Notes from a window looking out at Montana:

June 27

It’s been raining since yesterday when a lightening storm rolled through western Montana. The morning started early with birdsong and the wet lull of rain on the windows and metal roof. A weird sort of quiet hung like the fog in the valley, the mountain across the way hidden in the cloud.

I like rainy days, though this year more than ever I’ve craved sun. Just sun. We didn’t see the sun much this winter, and it still hasn’t caught up to me. Life in western Montana. Visitors think it’s always sunny. It’s not. But when it is, it somehow makes it worth the rest.

This is how the day has played out, like so many lately. I wake up to the sound of the birds. My dog is laying across my feet. I look up and see him peering at me, like he’s been waiting for me to wake up. I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.

I slide out of bed quietly, though I’ll probably knock my water bottle over and make a ruckus regardless of how sneaky I feel like I’m being. I pull on a sweatshirt and tiptoe down the stairs. I hear Acre jump from the bed and follow me, his claws making a pleasant ticking sound as he descends.

He’ll go sit by his food bowl by the rear sliding glass door while I pee and then start heating water for coffee. Looking at his wonderful patience I’m a sucker, and I’ll feed him early even though I know that he’ll probably start nudging me earlier and earlier in the day for his food if I give in like this. But look at that expression… the poor boy is starving for god’s sake.

So I scoop his food, put a little bonus chicken and pumpkin on the top, a few frozen blueberries. Yes, he’s spoiled. I don’t deny this. He waits patiently though, and when I go to set the bowl he lays down like he’s doing a trick for a reward. Then he jumps up and eats. And then I make a coffee.

Our coffee grinder is loud. I’m shocked that of all the noises this is one that doesn’t seem to wake anyone. The espresso machine then hums, and the elixir is complete. Magic Black Juice.

I like to spend my earliest hour without my phone. I sit with my journal and write with pen first, sometimes shocked at how much I have to write, other times shocked at how little I have to write. Then if the hour isn’t over, though it often is, I’ll pick up a book and read a bit. Or a paper. I’ve recently discovered the County Highway, and it’s given me a renewed pleasure in reading journalism. Over the last several years I’ve cancelled all my subscriptions, quite a few really. High Country News. National Geographic. Harpers. The New Yorker. At one point Outside Magazine, though I think that was my first to cancel a decade ago. The others lingered in my life until I realized I just didn’t like them any more. They all began to feel preachy in a religious sort of way. They all started to carry a similar agenda and ideology and it take on a tone of consternation and condescension. You see and hear a lot of that socially these days. People have forgotten it is ok to converse, even enjoy the company of people they may disagree with. It’s actually become really problematic for our society. People disagree on a few things and write people off completely as a result. “I just can’t deal with them anymore…” and what not.

People have written off friends, family, and acquaintances over ideas that have no true bearing on their lives. Theoretical things that are often decided completely out of their hands. That to me is a sad state of society. Before we all had constant bombardment of electrons in our hands telling us how, what, when, where, and why to think, people were much more likely to just go about their days in civil pleasantries. Now there are just so many god damn opinions that dare not give an inch and dare not risk being wrong, that lines are constantly drawn, and many dare not cross.

I’m personally trying to get the device out of my hand, out of my brain. For one I find the 2 second attention span it promotes is antithetical to what I want to foster in my mind. It’s the reason I like Substack. It’s the reason I like long walks. It’s the reason I like books, real books, with physical pages, that I turn by hand. It’s the reason I like albums, records even. Long form thinking. Less sound bite. More form. More development.

Music is actually a good example of this. An album is, for some musicians anyway, more than collection of songs. It’s a creation that tells a story. Each song is a part of the larger form. And only if you’ve listened to the whole do you see the whole picture. Not only has music digressed away from album themes, now we get snippets of songs. And for many works there is one small snippet that is clearly meant to be the “attention getter.” I hate snippets.

When I hear my darlings alarm go off I go make her a coffee and deliver it to her in bed. She’ll sit there and enjoy it. Sometimes I join her, sometimes I go back to my spot and keep reading or writing. I love these early moments of the day. Soon I’ll open my phone. I’ll start going into email. I’ll start the work that needs to happen for the day.

Ella leaves for the shop. Our daughter is working there full time this summer too. It’s become a multigenerational family business I guess, which surprises me how cool that is. After they leave I head to the creek with Acre to reset my mind and body. Yes, sleep is a reset, especially for the body, but something about starting the day with a good cold shock puts it into a state that is ready for anything and everything the day can throw at me. It’s the wake up. Far more than coffee. It’s also a few minutes in the woods. Trees. Bushes. This morning everything is dripping and the rain is falling. I don’t pass anyone along the trail. Everything is quiet with the exception of a few birds, a few squirrels. Dripping. I get in the creek and lay down and slowly start my counting. I’ll stay in past the shock and get to a point about three or four minutes in where it just relatively comfortable in the discomfort. This time of year my body doesn’t really get that cold, but for some reason my hands do, so I force them deeper, trying to push the blood into them. Then I dry off on the creek bank and just enjoy a few minutes looking around. Then we head back. As I’m riding my bike, Acre chasing and running along side me, he swoops in the long grasses and emerges with a stick he’ll carry the rest of the way home. He brings one almost every day. We have a giant pile of sticks in the yard that we use in the fire pit. All carried by mouth to our yard from the creek.

