Heading to Montana

I was sitting in the middle seat on a totally full plane heading to a family reunion in Montana. Other than my sister Elaine and her husband Dominique (who I don't see very often), I hadn't seen or talked to any of these people in 25 years or more. It didn't seem like family. It felt like barging in on some other family's get together.

I'm not the sort of person who is any good at small talk. Social situations with large numbers of people are very energy draining. Even more so if they're strangers who all know each other.

Looking through the plane window, it always seems like the plane is barely moving, but before you know it, you find yourself far away.

It's a cliche to say time is like that. But it is like that.

It must have been forty years since I was a child at my grandfather's farm in Idaho. It sat in a narrow valley between two mountains, with a shallow creek running through. I remember it as mostly dry prairie grasses with a few trees here and there. There were two houses side-by-side made of what seemed like weathered wood within some sort of fenced in yard with a straight concrete walkway to a simple gate. A short dusty gravel private road led down to the slaughterhouse where the cows were butchered. I would sit on a wooden bench watching it all, maybe even eating a Wonder Bread peanut butter sandwich. It was like a live B-movie slasher film, with shows daily. Always the same show, different cow. My Grandpa Joe and Uncle Wendell and maybe others, I don't recall, perpetually in overalls, they'd be hacking and sawing away to the same script each time.

I remember my grandmother as being soft-spoken, down to earth, offering short bits of advice to do some-sort-of-thing or else some other bad thing would happen. My grandfather was happy, easy-going, he always seemed like he had everything already figured out. He'd walk down to the creek and toss the rocks around for a few minutes, then go back to the endless work that the farm seemed to demand.

I remember Uncle Wendell (I don't even know if that's the right spelling!) lived in the other house along with two kids... was it Joey and Tracy? I never saw the inside of the house: It was one of the great mysteries of the farm, along with whatever was in the musty smelling cellar, the supposedly terrifying insects hiding among the unexplainable implements in the shed, and the Indians living beyond the edge of the farm who I seem to recall would arrive to take away the parts of the butchered cow that no one wanted. I don't remember much about Wendell except that he seemed like an easy-going, hard worker like my grandfather, both of them seemed tall, thin, and sturdy. I vaguely remember Joey, who was around my age, and Tracy, an older kid.

Everything in the valley gently sloped upwards toward the mountain on one side. More of a hill than a mountain, really. It always seemed to me like you could simply walk up to the top without any trouble. I remember the adults and older kids did, but I never recall anyone saying what was up there. To me, it was another great mystery of the farm.

My branch of that family had moved to Los Angeles and it just seemed like the farm and the people there grew further away with every year.

I navigated through all the years since then with varying results. Lots of things I wish I'd done differently. Lots of things I'm glad I did differently: I've never fit anyone's idea of what a person ought to be or do. People ask where I'm from and I don't have any answer they're looking for. They're really not asking what location you lived in, they're trying to figure out what tribe you belong to.

Routinely I would recieve a handmade greeting card in the mail from Kathryn Smith who I recall was my aunt. I'd save the envelope and address with the idea that this year I would actually do the right thing and respond, but with nothing in particular to say, and having never responded to the last 20 cards, it seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.

I live in Boston now. It's fine, but I liked Rhode Island better. The people are a little less rude and arrogant there. Actually more than a little.

Over the years, every now and then, I've had dreams about my grandfather's farm from my childhood. Except the farmhouses are empty and it's like a 2-house ghost town. I'd start walking up the hill to finally see what's up there, but never make it. One time, I dreamed that I got to the top and it was a whole city, with no explanation how it got there.

So anyway, the airplane finally landed in Salt Lake City and I met up with Elaine and Dominique. We flew the next flight to Missoula where we got supplies at Costco and some other store and then headed up to Seely Lake.