A Testament of Hiraeth; The Direction of the Firs

Hiraeth is a word bred from the Welsh language and summoned to claim my open secret of a love that once was but will forever remain in my heart. It is defined as homesickness for a home to which you cannot return to, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. Bozeman, Montana exists as a place of Hiraeth, the place of my past where I found the avowal of love that showed me the divine beauty of our Earth, and where newly found motivation flowed through my veins like a riptide of the Pacific Ocean. It was the harbor I could no longer set sail to, symbolizing the connection of vanished, ardent, love. Galleries of hang-worthy photos exist as the sole survivors of the bygone voyage.

I sat in excitement listening to the shutter of my camera as Lucy was snapping photo after photo from the back of her mother’s rustic jeep as we headed south from Bozeman to the foothills of the Gallatin Range. My girlfriend at the time; Lucy, her sister, and their mother were bringing me to a close friend’s property where I would come to discover the life-changing art that was, is, and will continue to always be, the art of storytelling. We pulled in their long and narrow drive; what was loose chalky gravel with bands of wavering shin-high grass. The tires carved a path to where Molly Caro May and her husband Chris stood in ease and elegance with welcoming smiles on their seasoned faces. They greeted me in front of a beautiful cabin. The element-stained structure sat surrounded by steep inclined hills, the empty space was filled in with Douglas fir trees that stood tall and upright complimented by the shading of shrubbery. A Great Dane/Mastiff/Hound mix came running out of the wild grass. Bru was his name.

The warmth from their hands and their soft sincere smiles made it easy to like them. Chris stood tall in work boots and jeans-wearing his favorite Patagonia fleece. He had long black hair and scruff covering his face. Chris had callused hands. I was quick to realize he was a carpenter by trade and built the garage that he stood in front of. Molly stood still with rosy lush cheeks, cowboy boots, and faded blue jeans. She wore a pretty blue fleece with a large beige sunhat. Her grip was gentle, hands soft like her voice. Molly asked us to follow her and Chris. Lucy reached out to take my hand, her mouth widened as she smiled as she said that I was in for a treat. We began to walk alongside the happy couple in the direction of the firs to where a vintage rucksack packed to the close settled beside a path that appeared next to the brush. I was quick to suggest that I was to carry the bag seeing as Lucy refused to give up my camera. The other sets of hands filled with multiple wool spreads that Chris retrieved earlier from the cabin. They were picnic blankets. They were the ones that you would see from a vintage magazine, or from scrolling through Pinterest while shopping for necessities to compliment the chalet you own far away deep in the forested mountains of nowhere. We start our modest incline on the switchback-laden dirt trail gaining elevation and shortness of breath. The words “mountain lions” caught my ear, as Chris talked about the local community. “You will never see the mountain lion, you just have to know that she’s here.” The sound of catch-up chatter between Stacey and Molly complimented the Bozeman breeze when minutes of walking on the trail led us emerging from the trees to greet the open Montana terrain. It was a picturesque wheat-filled plain that danced waist-high. The sight reminded me of a portrait masterpiece. Where would this path continue to lead? I couldn’t wait to find out.

To my surprise, we were at the foothills of the Gallatin Range. This was now my second trip out to visit Lucy, I was still getting to know the area. Open land as far as the eye could see, a subtle breeze, and the mountains. It was an upland leading to the mountains, what more could one ask for? We kept trekking ahead and my eyes quickly dialed in, my mouth opened and I gazed upon a traditional Mongolian yurt. Another masterpiece crafted by the carpenter and his wife, and it too was just as awe-inspiring as the cabin back down the hill. Set adjacent to the yurt was a crafted bench, on which sat a barrel-like size of fresh ice tea and lemonade. The bench imprinted the land on which it stood, sinking deeper and deeper as the leaves changing color. Stained a dark rich tint, the weather-beaten form showed many trivial scars not affecting its function, only adding to its beauty. The bench had many visitors while the evening’s nibbles and drink were placed on its smooth surface. Nearby, a tall-chiseled vessel stood lofted as the blades of wheat folded beneath it. This podium greeted the open meadow. I watched as the blankets were spread out in front of the pedestal, my eyes were fixed on one of the woolen patterns. It was a light-brown muted blanket with a series of several yellow lines running diagonally across running thick, then thin, then thick again.

