Wait…Who Said You Can’t Go Home Again?

I’m not sure if being away felt immensely long, or passed in the blink of an eye, but if ‘my’ brewery is anything to go by, it was more blink-y than immense.

A couple of times I’ve been in since I returned. How much writing have I done?

Err…

Well…

I know all the regulars, you see…

Okay, okay: none. Not a bit.

I’ll tell you what, however: the week-long welcome home has been fantastic. It is easy to get so focused on what I gained up in Yellowstone that I forget what I left behind. The camaraderie and brotherhood is different, but no less strong.

As much as I loved the Taiwanese kids up there, as hopeful and happy as they were, do I love the Wal-Mart contingent down here…as bitter and cynical as they are.

Add in John and his dogs the size of horses…and Rob and his inability to admit just how big a nerd he is…Aaron’s vampire-like inability to tolerate sunlight…Don’s constant shit-eating grin now that he’s found real love…Travis’ beer-centric nerdism that still makes me jealous…

It was like I’d never left. Surely, it couldn’t have been almost six months since I’d been here..could it?

Yes, it was…and don’t call me Shirley.

Couldn’t stop myself – sorry about that.

Bad jokes in reference to old(ish) movies? Yep, I’ve come home alright.

I love everything I lived up in Yellowstone, from the park to the people to the insanity of the whole thing. I loved it, in fact, enough to commit to returning next year…but there is a very good reason why this place is still home.

The traffic sucks…the prices suck…the mobs of people suck…but it’s home nonetheless.

By the way, you’ll never really know you’re home until you have a 135-pound Great Dane get so excited to see you, she turns again into a tiny puppy. And, yes, I do indeed have the bruises to prove it…

Bitter & Cynical For The Win!

I’m home.

Yay…?

Getting into a real city again was weird. For all that Yellowstone’s surrounding towns have to offer, not even the most charitable could call Cody or Bozeman “cities”. That is, of course, a big part of why I like them.

Hell, half the reason I went to Yellowstone in the first place was to run away from the crowding and craziness that are starting to take over the area I currently call home. The area to which I just returned.

I almost didn’t, by the way.  Didn’t return, that is. A winter in the vast, sprawling metropolis of West Yellowstone wasn’t sounding too bad to me at the end, there. But…

But family comes first, and right now family has to take priority over self-indulgence and my introverted desire to continue running away.

The trip home*, however, did have one very big saving grace: time and quiet to take stock of the writing I did in Yellowstone.

*Thanks, airport shuttle, for having ZERO heat in twenty-degree weather!

Umm…

Ahh…

That stock-taking kinda sucked.

The plan was to write something on the order of 80,000 words while I was living in the park.

“Hey,” I thought, “there’s nothing around…I can write my ass off.”

Yes, I was that big of an idiot.  80,000 my ass – I wrote 20,000. That’s it. Shit, I should be writing 20,000 in a couple of weeks, not over the course of five months!

And you know why I got even that much done? Nagging guilt and shame had their roles, of course, but also the faith and support of my friends.  Especially of those that read my rough draft stuff and tried to keep me focused.

Hell, I don’t think I can ever really describe just how much I appreciated one friend’s…well, there’s no other way to describe it: her outright bullying.

“How much did you write, today? Nothing? Go…shoo! Go write! Now!”

Now, I’m a pretty big guy, and Billy small enough to stuff into my pocket, but I just hung my head and went to write. And valued the friendship as I went.

The time up there did, however, change the tenor of the story a little bit. That’s fine for the last third of Silence – it was intended to return a sense of hope, and of meaning, to Connor’s life – but for the first bit?

Err…

It sounds weird, but I have to recover that bitter cynicism that so colored everything – both for me, and for him – before I left. One glance at the traffic as we drove home, and I decided that rediscovery probably wouldn’t be as hard as I’d first thought.

What A Crew Of Blessed Souls*

*Note – from Dave Haus’ “Meet Me At The Lanes”

I don’t leave for a couple of days, but this is probably the last post I’ll have time to put together before then. I figure Monday – while I actually am leaving to travel home – is probably a good time to put up another snippet…

At any rate, I decided it was time to sum up some things from the past 5+ months. Now, I don’t really have to say that I really did love it up here. That has, I think, come through in past posts, both written and photographic.

All I can really add on that score is a simple statement that Yellowstone was worth every minute, and every drop of the frustration that cropped up from time to time. Even if you never venture off the trail, even if you never try to follow me into places that haven’t seen a human in decades (if ever), it is well worth it.

No, what I lay awake thinking about last night was the people who are about to scatter to the wind. The people that I never would have met under any other circumstance. With only one exception, the group that remains to close the store is the same group that opened the place so long ago.

We didn’t know each other back in that first week of May. Hell, we had not even the slightest idea about each other. Yet, as different as we all are, we’ve become close…we’ve become real, lasting friends.

Those of us who write, like to think about how to break our protagonist’s stasis, how to shake him or her out of comfortable normalcy and throw them into the situations in which they can (and hopefully will) grow.

Well, five months up here broke my stasis.

I thought last night about what would have happened if I had not come up and, instead, any of these remaining twenty-ish people had walked into the brewery.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

If we interacted at all, it would have been solely on the most surface and shallow of levels. And that would have been very, very sad. I would have missed that which has caused me – like any good protagonist – to grow and change.  And, worst of all, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.

Crap, I’ll reiterate: I generally don’t do nostalgia. Err…well…oh hell, let’s just go with it, anyway.

Now, like any human, I’ve grown closer to some than to others, but all are people I like, and people I am the better for having met.

From Bridget yelling at me for change, to Ian failing to work through biblical hangovers…

From Mark’s pro-Trump sermons, to Onni’s anti-Trump jokes…

From Chandler’s retro-goth hair and nails, to Jess’s Shy Guy tattoo…

Twenty-plus people up here, all with their own foibles and tics…all with their own stories, and their own worth. A few, though…a few are the ones that really stick with you:

Steve R and Sarah N – for making me laugh…a lot. And people wonder why we all spent so much damned time in the office.

Sara P and Jarrod – for the friendship, and the pending marriage. There’s no way I’m not coming out to Mass. to visit.

Kody – for making me laugh…for skipping right past the few lines even I wouldn’t cross…and for just being that comfortable, confident kid you are.

Billy – for late nights of anime and podcasts and D&D…for reminding me I’m fucking old, and (most importantly) becoming one of my closest friends, anyway.

So many I’ve met, that I’ve come to know, but those few…those few really stick with you.

Thank you, all.