Home

I am still in Minnesota. Keith and I were talking yesterday and decided that instead of 2 ½ weeks it feels like I have been gone 3 or 4 months. Not that I am not having a wonderful time, which I am. Time creeps in January and February anyhow. So I am attributing the snail’s pace to winter days.

We had to turn in our xc-ski rentals last week (my sister and I) and it promptly began to snow perfect skiing flakes. Today I will strap on snowshoes and head out with my sister’s dog, a black and white noodley looking cute thing named Buddy.

Everything is bright white, all the branches, sidewalks, roads, and already existing snow piles. This is the time of year that a little extra effort of getting outside is rewarded with quiet and peaceful vistas of white. It does take a little extra effort though and yesterday I was thinking how if you didn’t have access to snowshoes, skis, trails, how this long lasting snow could feel so formidable. I couldn’t run outside if I wanted to. Between the calf-deep snow drifts and now hidden icy undercoat, it is a challenge to walk to the car. Well, this might be my former southern experience talking. I know I will get used to it, I know I will.

So I am back home, or at least where I did my growing up years. So naturally I have been thinking a lot about the idea of home. I currently feel shiftless, uprooted, transient. And I am discovering that these feelings are not necessarily bad. These feelings are just what is at the moment. It occurred to me that I have been thinking a lot less about my old home in NC, the home that is now someone else’s home. And really it was just a house: walls, rooms, windows. What made it home was the people who were inside and outside those walls. I miss them. I miss the camaraderie of our street, I miss the ease of connecting with old friends not on my street, but much closer by than the 2200 miles that separate us now. We all had been through a lot together including a lot of life challenges that made us realize how much we needed each other. Death, surgeries, illnesses. But of course sad things aren’t the only uniter, we had birthdays, laughter, successes.

Had I not left that comfortable nest….I would not have learned a new definition of home. Now when I look out my window, I see the Rocky Mountains. I may not have the camaraderie of my former life, but I feel like both Keith and I are growing closer, learning about maintaining friendships and being open to developing new ones. I also may not feel my Montana home is my rooted place, but I am glad for my new friends and the new views. Who knows where we will end up, we do have a map (3 years of grad school), but we don’t really know the destination. Sometimes not knowing even what we are doing this summer feels a little overwhelming. And sometimes it feels like a great, big adventure. I keep hoping the latter feeling presents itself more often than the former. No matter what, by May I will know something and really that is not so far away (despite these long winter days).

Over the weekend, Jeff, Janna, and I packed up our snowshoes and headed out at dusk to the City of Lakes Loppet Luminary 5K (noncompetitive). Whatever that means right??? We had no idea, but since it sounded mysteriously interesting we signed up and showed up for a 6 p.m. start time. The luminary loppet turns out to be a course around the Lake of the Isles (one of the Minneapolis city lakes) lined with ice sculptures and candles. Lovely, amazing. Just another reminder that this rootless, shiftless-feeling person is having some pretty wonderful experiences, just because I stepped out of my regular routine.

