House on a Hill

After five years of trying to find happiness in Montana, I am feeling pulled to another place. It’s not that I can know for sure that I’ll find what I’m looking for there. It’s that I can’t live with the near-certainty that I’ll never find it here. In the past five years, I’ve spent far too much time alone, and it’s not good for me. In order to write I need to live large, and here, I have found myself living smaller and smaller, particularly in the long winter months. Most of all, if I want to write about the human condition, I need to experience the kind of deep connection that has eluded me. I can honestly say that I tried my hardest, but my best efforts ended about a year ago. I have spent far too much of my life bashing my head against brick walls. I won’t do it anymore.

I’ve been comfortable here in my cozy house in Montana, but not sufficiently brave enough to think I can endure being so alone forever. And so, I guess I’m deciding to choose to follow the words of Brene Brown, who wrote, “We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.” I will have to begin again.

The winter of 2018–1019 broke 100-year records for snowfall and extreme low temperatures. As the dark and cold dragged on, I felt myself pulled to sunnier lands and temperatures that aren’t designed to kill human beings. But, during the weeks that I planned my second road-trip to Northern New Mexico, Monida Pass, leading south on I-15 from Dillon, through Idaho to Salt Lake, and then to the red rock masterpieces of Arches and Canyonlands, was…