A Road Trip Across America
We will eat every thing
Welcome to the midweek(ish) version of An Irritable Métis ... and I’m really pushing any idea of it being “midweek” at all this week, aren’t I? Depends on your week; I hardly ever know what day it is. Anyway, this is where things are usually a little more random, a little less … irritable. If you forgot what all this is even about, you may remind yourself here. If you want to help me keep the lights on, well….
Thursday I was out at my truck in the cold and dark hours earlier than normal, scraping away the ice formed on my windshield. The Bluetooth sorcery that enables my truck to communicate with the phone in my pocket soon had the last thing I listened to blasting from inside the cab. In this case, it was the mixture of river sound, rain, and birds that I often play at night to soothe my irritable brain into sleep.
I didn’t mind being out at all because it was gorgeous. Crystal clear, maybe 10°–12°, with light beginning to stretch across the eastern horizon. The crescent moon, brilliant with a pale corona encircling it, was facing me to the south, while to the east Venus could have been easily mistaken for an incoming jet with its high beams on, She was so bright. I was transfixed. What a scene.
Business I needed to tend to in Missoula had me out so early, a full mug below my coffee quota. By the time I got on the road the mist was rising in this river valley. Once I turned west and headed toward where Mullan intersects with Pulp Mill Road at the decrepit remains of the old superfund site where my dad worked for 40+ years, the air was thick with fog and disorienting. I was driving slow, and within a mile I had some jackass in an oversized pickup right on my bumper for the remaining two miles before I turned; a side road I passed was lined with idling cars burning parking lights while they waited with their children for the school bus, presumably, though it seemed far too early for that.
A turn north up and over the haunted bridge that features the shiniest, newest guard rail in the entire valley, and then another hard right to head east and up the long hill headed toward the Wye (the intersection of Highway 93 and Interstate 90) and I was free of the fog. For all its growing light industrial sprawl, this stretch of road is one I’ve always found compelling. For example, it inspired these two short poems from the Winter section of One-Sentence Journal:
This is also near where, in February of 1812, the explorer David Thompson rose early from his camp just north and set out to have a look at the valley. People speculate over where exactly he planted himself to make his sketch—lost now to history but his journal survives—but it was almost certainly within a couple miles of here … if not at the top of this very hill.
Also at the top of the hill is Marvin’s Bar, storied in its own way, but notable for my purposes as being the place where last fall I met with Daniel Slager from Milkweed to begin the earliest discussions of our plan for unleashing Becoming Little Shell on the world.
Why all this description of a routine trip into Missoula?
Have I mentioned it was beautiful?
That Business to Tend To
I needed to make it to the quiet privacy of my writing space in Missoula to do a phone conversation for a national NPR program called 1A. It was live radio and streaming online, but you can now listen to it HERE. I was contacted to participate in the discussion after this Guardian piece I wrote in November about derogatory place names being changed but it is also more than that. I think it’s a good discussion. I’m so grateful to all the people who have helped guide these opportunities my way, but also by the work of editors and producers who want to see these stories out in the world. It takes a lot of people doing hard work to pull this stuff off! A few years ago these stories might not have been told. It takes a lot of effort to get this stuff out there, and I am overjoyed to be a part of it.
If You Are Confused, That’s Understandable
Lyz Lenz’s Men Yell at Me newsletter is one of my favorite reads a couple times a week and this recent one staggered me for how much I loved it. It’s essentially about loyalty to … convenience stores? As my pal AHP says, “Just trust me.” READ IT HERE. I must admit straight up that c-stores, for how gross and often dirty and horrible they are, are one of my favorite American “things” that just don’t seem to fit with how much I hate most American “things.” I’d never really thought about it either, or the specific ones that have figured daily in long stretches of my life. I don’t have a daily stop anymore and really haven’t for a couple years, at least since I stopped drinking soda, and that’s probably for the best. But still….
Lyz’s wonderful piece also does that rare thing for me in that it makes me miss the Midwest. I really need to get on a big road trip here sooner than later.
Announcements
I’ve got stuff coming up. I’m doing an in-person Little Shell event in Lewistown. Dates are being penciled in for this year’s Freeflow Institute workshop on the Blackfoot River (we talked about doing one somewhere else instead, but I get enough people asking, “When are you doing another one?” so I am staying close to home … at least for this year) in June. Another Yellowstone workshop in July, plus some other Humanities Montana-related shindigs in the summer as well that have been cooking for over a year. It’s going to get busy. I’m really hoping for a face-to-face summer, but the jury is still out on that one….
Be safe, friends. Be courteous….
Venus has been amazing the last couple weeks. This morning the waxing crescent over the Absarokas was her muse and I was all in.
Ha! After reading it, it is about places like Wawa. People get obsessed about them, here too. I wish I’d stopped at a Casey’s when I drove through Iowa. Next time I will.