There was hiking, there was scenery, there were mountains, lakes, forests, deserts. No cities, at least not as most would call cities, just widely scattered population centers of a few hundred or a few thousand here and there. No people to speak of, certainly none we paid any attention to or noticed us at all.
We panned and sifted for jewels and gold along river and streams and ancient dry riverbeds. Found some, too, a couple big enough to be worth a bit, but destined for the grandkids' junk drawer. They'll like 'em.
We got a couple of bags of gravel out of a sapphire mine up around Phillipsburg, MT, and someday we'll show the kids how to screen and pan to find the little blue/green pieces of glass that are actually jewels, the thin line of black sand left in the pan if you're doing it right that holds the shiny little bits of gold. Should keep them fascinated for a weekend or so which, incidentally, is good low-maintenance grandparenting when you have a wad of high-energy grandkids you're babysitting for a day or two.
But the vacation, in general — flawless. And that is a true and literal fact. The entire two weeks were the incarnation of White's musing on the nature of happiness:
“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”Two weeks is a lot. I've been trying to get a grip on the size this post would have to be for me to cover it all. It can't be done, it seems. So, then, a representative bit of it, almost randomly chosen, but a bit that seems as much as anything to capture it. I've never had so much time work so well. It was as if the entire universe was thinking up new ways to be nice to us. Luck? Chance? Sure, that's part of it. I don't control the weather, for example. But there was more than that I haven't yet got my finger on.
— T.H. White, Ghostly, Grim, and Gruesome
It has to do with me settling into contentment of Stoicism, I think, appreciating Now. "Stop and smell the roses" as the crash-pad wall-posters used to say back in the day. I don't know what it was/is, really. But I'll take it.
Anyhow, there's nothing special about this particular day — it's just representative of a string of days that were all as different from one another as they could be, but each a separate line in the whole piece.
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We were in deep forest in Montana on an unnamed barely-two-lane road, wending our way along the bottom of a steep-sided canyon. We were going to a Thing, and were loafing along in that general direction, just enjoying the day, the roll-down-your-window-and-smell-the-pine weather.
The Beneficiary was concentrating on the forest rushing by. I asked her what she was looking at so hard and she said she was trying to get the colors down. She said she'd never be able to paint those colors until she had time to compare what she was seeing to a palette, and she didn't want to forget what she was seeing. This sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so at the next possible place I dove off the main road and down the first dirt track that seemed likely to cross the bouldered stream that had been stalking us .
"Where are we going this time?" she asked, faintly amused. This was not the first time on this trip we'd taken some random path, trusting to luck, just to see what was there.
"I'm looking for something," I told her, and shortly turned up another, even lesser trail for about a quarter of a mile at which point it petered out and stopped at what appeared to be an abandoned picnic area — an overgrown parking space covered in forest detritus. Just over to the side there was an old picnic table which was surprisingly pristine. As always during the entire two weeks, the weather was ridiculously perfect and the accidentally found location was exactly the thing we didn't know we were looking for.
We got out of the truck. The stream schussed by just below us, sounding like a small waterfall. Some small bird inquired and then went on about its business. A breath of moving air made the pines creak a bit and in the echoing distance a woodpecker powered his lunch out of a pine trunk.
We just stood there for a bit soaking it in.
"Wow," she said. "Good call."
"C'mon," I told her, opening the back of the truck, "Get your stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Your painting gear. Drawing gear. Color stuff. Set it up right here on the table," I said, as always my ignorance of the tools of her trade reducing me to saying "stuff" and pointing. I tapped the picnic table's bench. "Here's the place for you to sort out the colors, I think. When you sit here, you're looking through the forest and light and shadow and all that clear down to the stream."
She hesitated for a moment. "Aren't we supposed to be in Livingston tonight? We don't have time for this." But I could see her looking, setting up in her mind.
"I'm on vacation," I said. "We don't have to do a damned thing that we don't want to do, and we don't have to be anywhere until we get there. Livingston will wait. Or not. I don't know. I don't care. Get your stuff." Then I turned and wandered off up a near-disappeared trail into the woods. Shortly I returned, and she was setting up in a perfect pool of sunlight, paints, papers, canvas, brushes, pens, pencils…
I walked over to her and handed her what I'd collected; a small branch, just a stick really, with clumps of peeling brown bark and gray-green moss drooping like a badly fitting wig, another with fresh live pine needles, and one with browning pine needles.
"Those are your basic colors right there, as far as I can tell," I said. "I imagine if you match them to start, you can probably work out all the shadows and variations." She looked up at me as if I'd just dropped a gold nugget on the table.
"Yeah," she said, "that will work. Thank you." She rolled the mossy stick in her fingers, concentrating. "What are you going to do while I'm doing this?" she asked distractedly.
"Whatever I want," I said. She was already reaching for a pencil. I doubt she even heard me.
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| Study of Color |
Hours later as evening was rushing in the way it seems to do in high country, the sun dropping like a red stone behind a mountain, she stopped.
I'd been writing in my journal. Old school, pen and paper. I'd finished some time before, and was lightly dozing in the warm afternoon in a lawn chair I'd taken from the back of the truck. Neither of us had spoken a word in that entire time. It was her time, doing what she loved. I wouldn't have interrupted her for the world.
She nudged me with her toe, and I snapped awake.
"I'm packed up here," she said. She paused for a minute, then smiled. "Thank you for this. I'd never have thought of it, nor expected you to just let me work."
I stretched and yawned awake. "You get enough time?" I asked. "We're not in a hurry."
"No," she laughed, "that was plenty," and gave me a quick kiss.
"Good," I said, standing and folding the chair. "Let me know if you want to stop again."
"Well," she said, sliding her hands around me, "like you said, we're not in a hurry. And there are other things to do in the forest besides art…"
Did I mention? It was one of the best vacations we've ever had.
Aww, that was lovely.
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