We’ve been preparing the garden and doing our own form of early summer weed whacking. Doug is our resident Zen master dandelion slayer, bending over good portions of the day to pull them by hand from the yard. If it were up to me they’d probably take over the yard, but Doug is persistent.
Doug's dead dandelion pile
Early summer around here is a magnificent party, where the lilacs and apple blossom fragrance fills the air, and the mountains shine with snow on top of velvet green. It makes me want to write poetry. Instead, I soak up the fresh rain, putter in our garden, and root for Doug against the dandelions. May it always be thus.
I’m leaving today for Las Vegas to run Sunday’s Rock ‘N Roll Half Marathon on the Vegas strip. Both Vegas and running a half will be a first, and I hope to survive both.
So far I’ve survived running in the rain, the wind, the snow, and the ice, so whatever lies ahead can’t be that bad. A big part of my life for the last six months has been getting myself in shape for this and following a gradual training plan, so I’ve put in some miles around our town (which provides me an opportunity to show off a few photos of Livingston). We have a nice park in town, with a short walking path along the Yellowstone River.
I’ve also perfected my “don’t mess with me” pedestrian face for running on the road. Even in small towns people can be oblivious or rude or both to runners and walkers, and I’ve developed a near phobia of cars. Doug and I’ll take walks in the evening, and if I even hear a car I jump. So, thankfully, the course in Vegas will be automotive-free. Looking forward to observing lots of funny stuff to post on the blog next week!
I think it’s about time I start writing about where I live, because it’s a funny place. Jimmy Buffet even wrote a song about it. When I finally read the lyrics I was surprised to find a few references to deviled eggs in bars. I’m no real partyer but I’m pretty sure no Livingston bars serve deviled eggs. It’s probably against the health codes.
’cause they’ll be rockin’ and a rollin’ on a livingston saturdaynight.
In actuality, Saturday is kind of dead in Livingston, and Friday nights are busy. We like to celebrate the end of the work week.
So, a reader of my blog wrote to ask a few questions about Livingston, and I decided it’s high time I wrote my own Insider’s Guide to Livingston, Montana.
Let’s address the most important questions first:
Why Livingston instead of Bozeman?
Well, this is true. Why would you live 30 miles from where you work, over a mountain pass, in a community that gets nearly blown away every winter by wind? And the answer is easy. To get away from Bozeman. Bozangeles (as I like to call it) has a few more people who don’t have to work for a living and a lot more big box stores. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot less expensive over here to live. I’m okay with creating some space for myself over here in the windy city.
Is the wind really that bad?
Yes. Livingston is officially the third windiest city in the United States. What does this actually mean? It means that in the summer, when the snowbirders are in town, the wind is fairly quiet, with some occasional afternoon gusts that could make boating on the Yellowstone quite difficult. In the winter we batten down the hatches and prepare for gusts up to 80 mph, passing semi-trucks and trailers on their sides on the Interstate, tree limbs flown into the street, and the feeling like you’re on a ship out to sea when you climb into bed.
Doug says I’m the only person he knows who doesn’t complain about the wind, because, believe it or not, I grew up somewhere windier. But, the wind is survivable, and you kind of forget about it come summer. I recommend buying a white noise machine and checking the condition of the roof carefully before you buy a house here.
My favorite fact about Livingston:
Livingston is a city for writers. Per capita, we have the most professional writers of any city in the United States. Dave McCumbe, an author himself, chased down the litany of writers in town. They include:
“Novelist and Time Magazine columnist Walter Kirn. Mystery writers Jamie Harrison and Peter Bowen. Environmental authorities Doug Peacock, Alston Chase and Thomas McNamee. Fishing and hunting writers John Holt and Ben 0. Williams. jazz critic and humorist James Liska. Foreign correspondent Thomas Goltz. cowgirl poets Gwen Petetsen and Sandy Seaton. The fine historical novelist, Richard S. Wheeler. journalist Steve Chapple, Debby Bull, Maryanne Vollers, Max Crawford, Diane Smith, Steven Hughes, Kim Leighton, et cetera.
Then there are the literary drop-ins, those who spend at least part of the year here on a regular basis. They include Jim Harrison, Peter Mattheissen, Guy de la Valdene, Toby Thompson, Richard Ford and Robert F. Jones.”
I remember walking in the Owl Bar when I first moved here and loving the fact that as many books were behind the bar as liquor bottles. I assumed that all of them were written by people who’d sat on a stool but the bar was sold before I could ask. I’d like to have a book of mine sit behind a bar some day. Then I’d have a laugh.
The bus drops me off in front of the Montana State University student union every morning, and I walk the mile downtown to work. For some reason they don’t have the downtown bus timed to pick up the Livingston commuters, but no matter, I could use the walk.
The walk through campus in the morning makes me feel like I’m in college again —students streaming toward me, the nip of fall in the air, odd statuary. And as I walk through the off campus housing, a few signs that wild times are still alive and well.
This morning I passed by the following items on the sidewalk of 7th Street:
On Tuesday I was waiting for the bus to take me home, reading a book, and checking my watch every few minutes.
My fellow commuters were stretched out on the university’s lawn, plugged into ipods or blackberries or books. The bus was late, but they didn’t seem too concerned.
