Lessons

 

It will most likely take me years to truly process the lessons this trip gave me.  After being gone for 11 years, once again, Montana changed me.  This time, I got there broken and battered from 18 months of a new Covid world, teaching in a pandemic, learning true worry about family, exhaustion of new panic every few days, reeling from lost friendships, changing landscapes and forced growing up in a lonely accelerated world.  But Montana took her rivers and washed me clean.  She soothed me with her people and their hospitality.  She awakened me with her new life and possibility of growth. She looked at me with calf eyes and saw through my armor.  She sent a gosling to spread his wings to love and remind us we would heal.  She gave me horses to carry me for a while, to help lift my heart and my burdens.  Horses to match my heartbeat and reset its rhythm to hoofbeats on sand.  She gave me tools to mend my broken fences.  And then she told me to talk to the mountain.  So I did, and the mountain told me stories.  She recited old stories of patience and courage, old tales of warriors and stewards, sweat and struggle older than my ancestors.  So I listened.  I found enough stillness and I listened.  And on the wind upon which I fly, I hear her singing to me every day.  Let go, surrender and be free.

Cowboy Wisdom

Sometimes you don't know how to put
down
your burden
until one day you
are mending fences with a philosopher cowboy
and he tells you
That mountain.  She has some stories to tell.
I am listening
I know you are

So I gave my burdens to the mountain.
Surrendered
them like an ancient sacrifice
And she blessed me
with quiet.