What Makes Me Laugh

I used to say things like, “I could never live anywhere that didn’t have the four seasons.” Meaning snow, of course. The older I get, the more I hope to never say never, because right now I feel like I could live somewhere without the four seasons, very easily.

Yes, I ski. Yes, I get out during the winter. Yes, I do think snow is pretty, especially on the mountains on a clear day. But I have to say, the dark that comes with the cold around here makes me irritable, and the cold can be painful for someone with as poor of circulation as I apparently have. My hands double as ice cubes for most of the winter. I don’t even need to get an ice pack for an injury. I just put my hands on my neck or my knee, and get immediate relief. I wonder if that’s what they call a healer?

Unfortunately for Doug, I sometimes try and warm my hands or feet on his body, and he yelps like an animal in pain every time. I just don’t know why. Huh.

As I’ve noted before, amnesia sets in around here once the weather starts to warm up a bit, and you forget that you ever had thoughts about living in the South Pacific because summers are so perfect. But right now I wish I was a snow bird, and could fly until I felt the sun on my face and heard waves crashing from an ocean nearby. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

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!

Well, I can pretty much guarantee that I won’t be welcome in the Rising Trout coffee shop in Lewistown anymore. Which is really unfortunate, since I travel to Lewistown frequently for work, and it’s the only good coffee shop / bookstore in town.

On Friday, my colleague Mark and I stopped in there for a quick cup of coffee and a scone for the road. While we were waiting for several others to get served, I noticed a pile of fly-fishing dvd’s sitting on the counter, and the devil made me violate the other Golden Rule, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”

“Have you seen any of these?” I asked Mark.

“No, what are they?”

I picked one up and flipped it over to look at the back. “Oh, they’re kind of like those extreme skiing films you see where a backcountry skier gets dropped off by helicopter and they film his descent with a soundtrack playing behind it. Only, in this case, it’s a lot of slow-motion fishing sequences. It’s kind of like fly-fishing porn.”

Now, at this point in the conversation, what I don’t know is that the owner of the shop, who is serving us coffee —  well, her husband and her travel around the world to make these films. And I have just compared them to pornography. It’s not funny, and yet every time I think about it I get the giggles.

“Have you seen any of them?” she asks me, with a sort of challenging voice, while making Mark’s coffee. “They are kind of like the Warren Miller films for skiing.” (You can see a trailer for a Warren Miller film below. You’ll get the idea pretty quickly what I’m talking about.)

“I think I’ve seen parts of Drift,” I say. Unfortunately, I don’t stop there. Instead, I make a casting motion with my hand and simulate fly fishing in slow motion. “I fly fish, but I don’t fly fish in slow motion.”

Ouch. Suddenly, I realize she is giving me the look that could kill and it dawns on me that she’s taking this awfully personally.  We all fall silent while she finishes up Mark’s coffee.

When I get up to the counter she says slowly, “What do you want?”

Gee, I think, I hope my hot chocolate won’t be poisoned, and try to make sure she notices the $1 tip I leave. When we reach Mark’s car I say, “Well, I guess I shouldn’t have said anything about those films. I seem to have really offended her.”

I don’t know how badly I’ve put my foot in it until I repeat this story to a friend from Lewistown, and she explains why I got the look of death and suggests the next time I go back in there I buy a few of those films.

It’s honestly tempting. If you check out the trailer for Drift above, you’ll find some beautiful images. It’s very well made, but my problem with these kinds of films (especially about fly fishing) is that a.) Nature is “conquered” as a plot theme; b.) I don’t consider fly fishing an extreme sport (unlike backcountry skiing); and b.) as a group, fly fishing guides already have egos the size of Texas, and they don’t need films to make them feel more “special.”

I know Montana is famous for Norman MacLean’s book, “A River Runs Through It” and the the subsequent film and I love both. I also understand the fly fishing obsessed since Doug has been bit by that particularly bug. I just think the bro brah competitive culture around fly fishing gets a little old. That’s why I loved the short film by RA Beattie that my cousin Mary forwarded to me. It pokes some fun at the male fly fisherman and really makes me laugh. I couldn’t load it to my page but you can find it at Drake Magazine (click here): 177-stream-of-consciousness. Enjoy!

