I have never been to a wedding where I felt the love. not only the love of the two getting married, but the love those two had for their audience.

after a week spent once again with all those good people that I relate to and feel like I am close to. all those people over there on the other side of the mountains. all the ones I relate to, those whom for some reason are really easy to be friends with. I had another amazing time in Missoula with everyone and hanging out with all kinds of frineds and James. yet, here we are again, on the far side of the last mountain range to the east. all the way out here under the vast vast vast big sky.

so, I bought my season pass. I am going to do a month unlimited pass at bikram yoga. I am ready for winter. I am ready to settle for a few months again now that the summer is gone. ready to wear scarves, hats and mits. ready to have everything turn quiet and trudge through the snow.

right. right. turn off the lights. there’s a smell in the air. that cold sigh is coming in from the north. the mountains breathe away your warmth, the lakes fall silent, everything sits still for silence and waits. like breathing quietly anticipating the storm. we know it’s coming..

mow your lawn, rake your leaves, run for the thunder, hide from the hail. raise your glass!

good luck with your tomato plants, I’m counting days.

life goes on in this little town under the vast big sky. we reel into one day from another. summer is ticking along amidst tubing adventure, mountain bike rides, road rides, rafting trips, week-night social hours… in essence, life in montana has settled back into it’s gears and the last of the summer seems to be flying by. it’s hard to imagine that schools are getting back into session next week! we barely just got started..

my cousin came to visit this weekend. while I appreciate him taking an interest in coming to visit in montana, I was still slightly baffled as to why he was coming here. as it was, due to our age difference, I left finland for good when he was only 11, so I barely know him.

when he arrived I was quite torn between feeling the need to take him out and entertain him to what is he interested in doing and not having a great desire to spend money from my currently strained bank account. so the options are: be an asshole and not take him anywhere, or be an asshole and go do the stuff I would do and leave him home, or just take him around downtown bozeman, or just ignore that he is visiting all together and go about my business as I would if he wasn’t here at all. or, try to show him what montana is like in a few days. so, of course I felt obligated to take some kind of care of my quest.

SO; I cleaned the house entirely since he is allergic, i bought groceries, cooked for him and fed him for while he was here. drove him 250 miles, toured the yellowstone park, took him camping, bought gas, cooked, made sure he was comfortable at all times, took him rafting, tipped the rafting guides, bought him beer, bought him lunch, smoked him out, took him tubing, bought more gas and delivered him back to the airport. as a thanks, he bought a 12 pack of beer after I pressured him to do so.

so, what should I have done? I know he hadn’t asked to be taken all over the place, but what the hell was I supposed to do with him? all the things I would have gone to do, had he NOT been here, would not in anyway involve him. he does not have the gear, experience or even any desire to do so. so was I supposed to just leave him home and take off? so what the hell? what is this bullshit expectation than to just to show up, eat, drink, party and not offer to pitch in even a little? i didn’t ask for him to come here. in fact I had to donate one of my weekends, pay money to do so and accommodate him, since he butted himself here. what makes it even more awesome is the fact that it seemed he would prefer sleeping and was quite disinterested in anything we were trying to show him. at least try to be polite for fucks sake!!

there. I ranted.

it’s been a while since I wrote. I feel like I have been on a constant train of driving lots of miles, living life. having adventures, seeing friends and loving every moment of it. our last trip included 5 nights, six days ad 93 amazing miles on the Grand Ronde river. fantastic experience shared with great friends, like anything, has left me somewhat sad, lonely and missing my friends.