As the day progresses I take a break to stop in here. I’ve been looking forward to it since Monday. I always wonder if I’ll have something to write. I’ve been working on some short stories that I’m not happy with. I keep at it with the hope that one will eventually work. Why is it short stories almost seem more challenging that long stories. It’s not true of course. It’s easy to start long stories, but in fact extremely challenging to finish them. But short stories… they are just hard the whole way through? I think part of it is the intimidation of expectation. Not that anyone else puts on them, but that I myself put on them. I’m my harshest critic. I know when writing isn’t good. At least I tell myself that. And I’m rarely happy with any short story I write. It’s why you don’t find them on here yet.

But writing in this form comes easy. I just sit. Type. I often think I’ll dive more into what is going on… It’s an election year. The world has gone mad. We are stuck in a two party/one thought-party system. Censorship just won a big case with the SCOTUS Missouri vs Biden ruling. Climate change is being overused for political and social manipulation to the point of nausea. Virtue signaling is everywhere. People need a good dose of get the fuck off your phones. There is more than enough fodder for writing about culture. But for some reason I’d rather just write about my truck and the woods and what it’s like to sit under the stars and go on a long run in the woods and take pictures of the same valley over and over and over.

I think we have enough of “what is wrong” in the electronic world bombarding us daily. I don’t need to write about that stuff. Not for me, not for anyone else. We have that in spades. But what I think I can use, what readers here seem to connect with, is how can we move forward and interact with the world in a better way, a way that makes us feel better, that makes our friends feel better, that makes our community feel better. What are the tools I found… writing them out isn’t just for others. I’ve always used written word much more selfishly than that… I’ll admit it unapologetically - I write for my own brain first and foremost. I’ve come to quite enjoy sharing it, but I’ve been doing this for years, and it is the way I figure things out for myself. I can go years of doing things and not until I’ve put it in words do I realize the significance of that thing in my life. Which is weird. Because it is actually doing the thing that is important, not realizing it. But somehow the realizing helps too. Like swimming in the creek everyday. I don’t need to write it to know its significance. But when I do put it in words, it helps me hone in on just how significant that thing is in my life. There are tons of things like this in our day to day, steps we take that are critical to our happiness and satisfaction in life, but we often overlook their significance until they are taken from us, or, as luck would have it for me, I think about it, write, and realize it.

Talking to your favorite sibling on the phone. Catching up with our neighbor in passing. Seeing a certain mailbox that always catches our eye. That cup of coffee. The view just over that hill, and the way the road winds. God damn that’s beautiful. I love that every time I see it. The way the wind catches those leaves and turns the underbelly out before the rain… The way my dog is staring at me when I wake up. I know he’s waiting for his food, but there is an attachment there too. I kinship. A friendship. These little parts of our day that actually make the whole day.

Before bed tonight I’ll step out on to the porch. If I’m being totally honest, it’s often to pee before bed. But I always take that moment to just stare out into the trees, look across the valley, stare up at the sky. Some nights if the stars are out I’ll go grab my camera just to see if I can bottle a glimpse of it. I like to take the outside air in before bed. I like to take the trees into my mind, and let those branches sway around as I’m drifting off to sleep. Before sleep, just like after, I don’t like to let the electronic hoards have access to my brain. They have enough access during the day. Going into sleep I want the nature of simple and quiet as I drift into the subconscious. We have a larch that grows up within touch of the porch. It’s one of my favorite trees. Right now the little green larch needles are so soft and green. They feel nice to touch. The stars over the mountain up there… that is a view that actually affects my mind more positively in 2 minutes than anything in the electronic sphere all day. And I think that is the point I’ve come to realize, not just now, but through the course of my whole life. Short moments in the natural world are more valuable than anything else. A walk in the wood, a walk down the street. I remember a lot of sunsets and moonrises in my life, but one of the early ones that brought me to actual pause happened at the intersection of 421 and I-465. I was in high school. The sun had just and a full moon was work its way up. A pink and orange sky in all directions, and there, in that low horizon Indiana, not even over the fields, but over the interstate that giant full moon. I pulled off the ramp and stopped and got out of the car (it was a slower area back then, now you’d likely be run over) and took a picture because I could. That picture is long gone, but not in my mind. My mind remembers it all. These are the moments we live for. It’s not the car you drive. It’s not the things you accumulate or don’t accumulate. It’s the little moments that make up your day to day that you find incredible pleasure in. The more you go about with the goal of collecting them mentally, the more you realize them, see them. Little glimpses. Long moments. You can’t hold any of them forever but you can always find another.