Throughout Bozeman's cherished public trail system stewarded by the Gallatin Valley Land Trust is a series of benches donated in memoriam to departed loved ones. At a bench dedicated to Chris Boyd, who was instrumental in designing Bozeman's Main Street to the Mountains trail network, a young man proposes marriage to his girlfriend. Photo by Angus O'Keefe
I wonder about how our Western landscape
includes us in its majesty. Are we absorbed into its hardscrabble features like
a bucket of water disappears into a river? Or do we find solace in its
vastness?
Do we climb, hike, ski, float, and run up its slopes
to forget someone or to meet ourselves in the contours of the canyons, ridge
lines, and wending rivers? Do our mountains inspire, intimidate, or provide
refuge? Do the visiting outsiders with second homes here really find comfort and
rest in their enclaves set among our wilderness neighborhoods or do they miss
the opportunity to achieve full decompression before returning again to their
lives in the urban fray?
My mind wanders back to Wyoming author Gretel
Ehrlich and Montana’s Ivan Doig for descriptions that match my experience in a
way a historian might find relief in a leather bound volume recounting past
civilizations' efforts at dominating the world while social media beeps sound
around about him.
A resiliency of spirit awaits to be discovered
in our western landscape. And yet this same open space can intimidate and
overwhelm. In her heartwarming book The
Solace of Open Spaces Erhlich writes:
“Space has a spiritual equivalent and can heal
what is divided and burdensome in us. My grandchildren will probably use space
shuttles for a honeymoon trip or to recover from heart attacks, but closer to
home we might also learn how to carry space inside ourselves in the effortless
way we carry our skins. Space represents sanity, not a life purified, dull or
‘spaced-out’ but one that might accommodate intelligently any idea or
situation.”
On my weekly walks along Bozeman’s “Main
Street to the Mountains” trail system, I pass one of the wooden and steel
benches that bear plaques of dedication to the departed often with a quote. One such quote is from the Old Testament, Psalm
121, that begins with: “I will lift up mine eyes unto
the mountains, from whence cometh my help.”
As a recovering Christian, raised by austere
Christian missionaries, this quote speaks to me even though it's the mountains
that provide me solace and not the Lord. And it also brings to mind the late
Chris Boyd, who was instrumental in creating our trail system and land
conservation strategy back in the early eighties when he spearheaded landscape
protection for the Gallatin Valley Land Trust.
One such bench is dedicated to his memory. His
suicide, while seeking treatment for chronic depression, haunts me to this day. Chris was a beloved and noble member of our community.
As friends, we would sit together and talk about the
forces that work a man who was loved and lived in our wholesome mountain world,
how we cherished our alone time, our hiking solitude, and yet were haunted by a
terrible loneliness that could slide into despair. The irony of the confluence
of love, beauty, relishing solitude and fighting off loneliness and despair
beset me to this day. What is the difference between these currents and how can
I protect myself and others from their undertow?
Those among us who wrestle with transpersonal forces—wilderness habitat, global warming, denigrating political posturing, economic and gender inequality, preserving open space, community integrity and identity—fall prey to loneliness and despair.
Those among us who wrestle with transpersonal
forces—wilderness habitat, global warming, denigrating political posturing,
economic and gender inequality, preserving open space, community integrity and
identity—fall prey to loneliness and despair.
It’s like we see a comprehensive overview of
what we are called to protect or defend and know that we are fighting a losing
battle, although such an admission is made only in the wee hours of the morning
after a restless night, and only to ourselves. It’s like we cannot pass through
and into a landscape we love without taking note of the new subdivisions, feeling
the views that have filled us up become eroded and steadily slipping away.
How do you explain this to a person who just
arrived and believes that this lesser landscape, this blighted one, is actually paradise compared to where they came from? Is the yardstick for measuring place
one that compares Bozeman or Jackson or Cody or Livingston or Big Sky to a
hellish suburb or against the possibility of what it can still be with
foresight?
The despair that comes with frustration is not
about admitting defeat, we are too strong willed and positive for that, but
there is this gnawing fear that in spite of our best efforts the power of greed
and shallow dominance can cover these places we know in our hearts like plastic
floating islands cover wide open oceans.
