Big Sky Montana

 

Big Sky Montana

Going Back

Back

“And we, spectators always, everywhere,
looking at, never out of, everything!
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. “Rilke

We are leaving at the end of a summer that is no different than the twenty that preceded it. When the decision to leave to the U.S takes shape and becomes an action, it appears, to my husband and me, as if it was there all along. We notice how the urgent need to go is consuming us, and everything around us. Our earth toned brick house, at the edge of the Judean desert overlooking the Dead-Sea, two cars, two cats, many friends and countless memories, are all left behind. “Maybe only for a short time, a break, that’s all,” we tell ourselves, and others, who nod, their eyes shifting, avoiding our faces, and the truth.

Following the footsteps of others, an ongoing theme in many of mankind sagas, is always uplifting, even if somewhat clichéd. Yet there is nothing of a banality in the way we experience our journey. From the congested northeast, my husband’s former home, we drive west to find a chosen place to spend the winter, or perhaps our life. For several weeks, we follow the sun’s slow journey across the sky, and the unending plains. The vastness of the land, until that moment only stories in books about the big, wild west, becomes a vivid reality.

The lines in the maps we study every evening turn, by morning, into fields and small towns that intrigue our imagination. Every sign declares the date, in which a town was established, and how many people live there, and we read them as chapters in a fascinating story. Is that the one? Should we stop here? One night we stop in a small town, in South Dakota, with a population of seven hundred people, in the local diner we hear all about the school that was destroyed by fire, and the new one being build. Could we live here, we wonder.

With the passing weeks and the changing sights we acquire a new sense of assurance, a sense that we have lost touch with for a long time, and discover again. Almost like the feeling that you have when you are young, that when true love will appear you will be able to recognize it.

 “The first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Inland of the Pacific Northwest,” I recite the words from the travel guide one late afternoon when we reach the outlook on the Fourth of July pass in the Rocky Mountains. The scene is as breathtaking as is the history of the pass itself. I can picture the line of wagons stopping briefly on the summit, exactly where we are standing taking in the view of the valley below, lovingly hugging the sparkling lake. The beauty of the landscape goes straight into my heart. From here the road, highway 90, zigzags down the mountain roughly following the path built by U.S. Army Captain John Mullan in the spring of 1859.

Northern Idaho is ‘it,’ we decide and for awhile embrace the differences between what was left behind, and our new reality. We settle in an A frame next to the lake and change, while at times hard to take, is exhilarating. In this profoundly religious part of the world we are a novelty, those people from the ‘holy land’. Whatever the reasons are and we don’t delve into them, the acceptance, and lack of cynicism are like warm soothing dressings.

And then like any fairy tale the story ends and reality takes hold.  When we board the plane to go ‘back east’ we promise ourselves (yet again) that we will be back. We still believe in it while flying over the massive jagged rock formation, topped now with white caps of fresh snow. It will be here, we believe, when we will come back like the timeless nomads that we are crossing mountain passes into green valleys, circling our wagons at the summit prepared for whatever comes our way.

***

I often wondered, and still do, how things could have developed had we stayed in this small corner of heavenly beauty and tranquility,  immersing our ‘lost and cynical souls’ in the deep set beliefs of those around us. I will never know. Less than two years we stayed in a house nesteled against the backdrop of the mountains, and then we left and resumed our journey that landed us in our current location in Maine.

This November we took another, quicker trip west. When the mountains, higher then I remembered them, settled inside the car windows I knew that they will follow us as loyal guardians all the way through the passes, and then along the steep descend down to the valley ending at the shores of the lake. I recognized the dense foliage that turns into a blur of greens, and the sense of anticipation, or perhaps just the thin air that yanked the breath off my lungs.

The Continental divide, Lookout and the Fourth of July Passes, Lake Coeur d’Alene, I was back, like I promised myself twelve years prior when we left, fourteen years since that day, so much like this one, when these mountain views were the first sign that our journey reached its destination. 

The car climbed up the road, the trees, and the mountain passes, same but entirely different. And I looked outside trying to commence the feelings that generated the stories that for years we told ourselves and others explaining our choice to stay, and then to leave. But I could not, the magical moments did not happen again. The mountains were just mountains, and the lake not different than hundreds I have seen since.  I remained cold inside, distant, uncaring. Maybe it is true that you cannot go back to the same place again, maybe the passing time is not a reflection of what was, but a mirror showing you what you want to see.

The Fourth of July Pass?

The Fourth of July Pass?

No this is not it. But almost. The entrance to Idaho on our trip back, twelve years after we left on March of 2003. Same road, almost the same time of day. I went over this moment many times in my head. Going back, exciting as it is is never the same.