I’m sitting here, in my studio, at my desk, trying to decide what to tell you. It is cool outside, and even cooler inside this log house. The dogs are laying in the dirt and pine duff outside the door and the breeze is blowing in and rattling all the beautiful things that create my space here. I have been away for almost 30 days (I was home for only one day between trips). I have been in tremendously wild places. When I was driving my truck up the Methow Valley from Pateros two nights ago, when my foot was tired on the gas pedal and my eyes were full of grit, when I was braking hard to miss deer and imagining the trout treading water in the dark river to my right…I realized I was coming home; I realized I was reluctantly coming home to the Methow Valley.
When I left Montana three days ago, a beautiful Montana dulled by a thick blanket of forest fire smoke, a wild Montana I rode through on the back of a horse, the spacious Montana I saw 80 miles of from the back of a golden haflinger, I told my friends, “There is nothing for me in Washington.”
They laughed.
I think they thought I was making a melodramatic joke, of sorts. But I wasn’t. I keep thinking to myself, “We need to get back to Idaho.” I keep wondering what will take us back to Idaho. I keep wondering, “How long will it take?” I continue to remind myself to be present, to love all that there is to love here, and there is terribly much to love about the Methow Valley. Terribly much. I am spoilt to live here. I truly am.
It’s a difficult thing to explain, but I will try. Washington is a wonderful state, but it simply doesn’t hold me quite like Idaho and Montana do. It’s perhaps an issue of cultural discombobulation for me. The closer I get to the ocean, to the coast, to the mighty cities there — the greater my sense of dissolution. I can’t wrap my mind around the reality of huge populations of people who are without space (the kind of space I need). It’s all too overlapping. The stifled feel of it pours over the Mountains here and dissipates, slowly, until the heart of the interior chokes it out with its wide openness and stamping hooves.
I remind myself, the way we receive the space around us is a personal thing. I need more than the average human…I am more easily infringed upon than the average human. I always stand in a way that offers great space to the people around me.
What will take me back? What will take me back to Idaho and the space there and the emptiness there and the way those two things sustain me, cradle me, inform my work, inspire the shutters on my cameras, settle my bones in their sockets, tether my soul?
I am not unhappy here. I am happy here. Here in Washington. But the sense that the grass is greener on the other side of the state line, for me, grows stronger with every day.
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Yesterday, after an eternity of laundry loads, after cleaning the Airstream from top to bottom, after running the dogs, before dinner, before editing photographs late into the night, before I sipped on that delicious gin and tonic with garden cucumbers…Tater and I took a cruise in the ’71 and it was beautiful. I’ve been meaning to take a self-portrait of myself, driving the Ford down a dirt road, from a wide distance, for ages now. I’ll make similar pictures again, in the future, until I think I have captured it perfectly — the feel of homecoming, wandering, twilight, freedom, diamonds of dust and the nature of being on the road, headed to nowhere, headed to everywhere.
Headed to everywhere.
I’m so glad you’re back. (Very selfish, I know.) I’ve been coming to this site, your precious photos and words and all the other precious folks commenting under them, for a few years now (I still feel like a newbie). I hate to think of myself as dependent on something. I’m not dependent on reading your words. But they nourish me in some fabulous, great and deep way. They bring out the desire for things in me (especially the need to be in nature) that I’ve always had but needed to be reminded of. THANK YOU for being you and sharing your spirit and soul so generously. I’m also thankful for all the inspiring people commenting here. (At times I had this fantasy of what an unbelievably rad festivity it would be if all those people actually came together in real life!!!)
I never felt like I could adequately express my gratitude and joy over all these things in a comment. But as that’s never gonna change…it’s now or never. 🙂 Love to all!! And rock on, Ms. Plume!! <3
(And those photos are so breathtakingly beautiful! The last one especially gets to me. It just screams: ALIVE!)
!!!
I know. My readership is SO precious…so rich…I am wealthy with their kindness and tenderness and wisdom and understanding and loyalty.
Thanks for going out on a limb today and leaving a note for all of us to enjoy. I appreciate you being here, so much, and am happy to officially know you are out there.
Love,
Jillian
Thank YOU! <3
Change is growth, my friend. Moving forward. Wisdom, experience, shifts… they all make us better & stronger. It is but another step towards your future that you alone build. I am certain you will settle in to feeling “right” in Wa. Sometimes it just takes time. It is different. And new; but not new. You’ll blossom here too, I am sure. And, it just brings you closer – sister like of mine: metalsmith, artist, explorer, Canadian girl.
xx Can’t wait to catch up soon.
It’s not that life feels upright here…it’s just that it feels righter elsewhere. Know what I mean? Hope to get to see you sometime in September. Let’s get a meet-in-the-middle-coffee-date set up.
X
I do know what you mean.
xxx
September would be fabulous, let’s do it!
