January | 2018 | Lisa Stowe – The Story River Blog

Do you ever look back at your life and think, if I’d gone in that direction, where would I be now?

Art & Arthur Lewis Creek Rd

I can see one such fork in the path in my past. My best friend asked me to move in with her and share an apartment in the city. At the time I didn’t think I made enough money so I said no. If I had moved in to that apartment, I wouldn’t have ended up in the mountains. So very many things would have turned out different. I also wonder how many things would have turned out different for her, if I’d said yes.

Recently I was encouraging my son to look at different job options. He’s been applying all over for work but not having much luck. The words that left my mouth were along the lines of ‘stop-gap’ jobs, some money is better than none, you have bills to pay. Of course all those words were related to just one word – responsibility.

Art Arthur Luke

And of course they were words he already knew.

Arthur Lookout Pt 4

He told me later that he was going to have to quit school. He didn’t want to take on student debt, but he couldn’t afford the university, plus save for overseas trips he was going to have to take as a result of his courses, plus pay his bills. I told him we’d talk more when we met for lunch.

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A few hours later, it hit me.

In 1977 I was looking at what elective classes I had to take in my senior year. I wanted to take creative writing. I dreamed of being a writer. Not just a writer, but published. Only a few people at that time knew I wrote secretly. Voraciously. My mother talked me into taking a beauty school class.

Her arguments were persuasive. A job as soon as I graduated. A job I could ‘always fall back on’. A job that ‘would hold me over’. Plus I’d save the family money because they wouldn’t have to pay to get haircuts. And if I ever married or had kids, we’d save money there, too.

Arthur's hair with text

I took the expected path. And wrote secretly for another twenty years.

Everything I’d just said to my son was a repeat of history – pushing him down the path of responsibility. Pushing him away from his dreams.

Shouldn’t we be able to dream until we learn the reality on our own?

Shouldn’t we be able to hold on to those dreams as long as possible?

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The problem has always been balancing the dreams with the responsibilities of life.

The problem is when there’s two paths to take, that middle ground is open territory with no trail. You’re bushwhacking with no compass. So most of us stick to the path, whichever it is and wherever it takes us.

Arts birthday & climbing 131

I want my son to pay his bills, to have benefits, to have financial security.

But the thing is, I want him to follow his dreams, too.

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All those paths before us. Do you remember when the roads forked before you? Can you pinpoint a time when you went in one direction, and what happened because of that choice?

I don’t regret where life landed me because of the path I took.

But I regret those twenty years.

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Do you ever wonder if the story you remember actually belongs to you, or if you’ve taken someone else’s history and made it your own?

I’m not talking about déjà vu.

I’m talking about northeastern Montana.

My family homesteaded there. They’ve been populating those little towns for generations. Busily populating, mind you. They’re a prolific lot. It’s where my first father grew up and where we visited often, and where we still return. My youngest sister moved back there, I think to have that connection to our history and our family. Although things rarely turn out like we hope.

The annual excursions involved an uncle taking us to the badlands. They spread across Bureau of Land Management country, private rangeland, and the Sioux reservation. You can see amazing wind-sculpted sandstone, countryside cut deeply by weather, and wild, unforgiving places where you can easily disappear. You can find agates and fossilized wood, dinosaur bones and fossils. It’s in the same area as the famous archaeological digs around Fort Peck. It’s a land that bares its age to the elements.

On the way, we always stopped at this tiny store to stock up on water and soda for the uncle. Almost seventy years ago an eighteen-year-old boy died there, shot in a robbery. He was my uncle’s friend. Every time we walk in that store I wonder if my uncle sees the boy there.

Every time we walk in that store I look for the boy because the story has become mine. I’ve heard it hundreds of times. My uncle tells it every time we drive that highway. I’ve absorbed the words into the sense of place so that it is tied up with heat and dry washes and old bones.

Is the story true? Did it really happen? I have no idea. But it’s real.

Anyone who has spent time on this blog knows I’m a mountain and forest woman. I need rain and green and high mountains and the standing nation of tall trees.

Badlands and ghosts of trees

But when I’m in that corner of Montana, it feels like home. It sinks into my much-younger bones. It feels like family and history, like my place in the universe. Even though I long for the whitewater rivers and high canyons when back there, the place still sings to my soul.

Is it because so many generations of place created my DNA? Is it because I’ve breathed in all those stories until I believe them? Is it simply the memories of many visits running together over years?

I don’t know. Maybe stories can’t be separated from your past, or the past of those who tell them.