Bri in Little Blackfoot River in Montana - on the horizon line - clark fork coalition

Farewell (for now) to Working for Freshwater

bri rafting the alberton gorge9 years.  5 legislative sessions. 100s of grant proposals.  28,000 miles of streams and rivers to speak up for. Dozens of floats, monitoring days, and presentations.  Thousands of meetings, laughs, successes, snafus, late nights, and learning moments.

That’s just a sliver of what working for clean water means to me.

Today is my last day of work at the Clark Fork Coalition, a kick-ass high-powered conservation group that does good things for great rivers in Montana.  I’ve worked for almost a decade in a variety of roles at the Coalition, and never once did I dread going to work.  In fact, walking in the front doors almost always made me smile in anticipation of what the day might bring.  This is due in large part to the remarkable people I was lucky enough to work with and for.

Bri in Little Blackfoot River in Montana - on the horizon line - clark fork coalitionIf you’ve ever worked for a small non-profit organization, you know that every employee is a jack-of-all-trades.  We are writers, lobbyists, fundraisers, counselors, janitors, technicians, scientists, lawyers, explorers, tour guides, comedians and engineers — all in the same day.  We are passionate and dedicated and motivated to make the world a better place.  And we’re really fun, too.

The Coalition taught me a lot about how to make change happen — not just for the spectacular rivers and landscapes in Montana, but in my community, my country, my daily life.  It taught me that water connects everything: big and small, urban and rural, personal and global, eating and drinking, forests and valleys, mountains and ocean.

IMG_0130Why, you might ask, would I quit such a fabulous job or pivot away from such an important cause?  Because it’s the right time, and I can feel that deep inside.  I don’t ever want to walk in the front door dreading the day, so I’m planning to leave while the smile is still on my face and the passion is still beneath my skin.

Plus, as I see it, we’re just moving downstream to explore.  Granted, the Pacific is a lot bigger pond than the Clark Fork River, but I’m comforted by the fact that all of the clean water I worked to protect will be a part of the ocean that floats my boat.

I think my husband said it best in his farewell email to his co-workers at Trout Unlimited yesterday, so I’m going to let his words close out my farewell-for-now to the world of freshwater conservation:

bri rafting the alberton gorge

I’m calling it quits.  Not because I think there’s a better place to work or because I could make more money somewhere else, but because its just time.  Its time for someone with a new perspective to take over my program, to infuse it with new ideas and enthusiasm.  This track is starting to get awful familiar, and it’s time for me to find a new one.

I’ll be basically wandering for the foreseeable future, seeing some new places and people and trying to figure out what I’ll do next in my life.  My wife and I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to cut ties and vanish for a couple years. We will be leaving March 26 with a couple of backpacks, some snorkeling gear and a desire to travel, sail and explore.  Hitchhiking the ocean, some people have called it.  

I don’t think that being unemployed will always be easy, but I’m sure it will be interesting.  I want to say thank you for taking a chance on a bright-eyed idealist and giving me the opportunity, the skills and the flexibility to succeed.  For that, I will be forever indebted.  I feel truly blessed to have been your co-worker and part of an organization that has an excellent mission, hires good people and is just fun to work for.  Keep up the good fight and remember that we’re all in that fight together.  I’ll miss you. 

– Rob

bri and rob by the clark fork river at our wedding in missoula - on the horizon line

saltwater cures with tears, sweat and sea

Saltwater Cures All?

saltwater cures with tears, sweat and seaWe’re flying home from Philly tonight.  As this dark and quiet plane starts to settle down toward Montana, my thoughts are full of family left behind.  It struck me during this visit how different we seem to the rest of Rob’s family (and maybe to lots of other friends and family, too).  Along with the many exclamations of “wow,” “good luck,” and “really?”, many mentioned that they would never want to do what we’re doing.

Voyages into the unknown aren’t appealing to many people, when you get right down to it.  That part doesn’t surprise or bother me.  What does, though, is the fact that our less-than-normal desire to spend 2 years without a job, an itinerary or a destination incites worried heartache in our loved ones.

This trip made me appreciate the irony of our voyage — setting sail will reduce stress for us, but will increase stress for many of those left behind.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch, my dad always said.  And liberation comes with a price.

rob with a valentine heart

Today, the price was tears.  We hugged goodbye Rob’s mom, step-dad, grandpa, brother, aunts, step-sisters, cousins.  These hugs must last for at least a year, or — in most cases — several years.  Sure, it’s hard to leave people behind.  But it’s a lot harder to be left.  Both take strength and faith.  Being left also demands a sort of zen-like patience, as you must wait at the whim of impulsive explorers for word of safe passages.

Like anyone, I don’t like leaving those we love in tears.  It’s been said that saltwater cures all, whether it’s tears, sweat or the sea.  I bet I’ll need all 3 to get me through the coming changes.   And I imagine our family will need a healthy dose of healing saltwater, too.

kevin, mamie, and willow - our next door neighbors in missoula, montana on the horizon line

Happy Hillside Commune

Chickens, dogs, and kiddos at the happy hillside commune - on the horizon line with bri and rob

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You might not know it, but Bri and Rob are part of a…dare I say it…commune. That’s right, call them hippies or hipsters, these two belong to the Happy Hillside Commune: A N’Amish Community. What’s N’Amish you ask?