I have come to slightly wonder why I live out this far from everything. especially since it seems damn near impossible to make friends in this town for people like James and I. neither of us are that pursuant or out going when it come to making new friends. so it seems we lag behind on building serious friendships. though I have started to also have this slight notion that most people in this town would actually love to have more friends, but somehow have a hard time with the same things I do, picking up the phone and making plans to do something.

yesterday James and I went a floated down the madison river. just the two of us. I said maybe someday we will have friends in Bozeman, and he replied: “I just don’t know”. lately I have wondered the same, all this time hoping that someday it will pick up speed and I will make great friends. two years in the making, I only have a couple people I could even call to hang out. very slim indeed. it might be nice to have friends over at our new place and have a barbecue, but I often wonder; with whom?

in reality though, I don’t have any real qualms about living here, but it is starting to be true that I travel a lot away from here, towards missoula, where I have more friends than I do here.

when we were finishing the last miles to home, already on this side of the continental divide, I found myself thinking that we sure do live an awful far away from everything… it’s just that every trip I seem to take, other than the Tetons, I feel like I am always driving an extra 200 miles to get home.

the irony of it all, is that I am writing about the same things I did two years ago, that I drive too far. all the time, I think it’s in my bones, I cannot sit still. but at least now my true desires to live in far away places, in wide-open spaces with mountains, has been satisfied. I live in a place where I can ski and enjoy the outdoors everyday, I do love this town and maybe someday I can have the same level of social stimulation I had in Portland. which really, I don’t think I am asking all that much. frankly, it’s just tiresome to put in the effort. tired f calling people day after day and having them never really call you back or make plans with you. fine. I’ll stop calling.

but the reality of it all, as independent as I have been my whole life, what makes me truly happy is to have friends and family close. the path to true joy with each exciting adventure, is always tied to being shared with your companion. it’s always hard to locate yourself, virtually alone, on the other side of the planet, if not just on the other side of mountain ranges. why is it that some of the best friends in my life, were made in a split second, or over a weekend, but after two years in bozeman, I have barely enough friends to speak of, and not many that I feel like I really connect with like those whom I have left behind. the transience of the town does play into it, as it seems many of those I have met have come and gone in that short amount of time.

how is it possible that a handful of odd ducks have a way of making you feel like you belong in the family in a very short amount of time? I think if you go once, you become a lifer. I have every intention of being back to scrub floors and scrape paint next year.

it has been a while since I had shared such sincere camaraderie from a group of strangers. I came back inspired, delighted and left with strong impressions from a few folks who habit the place.

thank you for elevating my heart.

James and I returned home from a fantastic two week long tour through the pacific northwest. I got home to unpack the car, take a shower, do laundry and send a few emails.

after spending this time hanging out with good friends, I find myself wondering why I live all the way out here again. or more specifically, how come I have not met any folks like those I really love and enjoy spending time with like I have in Oregon. granted I spent 8 years making those friends and there have been MANY along the way I have let go and left behind. I suppose it takes years to find those few key folks that you just love spending time with.

I feel like so many of the folks I have met in montana, lack the qualities of the laid back people I know in Oregon. it seems I know quite a few folks here, I should not say I have no friends, but it feels like many of the people I know here are not like those I have know to take road trips with, chill on the mountain with or just hang out and enjoy the day with. I feel like so many peeps here that I have come across, are often a little too uptight or aggressive about their adventures. now that I have reflected a bit, I see how skiing with Ben all the time actually gets a bit exhausting and that’s why I have just gone up to ski by myself the last couple of times and really enjoyed it. I am out there to enjoy skiing with friends. where are those friends?

I know that I have had summit fever too, and I have needed to push to the summit of things due to my own struggles with life and myself, but I still feel like my aggression was never to prove to the world to ski the sickest couloir or ski the gnarliest line. no. not at all. the reason why I have turned to the mountains, is in the serene peace and beauty that comes with. the reason why I ran for the hills has always been their lack of judgment of your abilities, agonies or personal struggles. I went there to find peace and to scream into the void. somewhere that I felt like I belonged to, and no one could take it away from me. it was my thing, solely mine.

while I chased my inner peace, I came to realize that the greatest things about these adventures were always the stories collected, the companion ships shared and more than the conquer (or epic failure), the icing on the cake is the bond created by the adventure shared. the chase and the whole part about getting there, sleeping in the dirt and waiting for alpine starts. or to have everything go wrong and it still turns out to be a wonderful, memorable experience. it’s always in the journey, shared with a good friend, that makes the adventure. the summit is only about 5% of it.