It was like a sanctuary, I proclaimed. Molly and Chris inhabited the yurt mainly in summer. They invited local and out-of-town friends and their guests to come to the property to partake in their magnificent practice. Molly’s career in writing sparked the idea of hosting readings where they could “get people reading aloud, to engage in the ancient art of storytelling.” The draw varied from experienced published authors, extreme sportswriters, English professors, retired business owners, and everyone in between. “The more the merrier,” she said. Lucy and I filled up on finger foods, licking our lips clean of hummus. Our pita chips where overloaded with the spread as we rushed them over an empty hand to our mouths. Lucy used her index finger to softly wipe a stray dab of hummus off my face before it turned into a new freckle. Our thirst was immediately quenched by the sweet taste of ice tea, and our stomachs quieted into silence, no longer interrupting the speaker after we devoured the clean slices of Gouda that stacked on top of fresh-cut summer sausage.

After one of the local English professors read a set of her newest and most proud poems, Lucy and I left our body-printed blanket and sat on the wooden fence that mapped out Molly and Chris’s land. I turned my head towards her, Lucy’s hair was pulled tightly back in a ponytail. I took my fingers and gently guided a few stray hairs behind her ear. She smiled and leaned into me. Smiling back, we took in the moment for what it was, perfection. I held her while we spoke of light plans, aspirations, and goals that we had individually and mapped out together. The sun was transitioning into the golden hour, which I was eagerly waiting for. We quickly got up and walked only a few feet over to the yurt. My trusty Canon was gently resting on top of a stack of Molly’s books. Thoreau and Emily Dickinson. We left the yurt to go outside and I whistled loud. I waited as Lucy counted quietly. Bru came running out of the trees, he was notorious for being anywhere and everywhere. With all that open land, Molly and Chris don’t blame him. Bru was an excellent model; he posed proudly in the wheat field. Dusk was but a few chapters away and it was time to sit and listen to the guests share.

It was truly a mayflower moment when I felt the tingling sensation run up my spine, as I sat holding the one I loved, surrounded by influential folk writers and readers. In this peaceful place, I soon realized that storytelling, and specifically writing, was something that would transform me for the better. As we sat listening to another reader, I couldn’t help my mind wandering off onto the land where we sat. It was felt like anything was possible, I was free to roam where I pleased and everything thought and word in my head would have sounded great on paper. Listening to the strangers tell tales of non-fiction while explicitly spewing out rich words, sparked the beginning to a failed recognition of a climactic battle that all writers encounter, but none of these authors seemed like they encountered writer’s block. Their sentences wove in togetherness, double-stitching the previous line as they overpowered the structured thought before. An endless array of creativity suddenly began to form a masterpiece of stitches that was readily prepared for even the heaviest reader.

I instantly saw the endless potential writing would give me. My brain felt swollen from imagining all the adventures I would go on, the pictures I would have added to my portfolio and the stories I would be able to write about then share with the people in my life. I have carried around thoughts for years that either dragged me down like a sack of rocks or had me flying higher than my father’s Boeing 747-400. Was this a way I could clear my mind, making space for whatever would come my way? My adventures and experiences from my childhood and teenage years could now be documented through the text that goes hand in hand with photos that hide stashed away at the bottom of a trunk that serves as a footrest in our living room. The trunk is a pine-sealed, salt-stained, rope locker that once held fast on the stern of our sailboat, Alika. We would rip through the waves of the Pacific Ocean like a child tearing sheets of paper from a coloring book. I formed an obsession with the writing process. All of my sailing journeys, hiking trips, and blessed life experiences are now shouting out at me. They invaded my mind as my fingers cramped up while producing word after word on paper like I had a quota to meet. But I was only seventeen years old, I had no quota to meet, I didn’t have a worry in the world. Right?

Lucy and I found such a deep connection to the earth as we sat grounded on the woven blankets. Our minds took off in a million and one different directions, and before we knew it our future was mapped out with all the things that we were going to do. A nomadic lifestyle intrigued us but the exciting thought of having a property just like this didn’t escape our minds either. Especially for Lucy, as she was conceived in a yurt in the Pacific Northwest. Why wouldn’t we want to live a life like Molly and Chris? We could see their true happiness; it shined like the summer sun on a perfect June day. While we spent time at “The Land” as Molly calls it, a deep connection began to fuse within me. Even new connections began to fuse between Lucy and I. Tracking back to my pre-K days, I have always been venturesome and in love with the nature of our world, here at The Land, I felt an inner peace and a call to adventure. “I only saw the idea of things instead of the actual it of things,” Molly said. I sit here thinking about what she had just stated, and I came to realize that things would tersely come to change.

