Mountain Time

            July 2013, Big Horn Mountains. Shawn and the kids spread out with their poles along the stream, hoping their casts lead to catches. I sit, notebook open, pen poised, attempting to conjure poetry that captures the magnificence of these mountains.

            Around me, flashes of color become touchstones of memory. Paintbrush orange and fireweed violet blaze from emerald grass.  Up the bank, forest-green raspberry bushes crop from a tumble of mottled boulder. At once, I am both in this place and on every other July camping trip we’ve taken. The creek winks in the sun, playing hide and seek with its treasure, and in the blur between vision and memory, my two little girls become two others, this mountain becomes every mountain.

            Here, on mountain time, I become closest to who I really am, who I want to be. Here in these mountains, I am once again 20, sitting on a sun-warmed boulder beside a mountain lake with a beer, a fishing pole, and the most exquisite peach I’d ever eaten. I smile back at a cowboy, my T-shirt, blue jeans and boots the only uniform I need. I am that girl, who had no schedule, no deadline, no agenda  -- who needed only sunshine, simple food, and somebody wonderful to love.

            Does Shawn still see that girl when he looks at me? Or does his vision stop at the 40ish wrinkles, the librarian outfit?  Can he see that same glow of pure joy on my face – ever? Or is the glow clouded out by frowns of worry, tears of loneliness? Does that girl still live in his heart – or has she faded to the woman who shares his closet and his checkbook, who frets over the children, the parents, the job?

            Would my children even believe that girl was me? My daughters – much closer to 20 now than I am – would they believe their always-on-task mother would sit for hours by a lake, catching nothing and caring less? Can they see past the practical haircut and sunscreened complexion to the long brown braid down my back and sunburn across my nose? Would they believe their ever-organized, ever-responsible mother would have been so in love with a place and a cowboy that she simply disappeared for a couple days, telling nobody where she was going?

            I know that the girl by the lake – the one awed by beauty, satisfied with earth’s simple gifts, in love with the people lin her life – remains. But does anyone else see her these days?

            Katie and Emily need help with their poles now, so I go. In twenty years of parenting, this response has been my grounding point – what my children need, if at all possible, I provide.  The girl who sat by that lake then untangles fishing line now. And realizes how fleeting this moment is – how twenty years disappears as quickly as summer in the mountains.

            This has been a summer of sudden endings: one friend’s brother killed in an airplane accident, another friend’s of a sudden heart attack. Just days ago, 18 firefighters on an Arizona mountain. My own cowboy had a brush with death a month ago, fracturing a vertebrae in a horse wreck.

            The lesson of that brevity, that fragility, should center me, make me grateful for just this moment, the way that girl at Sheep Lake was. Yet this camping trip has been clouded by a muddle of negativity – worry about my left-out youngest, loneliness for my absent oldest, frustration with the elders living down the creek. My mind rarely stills, rarely lands in one precious moment. It flits instead like a butterfly on fireweed, darting from one problem to another.

            Ironically, it is that same brevity and fragility that unravels my calm. Just as the face of this mountain is ever-changing, so too my life. I want to hit pause, to get a do-over, to try once more to get it right.

            I recently saw a workshop advertised as an opportunity to learn how to “re-invent” oneself. I see no need to reinvent: life does enough re-tooling for me. Gone now is that young, flushed bride with the long dark curls: now graying hair greets me as I pull on my mom jeans in front of the mirror. Gone too is the young, idealistic mom who read eight stories a day and folded cloth diapers at night – now there is an errand-running, appointment-making mom who’s sometimes too busy to talk. Almost gone is the mom who helped with school projects – replaced by the mom who does financial aid forms. Gone is the lullaby-singing, rocking chair-snuggling Mommy – now I’m the mom who can’t always fix things or kiss away the hurt.

            The rest of the family joins Katie and Emily now; the fish just aren’t biting today, so we decide to return to camp. Emily wants to take some pictures before we leave, however. We find a stand of paintbrush framed behind a piece of deadfall, and the vibrant orange contrasts beautifully with the weathered gray. I give her some advice about paying attention to the background and foreground, and about getting on the same level as the image she wants to capture. With her blond braid and faded jeans, Emily looks so much like her oldest sister, Laura, just as Katie looks like Carmen. Soon a day will come when Emily won’t want to take my advice, and that day will mark the beginning of an end: the end of the time when I have the answers to all her questions, the end of our simple, sweet relationship. One day she’ll have to discover her own answers. One day she’ll see me not as Mommy, but as a sometimes fierce, sometimes fearful, always fallible woman. One day she might even see me as the girl at the lake.

            As we finally drive away, I look back down the draw. I know enough about mountain ecology to know that the unstoppable progression of drought, infestation, fire and mud slides may – and most likely will – change the face of these mountains. I know enough about mountain economy to know the human impacts of grazing, logging, mining, and even recreating will eventually alter what I see.

            But despite all those changes, the mountain – its essence, what it truest about its nature – will remain. I can only hope the same for me.