It’s getting interesting. 2013 was an amazing year professionally, and I’m thrilled to have several short stories appearing in the coming weeks. My snarky science fiction tale, “9 Steps from Door 9” will be appearing in Spark IV along with a bevy of fantastic writers. My epic science fiction/mystery/wolf tale “Lost Planes, Lost River” is set for the January edition of Perihelion Science Fiction. And if you haven’t yet, check out my latest piece, “Hydra” over at AE: Science Fiction. There are also several other projects looming large, so large that they are taking almost all my time. More details to come….
I planned to write a detailed year in review, but those things always come off as so self-involved. If you’re on this site, simply check the “Story” section for 2013. Maybe skim down and see some of the nature entries.
So how do I feel about another year added to the stack? Honestly, I don’t feel any different. I’m not even sure I’m supposed to. I do know it’s cold and snowy, so that means winter. And my heart is still beating, which is nice. I know I need water and food, and I know I’m on this floating ball of rock just like all of you, wondering about the why’s and the how’s.
In November and December I had the privilege of shooting bighorn rams in far northwestern Montana. I had never been to the area before, and was thrilled to discover the furthest inland temperate rainforest in the world and the existence of a small band of grizzly bears. On top of that were the bighorn. They emerged slowly from tree line one morning, breath frosty and eyes wild.
Although not the tallest range in Montana (Snowshoe Peak is the highest at 8,738 feet), the Cabinet Mountains tower 6,000 feet over the river valleys, which is what counts when considering potential “oh wow” factor.
In my time spent in the Cabinets in sub zero temperatures, I came to realize these rutting bighorn were the true ambassadors to country I had never seen before. All through the morning I heard the crack of their horns as they smashed heads. Sitting here in the sprawl of Chicagoland, I can still hear them if I listen close enough.
Yeah, Missoula. My favorite town. Why? Missoula is the finest outdoor town in the lower 48. You can hang in a coffee shop and five minutes later be in the Lolo National Forest. Just to the southwest lies the largest wilderness complex in the lower 48, the Selway-Bitterroot/Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Directly north looms the Rattlesnake Wilderness, the Mission Mountains, and incomparable Flathead Lake. To the northeast you’ll encounter the southern tip of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, known by most as the Glacier National Park/Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Directly to the east rise the Sapphire Mountains, Rock Creek, and the Welcome Creek Wilderness. Two blue ribbon trout streams flow through town, the Bitterroot and the Clark Fork. Water is everywhere unlike the Rockies south of the Wind Rivers. Yellowstone National Park is a bite-sized four hours away. All of this public land serves as a barrier to unchecked development.
For the most part the people are kind, and lack the jaded sarcastic edge of metropolis suburbs (where everyone got everything they always wanted for Christmas). I keep waiting for that cynicism, that snark in various conversations (because I myself have it) but it never comes. It’s a shock, but a welcome one. I’ve made great friends in Missoula on my trips, and this year was no exception.
I’ve been in and out of Missoula for the past couple of months, and honestly I hate to leave. Part of the reason for the trip besides wildlife photography and work was to research relocation possibilities. I had it narrowed it down to Seattle, Portland, Missoula, or Chicago. Now it’s down to Missoula and Chicago.
The problem is I really don’t want to leave. Oh, I’ve tried. I got as far as Rock Creek and became nauseous. Pretty crazy right? Why would a 6’3 195 pound scary-looking dude such as myself act so afraid?
Sprawl.
It scares the hell out of me. If you’ve read any of my work, you’ll know how often the topic of sprawl comes up. The contrast between the sprawl in Montana and Chicagoland is stark. In Chicago, if a fifteen year old strip mall starts to look slightly worn, they just build another one four miles down the road. The net effect of this is miles of avenue entirely devoted to dead malls (see Route 64 from St. Charles to Chicago). In Montana, what little sprawl exists is kept in check by millions of acres of public land such as national parks and forests. Northern Illinois has none of that. So farmland gets bought up for new strip malls and housing tracts, and it’s just going to go on and on. I feel like an ant there, burdened by an urge to chew off a hunk of leaf and scurry back to the colony. The absolute greed on display by city and county officials in contributing to this reckless sprawl is embarrassing.
Further adding to this sense of crowding (and some would say isolation, which is an interesting contradiction) in this mega-sprawl-complex is that it takes five hours to reach a national forest from anywhere in Chicagoland. And yet these national forests are mere shells of the public land west of the Mississippi–usually flat, cut-over tree farms with high road densities and a cabin on every lake. Some might say, “why not just go out to the farms? That’s nice country”. Nope. That’s not country. That’s agricultural industry, for miles on end, sprayed hard with various toxic pesticides. “Country” is where the road sometimes ends, where biodiversity increases.
Only one artist has expressed this fear of sprawl in a way that flattens me: Jason Lytle of Grandaddy. He’s such a talent that he creates a devastating effect with a single line and a simple melody:
“The dead malls are all over town”.
The dead malls are all over town. Zombies aren’t fiction. We’re becoming them, structure by structure.
“Fare Thee Not Well Mutineer”:
This would be such an easy decision if not for family and friends. So as I try to drive back, mile by mile I feel that sprawl squeezing me–that existence where all we think about is our paths amongst the strip malls somewhere between breakfast and dinner, where a world outside of our own material creation doesn’t seem like it exists at all.
That’s the most terrifying thing of all to me. You’ll see this expressed in my story “Street Lamps and Carbaryl” and my most recent piece, “Hydra“.
Another reason I’m considering postponing relocation is the workload. I have several huge writing projects stuffed into my laptop, and a few surprises in terms of medium. I’ll be able to post more information deeper into 2014, but needless to say things are amazing right now.
So, Missoula. It seems to have a gravitational beam like the Death Star, except unlike Han Solo and Chewbacca, I want the damn thing to take me.
Sunset in Missoula, December 10th, 2013, my mom’s birthday. This photo is dedicated to her.
It’s -1 right now in Missoula, Montana. Without the windchill.
Luckily, I’m typing this up from a warm and snug hotel. My car and all my supplies however will be forced to face the abusive cold.
Today was the first day I’ve traveled to the deep southern Bitterroots in many years, into the Trapper Peak and Como Peaks country. The last time I was that far south was with an ex-girlfriend. Of course, the previous trip had been in much warmer weather, which seems like a fantasy from where I’m sitting now. I had forgotten how all those ponderosa pines looked, carpeting the slopes up to the twisted spires and outcroppings.
It was a joy to be back.
I have seen many mountain ranges across the Northern Rockies the last ten years, but it had been too long for the southern Bitterroots, which house one of the largest wilderness ecosystems in the lower 48 (the Selway-Bitterroot/Frank Church/River of No Return Complex). Other mountain ranges may be more showy, more chest-pumping. The Bitterroots sort of rise up, slothful like, unfurling their bare granite spines in predictable fashion one slope after the other. But once inside the rugged valleys the true scenery splays open for the onlooker, as if the formerly sheepish mountains were hiding something from busy Highway 93.
Ten years gone. Winter is here, harder and more brutal than usual. Girlfriends have come and gone. So have friendships. But it’s good to know I can always count on the Bitterroots being the Bitterroots, turning their cloaks of ponderosa pine to the travelers on 93 and hiding their spectacular innards.
It is -1 in Missoula. I look out the window to see a town paralyzed with cold. The sound of trucks along I-90 has faded with each passing hour. Winter has a way of cleansing all that came the season before. But if you listen carefully, you can hear a quiet stirring. For all things change. Even the Bitterroots, one day.
The Bitterroot Mountains are split by a sunrift in Montana.
