Hill of Content

Summer somehow didn't find it's way to Montana this year. Perhaps the weather gods decided to give the good people of the Western Rockies a taste of why many of us moved here, for the snow. Snow in June, snow for July and even snow on Labor Day eve. Yes, the white behind me is indeed freshly fallen, but I feel I should give this peak a chance. It's Trapper Peak, which stands slightly over 10,000 feet beaconing the Bitterroot valley just south of Missoula.

I've heard more conversations about the weather this summer than I can ever recall. Even more than than the summer when the temperatures never crested over 60 degrees along the shores of Lake Superior. The summer of 2004 in Marquette, Michigan when I wore turtlenecks to teach in and napped under heavy blankets while I stubbornly slept on rocks yearning for some warmth. But Midwesterners, if they complain at all, would say something about how it could have been worse that summer Lake Superior had ice during July. "We could have had 100% humidity, black flies, feral mosquitoes and tornadoes," to convince ourselves we were somehow better off with gray skies and cold winds.

But out here in the west, people don't exactly cry in public, but they do complain...openly. I don't have any Slavic or Nordic ancestry, but when people get heated up about lousy weather while standing around a fire at a potluck, I quietly stare at my shoes, obviously too cold for sandals. My midwest inner nasaled voice thinks, you people are whining, aren't you embarrassed? I still cannot believe someone can openly complain and actually not feel guilty about it. It's just a mind twist for me. Isn't anybody going to say, "well at least it hasn't snowed in the Missoula valley this year?" But they don't. Nor did I. I just kept quietly talking to my internal midwest voice while focusing on my boots.

And really even during the wettest day of August this year, I didn't complain. Mostly because I was too busy exploring the Western Rockies to be bemoaning. Luckily, I had some visitors to take up hiking in Glacier, some mountain bike riding in Sun Valley, a too quick trip home for swimming in Lake Michigan and even wet suited river days down the Alberton Gorge. Summer happened, but it just didn't look like what the good people of Missoula wanted or more specifically, what people expected. And so with this cursor as my witness, I can write, I've been really happy this summer. Mostly because I didn't really have any expectations. Maybe I am turning more Danish than just a midwest transplant. Or maybe I'm just learning how to climb the hill of content(ment).

Let me explain. If you'd like a far better explanation, then watch this video. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4181996n&tag=related;photovideo. Or listen online at http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_the_awesomest_economy.html. NPR's podcast about the study of not just money, but happiness. According to numerous studies by both economists and psychologists, Denmark is considered the happiest nation. Yes, these herring hungry blonds are surrounded by healthier Swedes and richer Norwegians but they are actually happier. Why? When their weather is pretty glum and their greatest claim to fame Dane after Hans Christen Anderson would be the prince of doom and gloom, Hamlet. So what really makes Danes so happy? (just in case you don't have time to read or listen to either story, let me sum it up for you.) Danes have a sense of contentment because they have realistic expectations. And furthermore, contentment is not a weakness in their culture. It's a goal.

But where in American culture is contentment valued? Where is the glory in being happy with what you have? What are we to do with the American Dream now that we've worked so hard to never be satisfied? Take it from me, someone who has spent more time believing and working at life is elsewhere and probably better. Contentment is really more of a mind twist for me too than complaining about the weather in public. What's my back to school essay, "what I learned this summer?"

Let's start with the greatest albeit fictitious Dane, Hamlet for a starting point. To be or not to be? To be or not to be, happy? Sure, go into any college library and you'll find more criticism about this clause than probably any other in the English language. It's existentially dense. And I would imagine a clause we ask ourselves in some form or another, everyday. True or not, but what is fascinating is that the most crowded class at Harvard is taught by a psychologist titled, the positive psychology of happiness. Students might be skeptical of all these self-help books, but they are certainly signing up in droves for some answers.

Personally, I don't have any answers. But I do have stories and poems. I do know this, happiness is as elusive and subjective as love, but there are concrete elements that psychological and economic researchers study and what is being taught at Harvard. If you don't have time to watch the video, then let me break it down to you. Happiness is having modest expectations. Danes still have ambition and goals, but humility and modesty are traits most associated with success in their culture. Perhaps even being able to except something as simple and as impossible as allowing the weather, well to just be, is having more realistic and modest expectations. Sounds too simple?

Today as I write this, it's gray and cold. Today, I look out over our front lawn and I see our white mini-van. A car I laughed at when my husband brought it home earlier this spring. There's nothing mini about this van, but it's everything modest. It's a great metaphor for contentment or in being happy enough with what you can afford. And frankly, I drove the mini van to Trapper Peak and it was great. And the weather at 10,000 feet, was better than I had expected. Here's a poem about modest expectations of happiness and as you might guess, mountains and mini vans. Enjoy.

Happy Enough

At first he picked me up in what his wife

left him. My fate to fall for a man who

drives a mini-van. At least he didn’t chew

his words, smell of olives like the last guy.