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 saturday night.

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:

• Five empty Busch Light beer cans
• A splotch of sticky red liquid (wine or paint?)
• One pair of women’s cotton underwear

And I had to laugh.

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.

Montana summers are the kind of summers people in southern parts dream about. They vacation here in dry 75 degree weather, with a cool breeze at night to ripple the leaves of the aspen trees, and talk about moving here someday.

Some of them do, and most of them leave after two years, when they finally realize the good weather lasts about six weeks. After that, days get windy and cold fast. But I’m not ready to ruin the mood yet with talk of bad weather. Right now I’m basking in the manic good mood that comes with lots of light and warmth and the all important vacation. Which is why, for those keeping track, I’ve been a little slower to blog, and a little quicker to play outside this month.

We just returned from hiker’s paradise, Glacier National Park, where I spent my “coming of age” summer between college semesters what seems an age ago. Glacier is a magical place. It’s full of grand mountain vistas, waterfalls, wildlife, and wild college students. Since it’s only open for three months a year in a fairly remote location, it results in a perfect marriage between corporate greed and broke college students. Which is why I saw at least two apoplectic tourists yell at the desk clerk while we were there.

Doug at Siyeh Pass

I worked in the kitchen in one of the grand lodges when I worked there. I learned to hate cantaloupe, and salad bars, and sandwiches, and pretty much all the food I had to manhandle on a daily basis. But I had a wonderful time with my coworker singing off Broadway tunes in the kitchen, and a so-so time singing country western cabaret at night for tourists (you can only sing the Tennessee Waltz a few times before you want to kill someone, preferably yourself).

The lodge at Many Glacier

I also learned to love hiking and grizzly bears and huckleberry ice cream and karaoke that summer. The karaoke thing hasn’t lasted (thank god) but the rest of it stuck. Which is why I jump at the chance to go back to Glacier every summer. You can see why.

Though the park has a few more visitors than I remember, the hikers are still quite a congenial crowd. We met a nice familial trio on the hike up to Grinnell Glacier. An enthusiastic father and his two sons strode along with us, and the 12-year-old kept a steady chatter going, giving the grizzly bears some fair warning of our presence.

The trail to Grinnell Glacier

“Where are you from?” I said.

“Wisconsin,” he answered.

“Wisconsin!” I said. “You know, we met some people on the trail yesterday from Wisconsin and I told them that everyone I’ve ever met from Wisconsin has been friendly. You have a very nice state.”

“It’s the cheese,” his dad replied. “It keeps us mellow.”

“That’s what they said yesterday. That exact quote!” I said, which was true, and they had also been exceedingly friendly.

When we arrived at Grinnell Glacier, we stopped for a late lunch, and I offered to share our smorgasbord of crackers, veggies, and other good stuff with the family because it seemed that the only item they brought with them to eat was Wisconsin cheese. The dad pulled out a large bag of sweating Wisconsin cheddar and string cheese from his backpack and swapped  it for some crackers and garden sweet peas. It was very good, and when I said so he gave a knowing smile and then a lecture on the evils of California cheese and the audacity of the Laughing Cow people to air ads in his state. Really, I’m not kidding. These people are serious about their cheese!

“Where’s your cheese from?” he said, pointing to the small wrapped packet of cheddar I carried to go with our crackers.

I looked down, a little ashamed.

“France.”

Fortunately, they had already agreed to take our picture.

Here’s the thing. I could be wrong about this. Way wrong. So wrong that I can imagine a laughing advice columnist sputtering coffee all over my letter before she advises medication. And yet, I wonder if I’m right? I wonder if our neighbors really don’t like us. I mean, really? Who wouldn’t like us?

We live in a relatively quiet small town in Montana in a relatively quiet neighborhood. Our house is on the corner of two streets, which means that our backyard intersects with the backyards of our two closest neighbors — Steph and Adam, Barb and Nate. This is our micro-neighborhood, if you will. Since we share a wooden fence with both parties, we know them fairly well. Plus, Doug and Barb work together, so that makes it even cozier. 

