Lordy Lordy

I turned 40 today. I think that could be a complete enough blog, but I am not sure that’s all I have to write.


My family has moved out of our home in Bozeman, and we are camping throughout the region while I attend a four week writing workshop at Montana State. This past week we spent it at Trapper Springs campground in the lower Madison, and each evening we make the walk down to the irrigation canal, and fish the river from the peninsula the canal formed. So far, I have not hooked anything, Cole hooked a good fish on a beaded San Juan Worm with the pink chenille Yankee Jim recommended last summer. The bad boy spun around downstream, and spit the hook without nary a jump. Cole was stunned and I was impressed, but that has been it. The water is murky, cold, and not as high as I thought it would be.

We have had other adventures near our campsite this week. Cole and I decided to recon some firewood from the abandoned campsites after the weekend. In 80 degree weather, we headed down the west road on the lower Madison, and at the same time we both exhaled something like “Holy Hanna-do you see that?!” There was a very firm and adequately voluptuous woman lying on her tummy on a picnic table at one of the campsites, topless, nearly bottomless in her thong, and appropriately turning red given the first real sunny day in a month. Cole looked at me almost embarrassed, and I said something like: “You don’t get to see that every day!” We then found a trunk load of cut wood at two other sites.

We have had tremendous thunderstorms nearly every night. We watched the bruised purple clouds start to unfold behind the juniper ridge across the river, and we started packing up everything. I am amazed at how efficient Erica and the kids are at this, and it is something we never practiced. Then we all get in the tent, and hang on. The first one was quite scary, because we didn’t know if the tent would even hold. We had to bang hail off the rain fly from the inside because it was accumulating on the roof, and I feared a cave-in. The back corner pulled up the stake from the wind, but otherwise we survived without a flood, and the next two were easy to handle. The baby just rolls around and walks around laughing and making her darling expressions.

So why are we camping with two dogs, two cats, two leopard geckos, and three kids? We cannot afford Bozeman right now. The house we were in was expensive to lease, expensive to pay for propane and electricity, and we do not get along with the landlord. So we moved.

Now we are struggling to find a new place, and I think for us that’s ok. Tonight we will be in Hyalite, and the kids can get into some good fish and we can relax under some big trees. Homeless at 40. Nearly penniless. I lost 10 pounds. Well-educated, good job, working on my doctorate. Making new friends. Fishing a little. All my children are healthy, and are enjoying the gifts of living in Montana.

When I was 20, 40 was ancient, and I didn’t want to live that long. Now, I want to live to be 100. Life is good. Forty is good too.