He arrived right on time, but when he tried

to unlock my door, it stuck. He swore

it was already funny when he drove

up looking like a carpet cleaner, tired

but shaven. And sometimes it’s that easy,

the awkward sexy moment when a man

offers his gloves in a hail storm, you fall

for him, his ill fitting sweater, uneasy

pause before speaking, the way one person

sees you like the capital of Nepal.

SkiJøring for Sissies

I've never felt bad about using the word sissy. Sure, I've been known to enforce word restrictions in class, but sissy has never been one of them. Perhaps it says more about me and my desire to be willing to jump into any physical test or at least try--even if it is badminton. I cannot say I was born an athlete, nor would I say I was born a poet, but it's surprising how little talent you need to actually feel good about just giving something a try--be it writing or flailing your body. Even if it is as odd as being pulled by a small dog in arctic temperatures around a snow-filled golf course, attempting a sport directly translated from Norwegian to mean "ski driving," Skijøring, I must admit, is very inspiring. Plus, you get to use such strange letters as the sliced o to make you feel better about your linguistic skills if you aren't that sporty.

And in the history of poetry, you rarely hear about sporty poets climbing mountains or circumnavigating anything but their own brains in search of themselves. The Hemingways of this world seem suited to fiction, riding out their days in Western backdrops along the backs of horses or venturing off for years on end whale hunting, sailing, pirating with nothing but bags of wind and the hope to return to stable shores and typewriters. Their romance with taming nature resembles the task of trying to tell a good story--a long affair of battling odds and time. Included above is my own (failed) attempt to look like I know what I am doing with a gun. I know, I will stick to a pencil.

But poets? We are an odd bunch. We usually work erratically spending long hours of the day or night alone, then sleep it off and go to our jobs that might not resemble anything poetic in hopes that we'll feel like writing again. If we were to be put in some sort of police line-up, a poet might be hard to identify. Minus the tendency towards tweed, poets are really hard to sum up physically. It's not like some genetic disposition like basketball or swimming where the body might guide the path. No, poetry doesn't work like that. I cannot recall hearing someone examine a baby's hands or feet and claiming their destiny, "My that furrowed brow will make him a fine thinker, maybe he'll be a writer?"

Nor is it as mysterious or mythical as some might try to persuade. Actually, if anything being a poet is like being a farmer. Seriously. There needs to be a whole lot of faith in something as temperamental as the weather and a stubborn and sometimes overly prideful belief in your efforts amounting into something, if anything at all. Yet in the case of poets, not farmers, the faith lies in something even more elusive than rain, ( I shyly pause before saying this to not sound too trite), you have to have faith in inspiration and your own capabilities to find it--even in the dark. I like when asked if Faulkner wrote everyday he said, "I only write when I'm inspired, and frankly, I get inspired everyday." Sure, he wrote fiction, but some of the most poetic fiction, so I think it works.

But what works the most for inspiration, isn't waiting for it to come or chasing it across lands and sea, I like to use the analogy of skijoring. Skijoring is a sport based upon a simple principle. You have a harness, the dog has a harness and both of your harnesses are connected and if you move fast enough on your skis and the dog moves fast enough pulling you, you'll find an odd rhythm. Sure, you have sort of forced this rhythm, but it feels somewhat liberating and endless all at the same time.

Now, unlike my husband who holds a world cup in Skijoring, I recently tried it for the first time. I must admit I was oddly displacing my memory of learning to water ski with the idea of skate skiing behind a dog that resembles the size and appearance of a juvenile seal. I had these visions of being pulled into snow banks and being drowned in cold temperatures and arctic winds. Thankfully, I was wrong. I was gracefully given a small female dog, named Mabel, and we were harnessed up and after thorough instruction such as, "Just keep skating. If you fall, the dog will stop." I shyly called, "okay Mabel, lets....um..go?" And that's all it took. Suddenly, this seal leaped and we took off with a short tug and oddly enough some sort of rhythm began.

As I've stated previously, I really cannot claim any physical talent in sports, but I can occasionally keep rhythm and in the bitter cold and still skies of Fairbanks, Alaska little Mabel and myself started moving, together. Yes, I did fall. And yes, Mabel did stop. But we got up and kept going, kept trying to tap into that feeling of some closeness to breath, beat and bray of our hearts pounding under all those layers, skating away from all that disbelief. I wanted to keep doing laps around that golf course or really I felt inspired despite all the doubt and darkness.

And that's what poetry does or tries to do at its best. It can take the simplest of situations and turn them into moments you keep as coveted memories, to tap into, to get close enough to feeling your heart and head aren't at odds, but simply a harness connecting them, moving together in hopes your efforts might just move or inspire. But the real task? It isn't just feeling this, it's trying to put this rhythm into words in the hope you can do it well enough to also inspire someone else. I hope I am not too much of a sissy to keep trying myself.

City Horses and Houses made for Fields.

