October.
Sitting here on my couch, wrapped in blankets, drinking a hot cup of coffee, watching the leaves whip off the trees…I can almost feel like I am back home.
I have cleaned the garden out, I have closed the windows for the season, found the hats, the gloves the boots. The heater has been cleaned in preparation of hibernation.
All that is missing is the smell.
The smell of Northwest Montana in the fall is the one smell that I will never forget. Spicy. Crisp. Woodsmoke drifting from chimmneys, frost on the stubbled field….the smell of soil rising as you walk through the woods.
Well the mountains are missing too. There is snow in the mountains, I would be watching the line slowly drift farther and farther into the valley, pulling skis and snowshoes to the front of the closet, pushing bags of suntan lotion and paddles to the back.
It amazes me that 12 years after leaving, I still ache to go back…even though I know it is not the place for me.
I want the place…the time….the air, the roads…and those things just aren’t there anymore. Malls stand on my empty fields, houses filll my woods. My house is gone, replaced by some sort of pre-fab housing production company. My town is twice the size, I could get sushi there if I wanted. All the people who made that town home are gone, scattered like dust motes across the country.
When I was there, all I wanted was to leave. To head to the east and search the world….to find myself and fufill all those dreams that fueled me.
Today I have found myself. I am sitting on a rock, staring out at the choppy October water of a mountain lake, pulling my hat down lower in the shade of the mountain.
I’ll be back. Someday.