How do you explain this to a person who just arrived and believes that this lesser landscape, this blighted one, is actually paradise compared to where they came from? Is the yardstick for measuring place one that compares Bozeman or Jackson or Cody or Livingston or Big Sky to a hellish suburb or against the possibility of what it can still be with foresight?
I do not mean being beholden to some false
ideal. Far from it. What I’m writing about here is the loneliness that comes
with introspective activists who strive to make this world a healthy place, be
it in the consulting room, conference table, art studio or stage and try to
push back against a collective mindset that either doesn’t care or has yet to
awaken.
Loneliness to me means that there is a place
deep within my psyche that is challenging to touch, to be affected by others or
even myself. This loneliness is tinged with sorrow and longing not for anyone
or anything but rather for union with life, like a fox kit might find union with kin
in a burrow warmed by her mother. This union may be attained, human to human,
in a fierce storm in a tent strapped to an endless exposed mountain face as
well.
It’s about bonding between each other and with
the landscape that nurtures us. Note: there are plenty of both feminine and masculine
ways to achieve union besides the obvious and much more meaningful and
enduring.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry has saved my ass
on a number of occasions. These lines from his poem, The Man Watching speaks to this inner space:
“The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in a psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.”
“What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need
names.”
You see, the perceived fight is not the real one. The real one is within my
heart, my soul, if you will. The trickiness of this battle is that the shadow
of loneliness is actually self-pity, feeling sorry for myself. That is the tiny
battle and if not fought against slides into despair.
Despair is the anguish or distress of not
feeling connected. No matter what someone might say or do to comfort the other,
there is a galvanized sense of feeling untouchable. Despair in our modern world
might account for the reckless and ultimately unfulfilling need to be connected
on social/cell media at all costs. On the other hand loneliness is the solitary
row boat adrift on the open sea of confounding personal and social cross
currents.
So here is how I help both myself and others
reckon with this trifecta of trouble. I was impressed years ago with a
philosopher’s notion that hope and despair are flip sides of the same coin.
The insight garnered by the paradox of this
riddle changed the way I related to the socially sanctioned use of the word hope. Rather than saying, “I hope you
are well, or that things are working out for you, the country and the planet,”
I began using the word ‘trust’ instead. This mindful practice shifted the focus
from the rough bet of hope which is entangled in despair, to a sense of trust
in the way things are.
The way things are might suck in a given immediate moment but hope is not the way
out. Presence is. Why do so many resort to yoga or sit in the quietude of their
version of a cathedral? Presence is about mindfulness, of being fully engaged
in what some might call nothingness but it is actually about being able to let
in the everythingness—not of information but of the mind-blowing awareness we
are alive. That being here, in this moment, in this place, with these people,
at this moment in history is a gift.
This brings us back to nature as we experience
it in our Western landscape.
Several weeks ago I strapped my nobby rubber
soles onto my boots and made a run at hiking up Drinking Horse trail east of
Bozeman. The snow packed icy surface felt like a bobsled run all the way to the
top and down again. I have a staff with a brass tip that I use for support and
my sense of ‘I can do it’ for my resolve. Our fellow super humans in male and
female bodies ran by me up and down the hill as did newcomers slip and slide
away. My surging breath, striving old muscles, and Celtic determination took me
to the top.
I was alone the whole time, although
pleasantries were exchanged with fellow hikers along the way as were rub downs
of happy dogs bounding across the path, through the trees and back. The
stalwart pine trees swayed in the breeze as did the magpies chatter, bossing
around who knows what. The cold wind ripped at my cheeks as I swore a solemn
oath not to fall, which I did not. The overcast sky laid heavily on the
mountain’s spine and the cars driving down the hill from the Bridger Ski area
hummed in the valley below.
I stopped at my favorite gnarled tree and rock
outcrop sculptures, patting them on their bony heads and trunks. I made good on
my pledge to not stop and take a breather on my way up as my personal metric of
where I am on the aging spectrum. And while on the bench on top, eating a
nutrition bar and drinking water, I was overcome by a sense that sustains me, a
gratitude that we mountain folk are as close to the revitalizing qualities of
the natural world as a quick ride on the bike or car allows.
About Timothy Tate
Community Psyche columnist Timothy J. Tate, who lives in Bozeman, Montana, has been a practicing professional psychotherapist for more than 30 years. For decades, he had an office on Main Street behind The Blue Door. He still works with clients downtown.
