"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.

Six miles this way.

Today, I thought the most reckless thing I could do was drive across a bridge hovering over a very pregnant and angry river. Overflowing river banks are nothing compared to finding myself alone with nothing but hours of waiting to fill my time. I had no place to be until four so I turned right solely because a sign promised me that there would be a campground six miles down the road. I spend most days looking for signs. This one seemed honest enough. I never saw a campground.

I need new glass or.................

Maybe I just need to close my eyes for a while so that when I reopen them I can see the world a little different?

What you say to the dark.

What you say to the dark.


I stood with the key in the door, face against the glass wondering if I should turn that knob or not. I've driven by the camp twice and up to it once and I'd never been able to make it out of the car. I was now at the door and I still didn't know if I could go in. I knew you weren't going to be in there, but something silly and unreasonable in me tried to convince myself that you'd might just be. I leaned against the door so long the glass fogged over from the combination of my breath and my tears. I turned the knob and I spilled into the kitchen and that old, familiar and wonderful musty smell greeted me and I've never wanted to turn around and leave so bad in my life. How can it be there, that house, that smell and you not be? You're just as much that place as I am. I loved you there. You sat on the couch, and you slept in that bed and you rested by the river. I made you peanut butter and M&M cookies and you cooked pizza in that oven. You touched that spoon and this one. You sat on the couch and did your breathing treatments while I read in the chair. I washed your ice cream bowels and your cereal bowels while you played video games as I rinsed them out and put them on the rack to dry. I liked the way that felt. I liked way that sounded. It was so normally average and common. It was evidence that you existed.

The living room was full of the outdoor furniture. I could hardly see the couch, and yet I expected you to be setting there on the corner with your big, wonderfully dirty feet stretching out before you. I could see you there, inviting me over. Oh, to grab that fuzzy green blanket and lay my head in your lap as we watch a movie. To feel your fingers in my hair and your warm hand on my back. I could close my eyes and I could hear your and feel you and see you there, but when I opened my eyes it was just stacks of green rocking chairs, that certain porch swing and dots of wicker chairs.

I headed past your bedroom knowing there was no way I cold pause there,even for a second. I remember on the mornings I'd wake up before you that I'd tiptoe past your room as quiet and as loud as I could. I didn't want to wake you up but I did all the same. I ran to my bed and I tucked my arms under me. The cold air rested around me but I stayed in that on spot until it warmed from my body heat alone, and that's all that I felt there, my body heat and damp cold pillow that only suffered more as I cried into it. I'd brave peek now and then through my curls and still you weren't' there smiling back and acting like you weren't just watching me. How can all that be here and you not be?

I lay there until the quiet bothered me. The trains rushed past and the dogs barked and both seemed louder than they ought too. I remember you said you'd hid stuff throughout the house and I began ripping into it even though I found almost all of it before you even left. Your letters and your t-shirt all remind me that maybe you knew all along that that week was it. I looked in every drawer and every cabinet and under every bed. I found nothing else. I still didn't find you. I remember when my aunt and I drove over and closed it down for winter, that as I boxed up the food, I found your cans of soup and how that made me sigh and that the other day at the house, I saw it in the pantry I found it again and this time it made me cry. Can you immortalize a can of soup? I may take it back and glue it to cabinet shelf. Just more proof you were indeed there.

I let the screen door slam the way I like it too and I went and sat on the river bank. I sat close to the fire pit the way we did that evening. I remember we sat there for a while even though it was raining. The rain pelted the river but the the trees sheltered us for a while longer and protected the fire. We ended up sitting in the screen room watching the fire fade out from there. I left when the ground felt too cold and the wind blowing off the water cut and pinked up my skin. I walked back through the house on more time, just in case you sneaked in while I was on the river. I locked the door and I sat on the front steps. I remembered you
setting there with me one afternoon talking about the cone flowers and the marigolds.

How can I be here and you not be? I'd rather talk to you than whisper in the dark.

24

They pushed you by.
Deceivingly quiet I sat.
Inside stormed,"Not yet. Just a few more minutes please. Please?
They drove you away anyway.....

Episodic?
Oh, yes please.

I fall apart.I hit the road.
I’m only as good as the charge on my mp3 player.
I take the long way home.

I am music, really,really bad music, until the tiny hours of morning.
(techno beats and everything)
Diet Mt.Dew has yet to equal a bubbly cure for insomnia.
Just thought I’d experiment.

A little reverse psychology.

It’s still just fizzy fruit juice laced with crack.
My heart feels like it will explode upon consumption.

I have pages of words, but I can’t find them.
How can I tell your mother of the ways I loved you?
How can the words I tell your father ever surface the way they sit honest and true and big in me?

We seem to be novella.

I am.........

A quiet dark thing.