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Well it’s NOT Amish, aka N’Amish. This lucky group consists of any number of neighbors and friends who live or gather on our street in the Rattlesnake neighborhood of Missoula. We share our fence lines, but not our husbands.  We share our wine, chicken eggs, hot tubs, and saunas, but not bank accounts.

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We share our hillside with the deer, our view of the valley, power tools, ideas, and occasionally old clothes we don’t want anymore.  In short, it’s perfect.

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So, to my new neighbors welcome, but ya’ll have some big shoes to fill.

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There is a worn path between our houses snaking through each other’s yards. On sunny summer nights you can find us outside having family style dinners, sipping wine and gabbing. We watch the hills turn brown and glowy. Real family members stop by like Bri’s parents. There’s sure to be game on the grill. Maybe even a deer from the actual hillside or an elk from further up the valley. Friends from out of town might be there, marveling at Missoula’s off the radar coolness.

N'Amish commune dinner party at bri and rob's house in Missoula

We try to convince them that winters are cold. “Don’t tell people about Missoula” we joke. “Really, it’s dark in the winter.”  My husband and I once made a list of the essential things you need to have to make it through a Montana winter. It included: a down coat, someone to snuggle with, a ski pass, good tires on your car, and I would add…neighbors who will bring you Tylenol at 11 pm when you get the flu. I actually sent a text to one of my N’Amish members that said, “check on me in the morning to make sure I made it through the night.” She did, and I did. These are the neighbors I always hoped I’d have.

Rob has a funny way of loitering in his own yard. You know he’s working on some kind of garden projects but doing it on his own timeframe, a timeframe steeped in a molasses-like active slowness. Rob’s tropical cadence will fit right in in the South Pacific.  He often lingers at the fence or pops over into our yard like their free-roaming chickens. Happy to give advice on seedlings, lift something heavy or pass on a story about his time in Madagascar. (As a tall white man in a village where children had never seen anyone but their own, he literally made children pee themselves). Bri consistently poaches our wireless booster to talk on her cell phone.  I have seen her many a time, talking, pacing around our yard trying to stay warm while she chats.

bri, cassidy and mamie after mamie painted our faces at the park near our house - on the horizon line

The blur between our yards and worlds makes me feel loved and part of something. There is a great yogic philosopher who says that what we are missing in this world is intimacy. Not the sexual kind, but the kind that comes from knowing someone well, from removing the boundaries we live within in western society. The kind of close ties and caring that comes with time, experience, mutual compassion and group parties in the hot tub watching shooting stars. Yeah, we have that.

In a few weeks the N’Amish will be losing key members to a trip into the unknown. The Happy Hillside Commune will go virtual. Bri and Rob, as you wander the ocean, more than a little bit of us will be with you.  Your body contains the soil of this hillside. Your muscles developed from protein of the deer that roamed these mountains.  Your dog Abe continually pooped in my yard, and I didn’t mind one bit. Your heart is forged N’Amish. Don’t you forget it.

kevin, mamie, and willow - our next door neighbors in missoula, montana on the horizon line

Turning a Dragon into a Princess

Note:  The M.U.P Files are a new community corner of On the Horizon Line.  Look for stories from our friends and family related to expanding their hometown horizons.  Let us know if you want to contribute!

Why “The M.U.P Files”?  Because these dispatches from the desks of our loved ones will be “magical unicorn ponies” that fly across the sea to greet us on distant shores.  Their writing will be our bridge to shore while we sail the world.  

* * *

by Margi

Margi on guitar - South Fork Flathead

I woke up this morning feeling inspired. I am usually good for a pithy quote and a fart joke or two, but this morning when my eyes opened I was thinking about the Mark Twain quote that Bri posted yesterday, about the adventures that each of us take in our lives.   The moments where we just say yes to some newness and an unknown outcome.

I feel the change happening in all of us, lately. Acutely. Like Bri and Rob’s sailing adventure is an allegory for what we all live day to day.  Packing and unpacking, emotional packing and unpacking; I hear their story in myself, I feel their tears and their joy.  It is more fundamental than a change in location, the different cabinet from which one grabs a cup for coffee or tea in the morning, the different route to work. I feel shy in its presence because this road is not a road down which I have walked before. Change is beautiful and it is brave. It can be scary. So when my alarm went off at 7:30 this morning I turned to Rilke’s “Dragon Princess”.  We are all solitary.

For him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way we can; everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

Margi high 5 wedding

So, I choose to go forward. To be an explorer in my own mind. To raise the sails in my heart so that they may catch the wind; so that when they do I will wake up on some remote beach I never thought possible; so that when the seas are dark and stormy I can feel them, and when the storm clouds part the sun on my face reminds me that I am human.  So that when we will come together again as friends, with deeper love and maybe slightly better music (we all hope that by the time Penny grows up that at least a few songs will be tight), I will be more me than the person you hug and say goodbye to in a couple of weeks.

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principal which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are the beginning if all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

 

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