This afternoon, I’m looking out to the east, watching the Big Belts. The 75 mile-long Rocky Mountain island chain stretches in an arc—a belt. Not quite 10,000 feet at its highest point. The Missouri River splits its canyon walls— the Gates of the Mountains the Lewis and Clark Expedition called it. A modest range that figured centrally in the 1860s as miners rushed to its gulches for gold. Now we know it for timber sales, fires, grazing land, hidden log cabins, and the lovely, treacherous Deep Creek Canyon highway, the only paved road that spans the range.
The Big Belts, 20 or 30 miles away as the crow flies, frame my days—my mood, the day’s evolution. Today, it’s snowing sporadically along the range, a system steadily moving south. In the last hour, I watched the storm blossom and turn serious. So far here in Helena it’s only windy. In the summer, curtains of rain inch across the mountains. At night, from my bed, I watch electrical shows and count the heartbeats before thunder scares the cats. On temperate days, the Belts send cumulus marshmallows up into the sky.
I am so enamored with the Big Belts and their drama that I am undone when our valley fills with smoke and inversions. Or when heavy snow blocks my view. It’s not a perfect high mountain pristine perspective. It’s not the Land. Here I look over apartment buildings and a scatter of houses near East Helena, a dot of red the local hockey rink. At night, the flash of police cars and ambulances. But I’m up high enough that the foreground falls away. I am left with sky and mountains.
*****
At 830 North Ash in McPherson, Kansas—the home my folks bought in 1953—the view north dominated our lives. Lincoln Grade School and its bursts of playground activity. Then, two blocks beyond the ugly Farmers’ Alliance insurance building, on up to the “new” water tower. Its mushroom dome illuminated in white light most of the year and then, in December, changing Christmas colors. Three times a day, standing at the sink and kitchen window, we looked to the tower as we did dishes. In winter, in the dark, feeling comforted by a lighted landmark. And in an emotional dark, as my parents grew ill and less able, my sister and I rendezvoused in the kitchen to talk over what to do next—the water tower a kind of Great Plains lighthouse that kept us steady through difficult choices.
My college dorm rooms had big windows sighted across our little campus—or to the neighboring church. But I was too busy at my desk or rendezvousing with friends to notice. During my guinea pig/fever study summer, Bethesda and parts of Washington D. C. spread out below our 6th floor room. Absorbing that view was just part of the summer’s fairy tale—too exotic to be believed.
I have no memory of charming views from my University of Oregon apartments. Just rain. And the insides of a metal study carrel in the library complete with cold, wet feet. The backside of another apartment building once I got home. And more rain.
In Gettysburg summers, Mrs. Keefer’s blisteringly hot sunporch sat right on the sidewalk and I kept the shades pulled to block heat and tourist curiosity. The funky apartment I rented my teaching year—a series of bedrooms Roger and Olive had pasted into a shotgun unit when their daughters married—offered up bucolic Maryland countryside.
When I moved to Gettysburg for a permanent position, I stumbled into a magic home: a second floor gable-roofed apartment next to the National Cemetery. An aerie settled in the tops of pine trees. No long views but sun and greenery. And the pure joy of having my own grown-up apartment. I owned a stereo, a bistro table, a bed, a Victorian love seat, and a few books and records. Perfect for a world in which the landscape that fueled my days was the battlefield itself.
Three years later I moved to work for the National Park Service in Washington D.C. I arrived for the changing of White House residents: Nixon out and Ford in. For the next six years, I lived in three different World War II era apartments—the last of which became a condo that I bought. Those interiors were lovely – parquet floors, butcher block counters, generous rooms. With gentle, green, comfortable shared “yards.” But then and now, the landscapes that I loved are the monumental ones that I got to walk every day: across the Mall to Interior, uptown past the K Street offices, Judiciary Square that came into view as I rode the subway and escalator to the Pension Building.
I flew to Helena when I moved here. And by the time the big Mayflower truck arrived, I’d rented a flimsy condo in one of Helena’s early neighborhoods. I looked to the west—up a scraggly hill or down the block to badly remodeled nineteenth century houses. Mostly, I lived physically and emotionally in the basement of the Montana Historical Society. Wrangling a hell of a new job.
Six years later, the spring Dave and I married, we toured Helena with realtor Bill Spilker to find the perfect bungalow for a family that now included Dave’s daughters, Emily and Amanda. We found no such thing in our price range, but stumbled into a better option. A builder-constructed 1950 rancher—long on storage, small architectural graces, and the partially finished basement that Dave loved.
The front picture window faced south and framed Mount Helena—a saddle-topped half hill, part of a ridge of baby mountains. An interesting landscape, but not the one I remember most. As in McPherson, our midsize square of kitchen window became the portal to my world. It faced the backyard that had much influenced our purchase. An upper level with a huge lilac bush and garage; a lower level with patio/basketball free throw circle, raspberry bushes, garden, and the most elegant, enormous climbable Russian olive. Flower beds all around – scattered tulips, bleeding hearts, lilies of the valley, and tall delphiniums. A strawberry patch that became the rabbit cemetery. We fed the birds deliberately and the deer inadvertently. I spent summer evenings weeding—an enterprise good for my soul but never finished.
But I knew that backyard view best from the kitchen window. Cooking, doing dishes, packing school lunches, washing vegetables. Daydreaming, listening for the distant band concert, or watching for the faint sky-high scribbles of rodeo fireworks. Somehow I had a powerful, grownup marriage, a family home, the sweet routines of a homemaker, and the needing-to-take-a deep breath annoyances of any marriage. That Russian olive my steady anchor and friend.
*****
Not quite two years after Dave died, I found this condo, fell in love with its layout and light and deep front porch. I was still working part-time, so settling in, understanding the neighborhood, getting art up on the walls happened slowly. I’m part of a three-building, 12 unit complex. Even then I knew that I’d struck gold. In my 2008 Winter Letter: “I watch sun and moon-rise over the Big Belts; evening light shimmering on a silver band of Missouri River; and goofy gangs of yearling deer chasing each other along a ravine.”
In a world where so many of our fellow beings live on the street, in tents, in camps stretching across the desert, in basements already shell-shattered by war, I have been pure lucky—pure undeserving—of safe, suitable, interesting homes. Of the ability to savor exquisite places on our earth. In no part of my life have I lived in ugliness or fear. If I’d never moved here, I still would have enjoyed a lifetime of wonderful homes – and views. Every place seemed to fit its stage of my life.
As developers crank out low-income apartments in Helena, they build on unwelcoming but available plots and install as few windows as possible. Economies trump loveliness. Instead, what could be better for struggling families than light, airy creative design— greenery and sky and breadth. Never mind the realities of senior housing. Picture two-occupancy nursing home rooms and the dark, stuffy, claustrophobic bed on the inside wall. The single window beyond a curtain and closed anyway.
I grow more grateful and enchanted as I age. I have time now to look up from my books and cats and computer and take a deep breath, to register the beauty, the breadth and depth of the world. To track seasons by how far the sun rises above the peaks—and so how bright my home becomes. To acknowledge and salute the whole iridescent universe. To watch for reflected sunsets that dance along in gold and pink on eastern clouds or paint my Big Belts in mauve and purple. To follow a slender finger of light as it brings a gulch into sharp relief. To breathe.
If I am even more lucky, I will slide from this dazzling slice of our solar system to the stars beyond. From here to eternity. ©