Pretty soon I would be back on a plane to Minnesota to finish high school and to get ready for my upcoming playing career in juniors, as Lucy would embark on a five-month trip to South America that was fueled by the wanderlust that egged us on while we listened to the stories during our times spent at the yurt. Yes, we made plans for our future, but I knew firsthand from my travels that things do not always go to plan. This thought tried to charge forward like a thunderous stampeding herd of wild bison. Reluctantly I pushed the notion back knowing that the stampeding herd was fleeing from a prediction of an earthquake to come. I hoped that this wouldn’t be the last time my eyes would see this place. Such a delight it was to be there. This place was like something out of a perfect book, everything about the beautiful cabin down the trail, and acres of the gold meadow wheat fields accompanied by the gentle breeze of Montana that spewed the cottonwood seed upon the land. It was home, their perfect home. The Land was empty from the shuffling bustle and sound of car horns and blared music, instead, the soothing natural symphony of the trickling creek down the hill next to the woodshop played on repeat over and over.

I wanted to stay on their property forever. Lu and I joked about buying a plot of land so we could just do the same and rent it out to our siblings when we were gone traveling. Our love grew while we were there because of an indescribable feeling that united us and then filled us up again some more. Lucy and I leaned on nature as our doctor, a doctor whose prescription would be as addictive as our search to find a place we could feel a similar feeling as we did at The Land. All around Bozeman we ventured. And it was good. Lucy took me to a hot spring outside of town where we found a comparison to the genesis of our newly found love. Though we appeared to the The Land a thin number of times, such a habitation does not require quantitative visits to exceedingly illustrate the perfection for which it was. Looking back on it now, I see it as God’s handiwork, and His grace that was filling us those hours spent at the yurt. We humanly loved one another just like the happiest and most elderly married couple one could think of. The thing that lead us astray was the progression of time.

The moment came to face reality. I could not yet leave the life that I had in the Twin Cities and turn rover. There were goals I made for myself, experiences as well as achievements to embrace before starting a new journey. As the weeks turned into months, I came to find answers to questions I did not even think to ask. I was single by then and discovered that my ties to Bozeman, Montana no longer flowed like the raging riptide it once was. Its depth became shallow as the tides changed. Lucy and I had both focused on the things we set out for ourselves, rather than the things we desired to experience with each other. The yurt became a dream to me, an experience so perfect that I wanted to keep the connection with it to Lucy and our discovery of the impact that writing had on us. Thankfully I stumbled across the word Hiraeth and its definition one afternoon while reading. I sat at a family friend’s house, a cultural anthropologist who owns a dig outside of the city of Jordan in Israel. His collection of books was extraordinary. Reaching out to the most worn spine on the shelf, I opened it to uncover my own cultural discovery. The word Hiraeth, and definition sat waiting for twenty years to lock eyes with mine.

It is sound to say that I summon the memories, and glance at the photos taken only to recall the beauty and joy that The Land as well as the people provided. The locality was deep enough in the busy of nowhere to be lost without getting lost. The Internet was shaky and your phone hardly worked, but I promise you too would find a better connection.

Follow-Up:

For five years Chris and Molly have lived on the property while even wintering in the yurt and using the house down below for dishes, showering, and completing other tasks. Molly now runs Thunderhead Writer’s Collective in downtown Bozeman with fellow author and journalist Kelsey K. Sather. Their mission is similar to the one at Molly’s yurt, just not on their land. Chris continues to craft furniture from the woodshop near the cabin. They moved the yurt down the hill as well. Molly wrote a novel about the yurt and her experiences. The Map of Enough: One Woman’s Search for Place. Bru is still running around and is a main source of entertainment for their new baby girl. Lucy is still traveling and is currently in Nepal for the year.

http://www.thunderheadwriterscollective.com

http://www.mollycaromay.com

http://kelseyksather.co