I, on the other hand, had just walked like an Olympic speed walker for a little over a mile to get to the bus stop on time and my heart rate wasn’t down to a normal level. I watched my fellow travelers for cues as to whether to be alarmed, but they seemed relaxed. Finally, fifteen minutes after the scheduled departure time another bus pulled up to pick up passengers and a woman approached the driver.
“Did you ask her about the Livingston bus?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “The driver got lost. He’ll be here soon.”
“He got lost?” I repeated back to her. “Lost?”
This might be possible in Seattle, or Los Angeles, or somewhere a hell of a lot more urban than Bozeman, but if you’ve been in Bozeman, Montana for more than a day you’ve probably seen the whole town, or at least the main routes.
We all stood around chuckling at the thought of someone lost in Bozeman and legitimately worried about our trip home. When the bus arrived a woman immediately said to the pushing-sixty-year-old driver, “We’re going to Livingston. Exit 330.”
“I’ve only been there once,” he said. “Last year, so you may have to give me directions.”
Directions? In a town where you can make approximately two right turns and get to the Interstate that will take you directly to Livingston? I couldn’t help myself. I had to laugh. We all did.
Once he picked up speed on the Interstate I thought our worries were over, but I was wrong. He hit the tight curves in the canyon too fast and we all swung back and forth across the leather seats like we were on a carnival ride. For some reason, this sparked another round of giggles among us, and we laughed for a good ten minutes about our driver’s initiation to the Livingston commute.
Montana isn’t a state known for its public transportation system. People live in hundreds, not tens, of miles from each other, and most places aren’t served by either Greyhound or Amtrak. I shouldn’t complain about the bus – it is after all an incredible free perk for commuters who travel to work the 25 miles between Bozeman and Livingston.
And it’s also a remedy for people who are driving impaired. I joke to Doug that you can tell who in town has had his license jerked for a DUI. He’s riding a bike past our house, in a 30 mph wind, gripping his cowboy hat in one hand, and pedalling fast with his faded cowboy boots. He’s clearly not a recreational mountain biker. He’s in need of a bus.
All I can figure is sometimes we all need to be slowed down a little bit, or maybe even lost.
Doug replaced our weathered bathroom window last week with a new, energy efficient window that won’t cause a shoulder injury when you try to open it. It looks fabulous, but as of yet we haven’t purchased a curtain. This is problematic because the view from our window is our neighbor’s backyard and kitchen windows. Therefore, while my neighbor is having his morning coffee with his visitors from Switzerland, he could casually look over his shoulder and see me stripping.
This harkens me back to when we first moved in six years ago, when the house window coverings were missing, so the first two weeks we covered the bathroom window with a towel, and then Doug decided that a better, more artistic solution would be to paint a watercolor mural on the window. Let’s just say that this was not a sober inspiration, but it did do the trick.
So anyway, I enter the bathroom this morning with the uncovered window, notice my neighbor’s kitchen lights are on and the drapes are open, realize that I really need to use the toilet and drop down on all fours to wrestle off clothing from my lower body. I’ve since learned that putting it on while trying to avoid being seen is much harder and requires a few Pilates-like moves. Hunched over on the toilet so that they couldn’t see my head, I decided that if I crawled to the tub and pulled the curtains around me I could throw off the rest of my clothing without the neighbors seeing an inch of flesh. They might see clothes flying through the air, but at least no naked booty.
I’m sudding up (which by the way, I learned recently during a Scrabble match with Doug that sud is not a word – it can only be plural, so I’m not sure if sudding is a word either, but I’m using it) when I realized that I’m out of shampoo. This is because I’ve been using the last dregs of complimentary hotel shampoo and haven’t had time to buy my own.
So, what to do. I could wash my hair without actually washing my hair. I could jump out, towel off, and try to streak through the bathroom to the bedroom, where I thought I might find another bottle. Or, there was a slight chance I could find one in the bathroom storage drawers next to the tub.
I peeked out of the curtain. Great! The window was fogged up, so I leaned over the tub while the water was running and searched my stash of hotel gifts. Damn. It was all lotion. I really never use the lotion samples they give out, but I keep them just in case. I slipped the curtains closed and considered my options yet again. I looked at the empty shampoo bottles in the shower. Well, you never know, I thought, and then proceeded to fill them with water in hopes that a dreg of soap would be left. Bingo! I sudded up the hair. I love when that happens.
Once I was dressed, the words “shampoo” and “curtain” made it onto my shopping list. Which leads me to the moral of the story, which is that Sunlight Dish Soap may be the healthiest thing you put on your head in the morning.
I was browsing Salon magazine today and immediately noticed an article entitled, “What’s really in your shampoo.” So I’m reading it, thinking at the end that the author, Bill Bunn, will advise buying a very expensive organic shampoo that you can only mail-order from Brazil and instead he advised using Sunlight Dish Soap!
And I laughed. Here’s what he had to say:
“My new shampoo, Sunlight Dish Detergent, has just four ingredients. It’s runny and slightly acidic, smells vaguely lemony, doesn’t foam excessively and looks anemic. It’s not perfect, just better. I need to apply it only once when I shampoo. With each shampoo, I use a 10th of the volume that regular shampoo requires. The bottle will last at least a year, as my last one did. And though its ingredients aren’t worth celebrity endorsement, my hair gets clean and I expose my body and the environment to less risk.”
Well, I never. I’m going to give it a try and report back.