When I left Oregon, I thought my heart would break until I rolled into Wyoming and found HOME! When I left Wyoming I felt like it was time for something new and Montana slowly worked it’s magic. When I left Montana I KNEW my heart would break, and it did, because I also left the West for the flatlands. I tell people I came here to the middle by accident. Now I spend time plotting ways to get back to Wyoming – to home. Lately, I’ve been thinking, “What a waste. I must find what’s here.” So far I haven’t found a place to pull off the road and wander up into the hills and it’s hard to breath sometimes in such a tame civilized place.
Yesterday I started looking at RV’s and cool old camper vans, because I’m a little older than I was when I went to Wyoming. (Back then I bought a good sleeping bag, a tent, a cooler and a bicycle and knew I would always have a place to live. I still have the tent and the cooler.)
I’m all for growing where you’re planted, but sometimes it’s just the wrong kind of soil.
(I guess I could have just said I know what you mean about open space………)
“…sometimes it’s just the wrong kind of soil.”
Spot on.
XX
Good to see you regardless of where you are…I share your love for space and you must imagine how I manage live in this space (I hide)…and yet, I would not want to be in outer space. I think you know what I mean…lovely pics as always xx
me, too :: i need more space than the average human. i find i am most “at home” and at peace when up on coyote hill, no one and nothing around me except the wide open spaces, the trees, the breezes, the sky.
when you find Home, you’ll know it.
xx
What a lovely way to explain how you want to be… in the open. These pictures almost look like CA, but it’s a little too green. I love that first shot of your smile and your dog!!!!! I, too, am glad you’re back~
Your images and your words are food for the soul. To see a new entry from you is like opening a present on Christmas day. Every single one of your pictures made me smile. Every. One. Wow. By the time I got to your last pic it literally brought tears to my eyes… as Johanna put it, *ALIVE* (my next thought was more of envy; I think I would first dent the hood and then fall off the truck as I twirled:) only you, tiny Plume, only you
You will find your way. You always do. Anyone who reads your blog knows this as simple fact
Oh that unassuming, slow paced Idaho! It has taken the hearts of many. That acknowledgement is something felt deep within your bones. I remember the moment I knew Idaho was my space. I flew back from Texas (where I’m from) and the plane dipped a little to land. I looked out my window and saw a mountain range. My body echoed “home” off of the peaks of the mountains and I knew. I just knew, it was settled so deep within me. I love your photo collection. So fun.
I think one can fall in love with a country, a place, a state, a province, a town, a village, a dog, a cat….not just with a man (or a woman). When I came to the west coast for the first time in my life (I come from Paris one of the prettiest and nicest city in the world) I fell “at home”, I cannot explain… I do not know why exactly it was just a feeling inside of me. I did everything possible to come and live here and I did.
You’ll go back to your love-state, you will have all the space you need, all around there will be no limits, just the mountains and the wilderness just for you.
And we’ll get the photographs!!!!!!!!!
Oh,Dear Jillian!
COME back to IDAHO!!! So happy to know you left your ‘soul’here in the land of POTATOES! To yearn so deeply for a place you have laid down roots in a ‘soil’ that runs DEEP,FAR and WIDE! I so get it…..every time I leave, this land pulls me back. I was inspired to write. IDAHO misses YOU……needs you…..loves you! As a native Idahoan, I know the goodness and WILDness of this great state. That you choose Idaho…… respect,honor and understand the gifts she holds,is reason to keep her close. She won’t be the same without you…..
You left your heart here……
COME BACK……won’t you?
Sometimes geography hurts us. I had to move from the coast of California to Upstate New York about 9 years ago and it still hurts, but I am slowly learning to love and appreciate the beauty here. I might even be hurt by the loss of this when and if I ever move from here, but I still miss the ocean. I don’t have quite the need of actual space that you do. I like the anonymity of being alone in a large crowd of strangers better than the everybody know and is related to everybody quality of where I live now. Somehow all of that interrelation and feuding seems confining to me…give me the ocean, but the east has a moodiness that appeals to something inside me, so I find things to love about it as well. Hopefully you will to.
Gosh, it’s lovely to see you back here! Like everyone else I have missed checking in with your words and images to add depth and perspective to some of these lazy, hazy days of summer.
I know exactly how you can miss the home-ness of Idaho when you feel that your tethers have been severed… So many times in my life I have been transported by circumstance to places far away and missed the old with deep longing. Now I find myself at a strange new junction– the realization that one place will never hold me exclusively. I love our land deeply, gaze out the windows with a sense of wonder almost daily that so many dreams have come true. And yet I will always feel a sense of homecoming when I return to the Monterey Bay, will always imagine navigating the bustling city sidewalks to spend hours in reverie before the paintings in grand museums of London and Paris, will replay endlessly the outdoor lunches with our friends in Giverny and look forward to the next ones, and Christmas will always take me back to my childhood in Germany. For too many years I have tried to commit myself to a single place, define myself accordingly, and it is only now that I have come to accept all of the diametric facets of myself as parts of a glorious whole– one that greets the day feeding a herd of horses and artfully wielding a muck rake and a wheelbarrow but is just as much at home wandering the beach and finding barnacled mussel shells or sipping wine at a sidewalk cafe late into the evening. We can love it all and still come home to the place that feels best. It’s always there waiting for our return.
