If you look for the Impenetrable Mountains on a map of Montana, you will not likely find them labelled. But we can assure you that they exist. We have been in them since we got here.
The from Peter Kingsley, a favorite author and guru, as he recounts an old Mongolian myth, about people being stuck in an impossible situation, with no hope of escape, no hope of moving forward, no hope of resolution, and how, at last, a magical wolf appears to bore a hole through the mountains and lead the people out of their stuck place, or a shaman appears and shoots a magical arrow that cuts a hole through the mountains and achieves the same end. Weve used this myth, and this phrase, as a way of looking at our present time, our current culture, our collective situation on Earth here at the precipice of what might very well be the dissolution of Western Civilization itself, and the seeding of whatever is to follow.
And I thought of this myth, and this phrase, as I lay in bed in our hotel room this morning, up since 4 or so, waiting for night to slip into and then dawn, and then the new day. I thought of impenetrable mountains. And wolves. And shamans. And arrows. And the impossible. And I asked for help from whomever or whatever might be listening. It seems were in a stuck place. It seems we cannot do this on our own. It seems we may have to go home with no clear answer to our question: why were we called here?
Without going into detail, let me say that, just as we seemed to have found our big beautiful place to land, a place that seemed to meet most of our collective wants and needs, a place of beauty and productivity, a place that felt bursting with life, a place we could love, our third partner got cold feet. That derailed us, sent sparks flying and brakes squealing, and banished us back to the Big Timber KOA, where we spent three days and nights in a corner by the creek, cooking sausages over an open fire, talking with each other, talking on the phone, talking with realtors, searching the listings, and trying to figure out our next moves, or to hear the peculiar travel suggestions which Kurt Vonnegut said were dancing lessons from God.
It was hard. It meant more ego shredding. More difficult family processing. More scrabbling for clarity. More More hours of conversation to achieve mutual understanding. Another f*#(ing growth experience, as they say. And slowly more clarity did surface. And slowly we began to see a path forward. And we put together a new list, the new possibles, the new places we might explore, the new places we might land. And, because this state is so huge, and because were open to half the state, at least, and because we didnt want to drag our poor real estate agents hours from their homes to show us places we would never want, we decided to go out on our own and do scoping out towns and properties on our own first, before we scheduled an actual viewing. We did one drive by on Monday, but it was very close to the railway and the Interstate. Then, yesterday morning, we crossed out a number of possibilities we realized wouldnt work, we put together a list of five remaining possibles, and figured out a route to take to see them, and headed off to The Coffee Spot in Big Timber, the sweetest place you can imagine, for two cups of stamina and resolve, and headed westward, determined to see as much as we could.
So often down to proximity and distance. Montana is pretty picked over right now. The urbanites got here before we did and bought up the properties, leaving inventory very low and prices very high. And when we find a property, one thats been on the market for more than a few weeks, our first question now is whats wrong with it that its still on the market? Whats wrong is usually a matter of proximity or distance, and that proved to be the case yesterday. The first place was way far out. Miles of gravel roads far out. Miles of unplowed in the winter far out. And we never did find it, exactly.