Toaster Oven Days

I am in Minnesota for a few weeks getting a new view. So I have left my camera back in Butte, so you will have to forgive the lack of photos. (That is the most interesting element I know.) I had taken pictures of my feet in Yaktracs so you all could see how I was getting around the icy streets of Butte. Instead just close your eyes and picture feet clad in a rubbery web of metal coils….keeps me from cracking my head open on the open ice rinks that were once roads in my new fair city.
We have had lots of white powdery even feathery snow before I left for MN, so I got my super long xc-skis out of the garage, dusted off the layer of sawdust from Keith’s kitchen project and headed out to the lovely golf course behind our house. My first winter sport experience in Butte and now I am hooked. I go to sleep thinking how I can get a ski in the next day. I sail (slowly, wobbly even) through blankets of pure white and feel peaceful and happy and, when it is all said and done, contentedly tired. Lucy loves the wide open spaces of the golf course and runs full speed as if she was racing the snow she kicks up next to her.
So our kitchen is torn asunder. Outdoor/Indoor carpet gone and old grimy cabinets pulled out and into the dumpster. Just the skeleton left, thanks to helpful engineering friends who like to talk about porosity and complex equations and other things I don’t understand. No kitchen means simple meals at home and a heavy reliance on the toaster oven, which can be coaxed into all sorts of uses: thawing, baking, roasting, heating a room for a dough rise, it’s magical. Or rather, it is a desperate attempt at a semblance of a home-cooked meal. I even made banana bread in the toaster oven. A bit dry and overbaked on the edges and gooey in the middle, but it will do. We also have the griddle, which is great for eggs, pancakes, quesadillas, sautéing vegetables. Fancy stuff.
No kitchen has sent me back to MN for a few weeks. My time away gives Keith a few moments to not hear me ask when the tile will be going down, and when are the cabinets going in. Well, I still ask from far away, but I don’t have to devise more toaster oven meals or sit and stare at the empty space that once was a kitchen. Plus, I get the added benefit of seeing family and my sweet nieces. AND my sister has a golf course across from her house, so I am back at the xc-skiing.
Groundhog day is today, and I am GLAD that the furry rodent saw his shadow because I want six more weeks of winter (well, aren’t I assured that just by living in Butte???). What is wrong with me??? Did I ever think I would say I wanted more cold and dismal? But when the snow is gone, no more skiing, no more snow shoeing, and I like this stuff. It is a nice break from a year of hard running. I guess by May I will feel differently, but for now this is white, powdery heaven.
I am including a recent photo Keith sent me from the beginning of the cabinet installation. I know you are waiting with baited breath for my cabinets to get installed. Just beside yourselves. Thanks for caring so deeply. Well, it is all I have photo wise. So take it or leave it. In the meantime, I am headed out for a day of skiing and family time.

The brink of winter

I know it has been too long since I last blogged, but we have just been forging ahead. Keith with classes in full swing and me working a little and hiking as much as the weather will allow. Which is not much. Here are a few things we have been working on before the snows hit even harder. Painting trim, building new kitchen walls, and Lucy does a great job of gazing toward the East Ridge mountains longingly.

We a had warm weekend a the weekend before last (50s!). And since then we have had cold and snow. What else should I expect? It's October for crying out loud. The middle of winter in Butte!

Here are a few around town views (in Walkerville, a small enclave that is the north part of Butte). The metal scaffolding looking things are headframes and they dot the Butte landscape. Headframes were the old way down into the mines, before they started strip mining here. Each headframe had an elevator that carried the miners down into the pit at the beginning of each shift and up from the mine at the end. If you saw Butte, America last week on PBS there was a lot of footage about the mines and headframes. They still stand as a testimony to Butte heritage. Butte's history is a lot more interesting than its apparent future. I keep asking people in town, "What is the future of this town?" and the response is usually a hope tied up in a company coming here to provide jobs or renew the economy. Butte is such an interesting place and I often feel like I am at pep rally for the Titanic. I don't mean that harshly, and I realize that this is a special place to the 35,000 or so people who call Butte home. Anyhow, come to your own conclusions. No matter what this is an interesting place like no where I have been before.

Butte landscapes.

Keith succumbs to the cold. Lucy tries to help.

Snow, snow, snowier

The snow is deep at 8,000 feet. See how Lucy's legs are all the way covered in the the snow!
These pictures are from Sunday's hike 1 hour northwest of Butte.We were hiking up to Barker Lake and an hour into our hike our sneakers were soaked and we realized we were too poorly prepared to make the hike in what was becoming 12 + inches of perfect powder snow.

Tonight the temps are forecasted to be 17 degrees F! While I ran today in the wind and snow, I counted the months until warmer weather: 8 months. It snowed last May when Keith was finishing finals. I also counted the days until I get to savor the NC mountains: 74 days.

Let me remind you what it looked like just last weekend when I wore shorts to go hiking north of Butte near Moulton reservoir.

So, what has Keith been doing besides playing with me in the snow and trails of SW Montana? He had an interview a few weeks ago for a summer internship. We should find out this week what we will be doing next summer. A lot of Tech students are feeling uneasy only because there are few internships for a burgeoning Petro Engineer class. MTech enrolled an additional 500 students this fall, which doesn't sound large, but it is a 50% growth compared to last semester. Makes you wonder what the world will do with all the new engineers coming out of their programs in the next 1-2 years.