Beautifully written, Janet. Thank you for putting my similar thoughts in words! XX
I think I know some of what you feel. In fact, you’ve articulated what I’ve struggled to put words to. Dissolution is absolutely the perfect description. This west coast city where I live, a place many thousands have flocked to for the creative community, leaves me feeling stifled and unable to concentrate. Concentrate/Dilute. I feel like I’m going to ponder on that for a while! There are just so many other energies, other people, doing, doing doing, diluting the (or maybe my) purpose of place. I love how you describe your sense of space. I too find myself stepping away from people in respect of their space, but really, I think it’s more about allowing myself the space *I* need. I just relate to this so much.
And of course, your photos are smack me in the face gorgeous as usual.
Please tell me more about what you saw, what you thought, while riding that horse in Montana! I can just picture the scene and I think I faintly heard you…when you told your buddies that Washington’s just not your bag! Yeah. I knew that.
‘Where can we go from here?
Where can we go?
We keep trying to get back
To Idaho.’ Caitlin Canty
So happy to see you in this gathering place again. I bet Rhubarb is bucking for a chin scratch. 🙂
x
I get it, Jillian. Absolutely and entirely. Place, space, your ground. All love and wildness to you, dear sister. xxoo
Everything is temporary. This is just a blip in time of your life. Those big, wide open spaces will happen again–probably sooner than you think. I am glad to see you back. I keep checking my feedly to see your words 🙂
That restlessness…I know it well. This last year, I accepted my city life, even reveled in it. The crush of humanity, the diversity of languages and skin color and everything else. Perhaps I was just accepting where I am, because lately all I want is vistas and rivers and wide open spaces–small towns where you really FEEL the community. Where you’re part of something.
I hope you settling back in well. Smooches to Tater and the rest!
I found your blog a while back and been simply mesmerized by it. As a person who grew up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the lakes and endless forests I can relate to a lot of the things.
Your pictures are amazing. They do make me home sick, but please, do take that as a compliment! 🙂
I have no great words of wisdom to offer, but the way I see it, if it feels RIGHT, why to settle for anything less.
Jillian, we arrived in Seattle a week ago after driving the seemingly endless plains of South Dakota, after camping beside rivers in the Montana forests. We were in Seattle approximately 7 1/8 hours (possibly less) before I felt stifled, agitated, and encumbered. We left early the next morning for the North Cascades and the space for my soul to take flight. I’m so glad I read this post because you’ve taught me I don’t have to feel guilty for needing wilderness (and I really do need it). This week has been hard: lovely to see family & old friends but often I quite literally feel like I can’t breathe. I love the line “I need more space than other people.” Thank you for helping me realize it’s okay, and not selfishness or contrariness to be wired that way. xoxo Stephanie from Bonneyboys
Moving away from Montana was like leaving a soulmate, for no good reason. I always exhale when I cross the state line. I feel closer to my Dad when I’m there. It makes my heart sing. My boys and I have just returned from a long road trip, and this is just how I felt (again) once I turned the car east. Thank you for this post. It is powerful and beautiful, and a bit of a balm for a frenzied heart trying to find the beauty around suburban Atlanta. (Can you believe that? MT to GA!). I try to remember that though we don’t feel exactly at home, we’re the lucky ones for ever feeling so tied to a place.
Hi Jillian, I just read your tweet that a bee stung you on the tongue… I don’t use Twitter, so just wanted to tell you that I had the same thing happen to me! So utterly wacky and a little scary as I was out on a bike ride, alone, and if my tongue would have swelled up– well, blocked airway with no one around: not optimal. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Your blonde hair in the wind and that truck! I know well the feeling of yearning for the land that makes your goose bumps rise and your heart feel like bursting. I was opposite coasts, moved from BC to Ontario. What I am discovering is the vast wilderness in Ontario, it goes on for way longer with a lot less clear cuts and the wildlife is unreal. Lately I’m finding your words the most grounding thing in my life, it’s amazing how you touch the people that visit here. You are such a wild soul, it’s the best.
Where ever you go, and how ever much you feel like sharing about it all with us, I wanted to let you know that I appreciate it! Your words and photos are inspiring to so many of us wild souls. In fact, last week I had a plan to go up the mountain that is my backyard with a friends to pick huckleberries. She had to cancel last minute, so it was just me and the dogs. I’ll take them for walks down in the valley, to the river or lake, but I had yet to really be up in the mountains alone. Then I thought about you and your brave heart, and all the adventures you share with us, just you and your dogs sometimes. So I went. And I had a beautiful day, picked lots of berries and hiked into my favourite little subalpine lake. So thank you for the inspiration, and if you ever make it to the Kootenays, I have some huckleberrie jam for you.
These pictures are adorable, Jillian! The last one is just outstanding, so you.