| I just completed a trip to Oregon
with my family. It was a working vacation -- my wife went
there to take a test that could lead to employment. I
went to scout out opportunities. We are thinking of
leaving eastern Montana in hopes of improving our chances
in the Portland area.
Portland is an interesting contrast to eastern Montana.
Eastern Montana is nearly a dessert, not only
climate-wise, but culture-wise. Portland, on the other
hand, is like a hot house -- life-giving rain falls all
winter, and flowers, blackberries and fruit trees bloom
in places they were never planted.
The dry climate and sparse culture of eastern Montana is
not a bad thing -- it is just the way things are. The
resources are spare, but you can see a great distance in
the clear, unpolluted air that covers this landscape.
Portland, on the other hand, is so rich in life the air
can seem oppressive. When I lived in Eugene, about 100
miles south of Portland, sometimes I ached for a long
look down the valley. I always was trying to get a view
of the mountains and the surrounding hills, but usually
thick foliage stood in my way, or fog, or smoke. It is
hard to get a feel for the countryside in western Oregon.
After awhile I felt as though I was locked in a room. As
I removed my things from the car after my return from
living in Oregon, I remember looking up at the night sky.
The stars shined clear, unobstructed by pollution or the
thick, moist, Oregon air. I breathed deep and knew that I
was home.
But clarity has a price. To survive here, I have become
like a dessert plant -- all prickly on the outside, my
tender parts hidden away. When I came here, I wrote a
friend saying I knew how to survive in eastern Montana. I
knew how to shepherd my resources. I knew how to find
nourishment where there was little to be found. The key
word, though, is "survive." I have reached the
point where I want more than survival. I want to bloom. I
want to bear fruit, both creatively and financially. I
want to enter America's great middle class. I want to
follow my bliss as well as feed my body. I have found
that difficult to do here. I work incredibly long hours
at a job that barely allows me to live from paycheck to
paycheck, while my poetry pines, the pages neglected in a
file on my desk.
The primary goal I had when I came here has been met --
my children are with me, and they are safe. For a while,
they were with not me, but their biological mother, and I
remained here in part because they needed me to be near
them. That problem no longer exists -- they will go with
me when I leave.
In addition, I now have a wife, who might not always
understand me, but she does love me. If we move, I expect
we will be each other's strength. This is important when
one sets out into a strange country where there are few
friends -- it is important to have someone at your side
you trust. The knowledge that this is so reassures me
that the move to Portland is a possibility, something
that we can make happen together.
I have friends who console me by saying I have done well
here. Perhaps I have. My job is one that allows me to
influence the community. It gives me the ability to hold
the facts up to the light where they can be examined. I
interpret and clarify the world as it exists in my small
community. This does not always make me popular or well
liked, but I am respected -- something that I am unused
to. I have an important role here -- one that will be
filled by someone after I am gone, but one that is mine
as long as I want to have it.
I have done my best to meet the needs of my community,
but I am not meeting my own needs. And so it is on to
Oregon or somewhere else. Not today, not tomorrow, but as
soon as we can manage. The task of packing things up and
moving 1,000 miles -- particularly when we have little
money with which to move -- is quite formidable. It will
be an adventure that I am preparing to enjoy, even if it
is frightening. After all, if it was not frightening, it
would not be an adventure.
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