I am currently hunkering down for the winter. We need some good Southern food, so Chicken-n-Dumplings are on the teal stove and we will get wrapped up in our warm jackets for a nice winter's evening. Stay warm.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Our first visitors, after a long hike at Moulton Reservoir.

This weekend's short fall. This morning's snow fall.
Snow. Yesterday it was 70 degrees. Today we have snow. Please feel sorry for me; it would make me feel so much better.

Well, it has been too long since I last blogged. Keith's parents have come and gone--so nice to see familiar faces in a foreign land. And apparently summer and fall have come and gone. I guess Montana has two seasons: summer and winter. So now it is winter. I will put up the sandals and shorts I wore just yesterday and trade them out for my parka and snow boots. Poor Lucy may need boots too.

Mining headframe and Cabbage Town, metal housing for the poor of Butte in the mining days.

William Clark's former home, now the Copper King Mansion B&B.

The streets of Butte, red building is Jewish synagogue.

We took a Butte Historical Trolley Tour with Bob & Barbara and learned a lot about the rough and tumble history of Butte. Lots of brothels (like I mentioned before, the last one closed in the 1980s), murders (labor organizers), gambling, drinking, and poverty and wealth. Marcus Daly, F. Augustus Heinze, and William Andrew Clark, the industrialists called the Copper Kings who made Butte thrive were the wealthy. The poor were the miners, timber men, and laborers who came from Finland, Scandinavia, Ireland, China, Serbia, etc. to build this town and make it the largest town between Minneapolis and Seattle for much of it history. A town of over 100,000 at the turn of the 20th century today is one-third the size. Vacant buildings and abandoned mines dot the landscape.

I don't know what will happen to Butte. I have such mixed feelings. On the one hand the scenery just outside of town is breathtaking. But the town itself is cracking at the seams. There is a huge meth problem here and Butte has the highest fatality rate for drunken driving in the state. Just last weekend a drunk driver from Butte killed an advocate for domestic violence Missoula lawyer who was driving home. He rear-ended her on the interstate going the same direction. Her car flipped several times and she was killed at the scene. The driver walked away unharmed. I have a small understanding of why many Montanans have a disdain for Butte-tans (?). They seem lawless, rough and a little out of control. But the few people we have met are salt of the earth, kind, giving, and helpful. All in all its interesting and wild.

More views of Butte:

The infamous Berkley Pit, the most toxic lake in the world with a pH of 2.5.

From Wikipedia: The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine located in Butte, Montana, USA. It is one mile long by half a mile wide with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic (2.5 pH level). The pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals, including arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.

Restaurant scene of Butte: Liquor to Go!


Moulton Lake Reservoir area north of Butte.

Butte Thoughts

Arnica growing in the Lime Kilns area south of Butte.

Butte...a special place. The lovely Highland Mountains to our south and the urban sprawl of uptown Butte to our north. What a juxtaposition. Here is what I love about Butte so far:

Pekin Noodle Parlor in Downtown Butte.

No chain restaurants! Seriously, this is a independent thinker's and eater's town. The one aberration is the single McDonalds in the "flats." Instead we have Pekin Parlor, which is a second story Chinese restaurant. Each table is in a 4 foot x 5 foot "closet" that used to room miners between shifts. Or Muzz & Stan's Freeway Diner, which advertises Liquor to Go! Or Lydia's, a straight from 1960s red velvet supper club that offers ravioli, sweet potato salad, spaghetti, green salad, and more with your steak order. (Not a choice, but all the sides are included and come on a gigantic round wheely type tray.)

View of the Highland Mtns.

The mountains, so close and so wild. The Highlands just to our south may have snow until July every year. I hiked in an area called Lime Kilns that crosses the Continental Divide Trail (the longest trail in the U.S.). We saw many elk prints and grassy balds. The views were amazing. And just 30 minutes from my house! By the way, Keith and I saw a moose and her calf on Saturday wandering aimlessly through a neighborhood near where we hiked last Saturday. Our first close encounter of the animal kind!