There needs to be a holiday called, The Day for honoring our Secret Vacation. A time when each person can leave, go where they want to go and it isn't secret in regards of doing something forbidden or hidden, just a time to go and be away, peacefully connecting to some space of quiet. As children, I think so much of play in forests or meadowed fields are times for being knights, giant spiders or casting spells, basically a time to be what you cannot be at school. As if your imagination connects you to some part of yourself that you only allow yourself to be in private. The place of restorative peace, maybe we do this as adults while we are on vacation. Vacations can be a time to be part of a foreign environment or culture and just observe, take walks, reconnect with a more private part of yourself while you visit odd sites often neglected by those who live there, sit longer in parks, bring back photos of yourself slightly tanner and more relaxed--to remind yourself that there exists another version of yourself, more reflective and a bit more likely to smile.

I once had a secret vacation where I visited a friend in London, while I was living in Rome, and for three days did nothing but walk the streets, sit in parks, drink pints before five in the afternoon and go to films. I cannot tell you anything about one museum or a national monument from that visit, nor can I indulge any historical facts or have even one photo. But what I do have are hours of doing nothing, but peacefully walking mostly through Northern London.

We'd weave through the boroughs and fumble upon blue plaques on houses left to tell us who had lived there and when. We found most of them by accident where famous writers, politicians, and even poets had spent some time. I recall coming upon a tidy little square in Camden, all of the houses white and almost identical gardens in each front yard. It didn't have the same smug sense of sterile living as a subdivision. The houses were well-kept, lived-in and for the most part seemed well-loved, all except one. This house hadn't been painted in years, the once rose bushes were just naked stalks, and the porch was a collection of forgotten wicker furniture, no grass in the lawn. It stood out. It didn't seem haunted or deprived as much as it needed to recoil from its surroundings. I couldn't figure it out. It looked like it could have so easily fit in, been part of the sensible lot, but the house or maybe its inhabitants refused. As I stared at the neglected lawn, my British friend, with a hint of sarcasm, miffed, "That's where your country's beloved poet lived." And sure enough, I walked closer to the gate and squinted to see the blue plaque inscribed : Sylvia Plath lived here from 1960-1961.

We walked on. Later, we passed more plaques of poets such as William Butler Yeats and made jokes about obscure plaque facts such as where Yeats had taken naps, sneezed, or simply had tea. It seemed silly and all the while we tried to forget about the lone house in Camden. Neither of us said anything about it, but I couldn't get it out of mind. How could such a beautiful house not recover or maybe it just needed to be let go, let it be put in some field to be overtaken by grasses and dust, the way barns can collapse and appear beautiful and slowly return to the wild. As if the souls of trees take them back.

Even today as I think about that house, my reaction is the same. That house needs to be set free somehow. Perhaps this is an odd leap (no pun intended) but this is how I feel about horses. In my mind, horses aren't meant to be kept as pets, saddled or even fitted for shoes, and they surely never seem fit for cities. Even when I see a horse behind a fence, they make me feel tired. I find myself sleepy, not because I'm overtaken by the bucolic vision of the animal, but mostly because I feel horses need to be wild. Aren't they tired too of being tamed?I am by no means suggesting animal rights here, horses go too far back for me to start fighting. They have been domesticated since 4000 BC and all except one breed in Mongolia is considered wild. There are even facts of equine intelligence with spatial discrimination and the chariot remains in North Kazakhstan are prized as some of the oldest facts of these animals living close to man. Horses are the ubiquitous force of civilized man, so perhaps my plight is more of a neurosis than a cause, more of my own myth than a collected fact.

Maybe I need to take a secret vacation and go horse back riding, but wait, I already have. I have taken lessons, gone on a camping trip where we rode horses into the Snowy Mountains, and still I just felt like I wanted to let them be free. Is it enough for them to be prodded and pulled by someone's foolish need to feel like a cowboy? Can some things never be tamed? Or maybe people like the horse whisperers and great Arabian or Mongol riders are merely trying to ride to another world, a world where wilderness reigns and where it is actually the rider at mercy to the beast.

Regardless of history or equine facts, horses, like poetry, thankfully do contain something of another world. I cannot speak about horses directly, but I do believe poetry takes us to a place in each of that we sometimes forget about, keep quiet or kept closed until we have some time to be quiet, take a vacation, take time away from noise and return to rhythm, either iambic or maybe even a canter. Sylvia Plath's famous collection, which a bulk of it was written in that Northern London home, was titled, Ariel. In the poem of the same title, she herself or the narrator becomes one with the galloping horse, merging to rise and run. Maybe she knew something about the nature and myth of horses too. I'd like to think so. I'd also like to think it is important to read and remember her poems, more than her house, the plaque and her neglected garden.

City Horses

In fields in the noon sun, they look tired

from all the work they haven't done,

left alone too long from boys who only fall

in love with women sixteen feet tall, screened

skin with lips that are nothing but light

fragments flickered red. Even in Montana,

horses look silly in cities, slowing traffic down,

parading some past, like a pow wow on a college campus

where the horses stand only in steel. Up river,

children grow in houses without barns, built on fields

that furrow trailer parks instead of growing apples

for Appaloosas. The west is an open space left

for one lone billboard to try and hold the hills

down with words burnt from some church's Christ

speaking down the barrel of a shot gun

held in the hands of someone's twelve year old

son. Maybe horses too, just need fields

to be alone, to just run.