet, pick up various sizes of brace bolt (we''ll probably need them) and grab some lunch.

After lunch we decided to switch on the machine and shut it off just as the pins fired up the twine to tie the knot. This way we would know by how much the timing was off. Bill headed off to herd the cows, again, whilst I sprayed down all the cogs of the knot tying section with WD-40, especially the knot tying pincers, just to make sure they didn't stick. When Bill got back he started up the tractor and I watched the moving parts as it rolled forward. Almost immediately the pins shot up and the bailer stopped. I was left thinking Bill had got the timing perfect and had shut the machine off at exactly the right moment.

No such luck. The pins had both jammed and snapped in the same place where they had first broken and two brace bolts had snapped.

Bill sighed and looked at me, "That's it. I'm not tinkering with this anymore. It's time to get out 'The Beast'."

'The Beast' was an older, larger version of the bailer we had been trying to fix. So much bigger and older, it had it's own engine. We managed to get it out from under the shed really easily and positioned it in front of the garage to charge the dead battery. After trying to start it a few times, with it not turning over, we worked out that something must be wrong with the starter motor or a piston in the engine. Bill decided that was it for the day, he was going to get some sleep and think about the engine over the weekend.

Week of work over, $200 better off, me and Candice took off for another 'fun' experience in Wal-Mart, Helena.

On Saturday, as per our invitation, we headed off to a mine, owned by some peeps we met the week before, for a barbecue. No BBQ happening there, but we sat down inside, out of the heat and had a few bowls and beers. I found out that their water pump had broken, so they were out of water, and we offered to help them out any way we could. In what seems to be the 'Montana Way', rather than paying someone to come and fix it, he wanted to pull the pump out the ground himself. All 200 feet of it. Five of us, one hour, a ladder and a lot of pulling later, we had the pump out. We left them before dark, a few beers and bowls later, and a complimentary bag heavier.

Thought On the Trip

So yesterday I thought back, to long before this adventure started, when we would just talk about it with people.
"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."
"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.
"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."
They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"
"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.
"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"
This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.

Well guess what?

As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.

But no.

Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.
The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.

We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.

Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.
Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.

Guess I'm not that naive then?


Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"

A Thought On the Trip

So yesterday I thought back, to long before this adventure started, when we would just talk about it with people.

"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."

"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.

"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."

They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"

"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.

"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"

This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.

Well guess what?

As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.

But no.

Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.

The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.

We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.

Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.

Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.

Guess I'm not that naive then?


Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"