Finally, what I love about Butte:

History. Butte's history is gritty, rough and the people here are real and down to earth because of that history. This was a town of gambling, prostitution (the last brothel was closed in 1988!), hard drinking, unions, and long winters. I say was, but in a way Butte still is this town. The urban center (on the hill) is not too different from inner city Pittsburgh or Detroit. And with just nearly 34,000 residents, Butte is the 4th largest city in the state. The gritty exterior houses some of the most interesting jewels, just a scratch below the surface. There is Front Street Grocery, which carries the best in gourmet non-perishables and wine and rivals The Fresh Market or Byerly's in selection (I'm not joking here). Judging a book by its cover would make me miss out on all the interesting and lovely parts of town. My favorite new fabric store is in a falling down grey house. I almost didn't go in because it looked so derelict from the outside. But inside was an amazing selection of fabrics. I could go on and on. But I won't.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTING IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT BUTTE:

PBS' show Independent Lens is showing the documentary Butte, America, which highlights the dusty, hard living and historical town that was once the largest copper mining city in America. I believe the premiere is October 20th, but check your local listings.

Views of the Highland Mountains: Lime Kilns trail that includes a small section of the Continental Divide Trail.

Poor Lucy after our Lime Kilns hike. She got into a fight with a stick in the woods. Dog heaven.

Keith with Rick Bass, a wonderful fiction and nonfiction writer who lives most of the year in the Yaak Valley of N.W. Montana (of Ted Kazinski fame). We met him last week at a reading at the University of Western Montana in Dillon and picked up his book Why I Came West. He is a former geologist who worked in the oil fields in Mississippi. The Yaak Valley is 4000 feet below Butte (Butte is about 5200 elevation and the Yaak is 1200) and interestingly enough a warm, rainforest area of MT on the Canadian border.

Rainbows and hot biscuits

Last week right before dinner, it started raining at Our Lady of the Rockies, which as I mentioned before you can see from our kitchen window. When I hike up the Maude S. trail, 1 mile from my house, Our Lady is just across the ridge. So needless to say, Our Lady is not far. The rain never made it down into the valley, which is how it seems to go in the high desert.

Instead we had a lovely rainbow to remind us that good and beautiful things can happen even when it seems dry here and dark everywhere else.

I have spent the last week hiking new trails, painting our pink trim brown, and messing around in the kitchen (I have to not look at the kitchen carpeting because it is an appetite killer for sure.) I have been running lots of different routes, missing my Hamburg climb, but the "urban" streets of Butte do offer a lot of different views and viewpoints. I did run the old railroad track that hovers to the east of town, but my neighbor said I should get bear mace before I do that again. It is very remote. I think I will get some this week. Oh, and this bear mace would be for the mountain lions, which are more common around here.

So Keith is settling into classes, and honestly it is tough. He gets discouraged and then encouraged and then discouraged. But we both agree that we are here to learn and grow and certainly doing the same old thing, while it may have its appeal, doesn't do much in the learning and growing arena.

I have been trying to get a grip on high altitude baking, which as it turns out does call for some tweaking. Water boils in no time here (200 degrees fahrenheit boiling point) and bread bakes in two-thirds the time. Keith and I keep saying we feel like we are in a foreign country and at least the differences do make the distance seem a little farther from "home."

Do I sound melancholy? I think Sundays do that to me anyhow. We do feel blessed and happy, despite my tone.

Today we hiked at Homestake Meadows. Just south of us by 5 miles. Lovely, grassy and full of deer and elk tracks. Oh, and wild sagebrush, too.

My neighbor has been taking me out hiking, twice last week. We did a 6-mile loop called Beaver Ponds and the 4-mile loop at Homestake.

I don't think I could ask for a better tourguide. She is a mother of two 20+ year old boys, an avid biker (she frequently does 50 milers just for fun, and has done many 24 hour rides) and exerciser. I am in heaven. We are heading out tomorrow for a Continental Divide Hike (longest US trail). Generally we hike for 1 1/2 to 2 hours and then she rides for 3 more hours. Crazy.

I promise something more interesting later this week. We were headed to the rodeo in Dillon (Montana's best weekend event!) But Keith has studying to do and I have all that pink trim to paint.