Saturday, June 20, 2009

"I've been singing these songs about you Montana for so long without ever even knowing it."

Walking the dog in the dark and damp backyard, it hit me. I’ll be driving out to Montana in ten days. Ten days and a couple thousand miles is all that stands between me and some of favorite places and some of my favorite faces. I let their names roll of my tongue :Helena, Great Falls, Garnett, Lolo, Missoula, Whitefish, Glacier, Ninepipes, The Mission Mountains, Amanda, Andrew, Annie, Becky, Brittney, Christy, Carl, Dan, Janice, Lindsey, Megan, Neil, Zola. Each syllable just as juicy and just as sweet as the next. Then I whispered Nic, and I felt heavy. This trip will be bittersweet in ways I don’t even know yet. Six months ago this trip was going to be a reunion, yes, but also a very telling few weeks on if I’d be making my home and my future in that wild west that both haunts me and delights me. A wild west that has the mysterious ability to fill me up, and at the same time leave me homesick for the hot, sticky wet of the green jungle in the heart Appalachian mountains, sweet ice tea, and people that are tied to my heart strings.

I thought about that as Gentry pulled me around the back yard. I have been so wrapped up in the things that were there, that were to come and that in a few seconds just flitted away to the point that I sometimes, don’t notice where I’m walking,where driving, or even what I'm thinking. He pulled me towards the part of the yard that the flood light’s sensor doesn’t read. I gripped his leash tighter as the yard when black dark. I just stood there for a minute, taking in the lack of light around me, but relaxing in knowing that I know this space. I know what’s all around me in the darkness and if I squint just right, I can make out shapes of things that are always there whether it’s light or dark. I looked forward and I began to notice a new light. I can see lightening bugs and I see the faint glow of some neighbors porch light across the tracks. I wonder if that’s what death’s like? All of the sudden you are in this new black dark of a space that was previous lit, and as you adjust to this new darkness, you see light, light that you’ve never noticed before. Is it like the lights going out? Is it that shock of black so sudden and intense that that is all you can focus on for a few seconds, minutes, hours, years? Is it just black until you adjust to the dark and see light in new way, a fresher way? You realize you are still in the place you’ve always known, but it’s just lit different?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe that's just what you leave behind. What who you leave behind sees. Maybe death is just the opposite. A shock of brilliant light. Maybe it’s that magic hour light right before the sun goes down? It’s warm with a light so orange and peachy pink that if you could taste it would be surly be like a sherbet or push up pops. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just hope, not matter how it’s lit, it doesn’t hurt. I often wonder what those last couple of days were for Nic. I couldn’t talk to him. I remember how I promised to be there when the time came. I hope he didn’t hurt. I hope he didn’t have time to be mad at me for standing at the end of a phone line rather than at the end of his finger. I have deep regrets. I’d say I could drive to Montana and back again a million times and those miles still would never equal how deep those regrets are inside of me. They flow like a river. They cut and leave behind boulders and stones piled so high, I don’t know if can get over them. Maybe you aren’t supposed to get over them, but just float by them from time to time and acknowledge that they exist, that they are now apart of who you are. These regrets, they are my own Grand Cannon.

I have three weeks and 5,000 miles to think. I have miles and miles of time to just listen. It’s long overdue. I’ve been wondering, who am I now, what have I learned, is my landscape so altered? Who do you become after you loose the man you thought you were going to marry and then shortly after your Uncle and Aunt? I’ve asked this a million times the past few months. When I do, all I hear the echo of the TV, the reverberation of sound waves on the radio, the blinking curser on the computer screen( I know it doesn’t technically have a sound, but some days it seems louder than my answers).

I have days and days in Montana. I’ve learned that I always find myself there. Even this winter when I went to say goodbye to Nic, I met with that stronger version of me that I didn’t even know that I had left behind. I was thankful to see her there. She carried me through. I get to see these people who are in essence, Montana to me. They carry that pioneer sprint in them that I understand. I found myself with them before, I’m depending on that once again. I’ll just be glad to stand in a room, a field, anywhere in proximity with them as we point our camera’s toward the same things. I’m also depending on that substance that’s inside of me that always, always gets through, that always finds away out, away through, away above.

I’ve never once wondered where God was in all of this. I’ve felt him all along and everyday, every last one, I am thankful for the ways he works in my life. I think often if not for photography, I’d never be here in this every exact moment, writing these very exact words. If not for photography, I’d never went to Montana. I’d never met these people who altered me, never seen these glimpses of big sky and up heaved earth that made me feel so small. If not for photography, I don’t know that I’d made it through these past months. I’ve leaned on it and I’ve depended on it. I’m never going to question God’s ways or God’s timing. I’m just glad to know that he knows. He has blessed me over and over and over. I'm glad he gave me a camera and glass and big feelings that I could never get out any other way.

I have great expectations for this trip I guess, but Montana’s big enough to hold all of that. And really, I can’t complain about any of this. These total crap times are what makes the good times good. These crap times are the times you grow. I’ve paused long enough to say ouch. Now I want my Band-Aid damn it. I want miles of road, miles of song, miles of stories, miles of laughs, and miles of big sky.