Our macro-neighborhood is a little less intimate with us, but no less interesting.

For instance Tom, our neighbor across the street, is a man I knew little about up until a couple of years ago. He wears his long, white hair back in a ponytail and seems to have a semi-annual run-in with the law. The rumor is that his next-door neighbors called the police because he was keeping a horse in his backyard, and the police had to persuade him to find a bigger pasture for his animal. Which is funny, since we lived with a rooster next door for two years, and fantasized calling the cops every time the rooster woke us up at ungodly hours of the morning.

Anyway, Doug was working in our front yard when Tom first  introduced himself. He said he had  heard us jamming one evening. Turns out he plays guitar too, and I’ve heard him sing Neil Young covers on his porch in a wan, sad way a few times. Doug trotted over to his house to see his fossil collection and hear stories of Tom backing up the band, “Ten Years After” and other tall tales.

But then Tom decided to show up on our doorstep one morning dead drunk, with a guitar strapped around his back and a harmonica to his lips.

“Is your old man in?” he asked, and I let him inside to share the song he wrote with us. Tom walked into the middle of our living room, took a wide cowboy stance while we watched from the kitchen (we were canning tomatoes) and belted out a nifty original tune sung  in the style of Neil Young. It expressed his sincere love for his ex-wife, and his sincere regret that she gave all of their money away to the local cult. It’s hard to rhyme with the words “Church Universal Triumphant” but I gave him points for trying. After the song, he explained that he hoped to reconcile with his wife and ran after her truck the last time he saw her to see if he could jump in the back and break out her back window with his fist as a gesture of his love (and I’m assuming anguish). “I think she might have come back to me,” he said. Too bad he can’t run faster than 5 miles an hour.

It’s been two years since Tom’s serenade and I still hide in the backyard when I see him venture onto the sidewalk. Not that he’s dangerous, but the whiskey and women and junk cars kind of preclude the kind of neighborly relationship where you barbecue together.  Sometimes you can know too much about your neighbor to be friends, without even trying.

Just not at the same time. This is what traveling in Montana is like. One night you’re picking up a thin, white terry-cloth towel from a hotel when you notice a warning sign posted in the bathroom that says, “Please do not use the ‘white linens’ for removing makeup or cleaning your shoes. That’s what the tissues are for,” and the next night you’re sleeping at a bed and breakfast where Michael Keaton rests his head before his hunting trips. 

I’ve been doing some “business” travel the past week, and since I work for The Wilderness Society, this includes getting to know some spectacularly wild landscapes and staying in some really out-of-the-way places.

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument

Montana is the 4th largest state in the union, and its reputation for beautiful, mountain scenery is justified. It’s just that about two-thirds of the state is more prairie than mountains and rarely visited by tourists. This isn’t all that bad, but when you show up in small prairie towns like Glasgow, or Malta, or Fort Peck, you just never know what kind of accommodations you’ll find. 

I called Doug from the Fort Peck Hotel and said, “So you know how some places you wish they would restore the historic features, like the woodwork? Well, this place doesn’t need to do that, since from what I can tell, they haven’t done anything at all to it since the 1930’s.” I didn’t want to use the shower, it looked so old, and the ceiling sagged in a few places over my bed. Blinds covered the window, with a pink sheet draped across the top for decoration. But what really puzzled me is why they offered six bars of soap and no other toiletries. Six bars of soap? I hardly use up one in a month at home.

But you know what, it’s better than staying at a chain hotel with no character at all, a place so homogenized that you’re not sure whether you’ve landed in Montana, California, New York, or New Jersey. I’ve been at conferences at Best Westerns where I’ve really had no clue about what was outside the conference center. The beauty of small towns and small town hotels is that they have character. They’re different. They even spawn different kinds of crimes.

Recently, two men got into a fight about the population of Hilger (which might have 50 year-round residents), and one man ended up dead at the end of the argument. I often pass through Hilger on my way to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and I’ve never seen a population sign, but it’s tempting to go into the Rainbow Bar and ask, “So how many people live in Hilger?” and then slip out when the debate begins.