James and I are making the move. We have been practically living together in my place since late last fall. Sure he has his own lace, but it’s nice to stay at mine since it’s private. And quite frankly, a very sweet spot. I will miss my place greatly but the move feels right. It feels right because we found a place that is just as quirky as I am. I can’t wait to decorate it’s walls with mirrors and hang up my globe. I have wondered if I should be scared, worried or somehow concerned that we might be making a mistake. But I have never met anyone that I would rather live with than James.

In the process of packing and cleaning my place, I came across and old diary of mine, back when I was still doing it in ink. It appeared to be mostly written through out the early years of dating Jason. it’s funny how we forget the mistakes we’ve made ad the places we have ended up in. I have written them down so that I could go back and read my memories. maybe learn from them. maybe realize I had learned nothing at all. it seems keeping a diary reminds us of our mistakes past and shows us how we might never learn from our mistakes. the diaries I have written give me a direct link to remember how I felt, what I thought, how much something hurt or bothered me at the time. enough that I spent time putting it down in pen. that is why I write. to remember.

I feel like I never have a very good gauge on how things are now, or where I am today, as to how they should be and how they could be. I have always had a hard time in stepping back and seeing me from a distance. and seeing things for what they really are. particularly in relationship and thus I evoked my license to date for quite some time. when I was in the relationship with Jason, I was inherently blind to the warning signs form day one. my diary reflects hurt and anger on many pages, spread over days and months. it seems clear now that the relationship should have never taken place (granted, had it not, I would not be living this dream). all the signs were there, yet somehow I managed to blame myself for a majority of our problems. the diary screams quilt. and self-hate. I am of strong belief that all those feelings were imposed on me by him and were a result of his own blame on himself and his low self-esteem, not mine. being the spineless fish that I am sometimes, I fell into my role of making everyone better and making everyone happy. pick him up and mend his broken wings. I was doing it without even knowing it.

I doubt myself a lot. I doubt my judgment. for a good reason. I have strong faith in James, but at the same time, I never stop being critical of everything he does, as to how that might fit into my picture of the future. is he the right person after all? has he always been? what is the criteria here? how do you decide who to be with and who to build a life with? does our relationship have the tell tale signs of eventual breakup after all?

what I do now. here are the facts. I cannot think of a single reason why I wouldn’t be with him. why we wouldn’t live together. either I have grown up and matured, or I have actually met a man, that mysteriously our volatile personalities can live in harmony. we swim in the same current. and somehow it works. it’s a blessing to be in a relationship where everything is easy. all the time. we bicker at times, but rarely do we fight. which is surprising seeing that I am a fighter. I know that about myself.

or it snows. and then it melts. everyday I can’t decide between walking to work, riding my bike, going to yoga, going for a hike, or just skipping work that day!

the weather is amazing, it’s warm in the sun. this weekend James and I spent time sitting in the backyard after skiing. he worked on the bronco, I handed tools and got afternoon drunk. the next day we took a drive around the crazies. it was due time to scout out those mountains, can’t wait to spend more time there this summer and spring!

suddenly I have money coming in. suddenly all the work is paying off and I am making more money than I have in a while. suddenly the wallet strings don’t have to be so tight. suddenly, again, I can buy the expensive steak at the store. the nice bottle of wine, skip the 5 dollar bottle of wine. I think moving to Montana brings on the obvious and inevitable financial struggle for a little while. everything has a cost and that seemed to be mine, but I am back and can finally pay down my student loans rather than just keeping up with it. also, I have finally decided to apply for citizenship this summer. wonder how long it takes.. it would be wild if by next christmas, going to finland, I could be a US citizen.. what a crazy thought! so many years in the making, I am here to stay.

the place is closed now. and it seems the crowd is burned out on it too, but a few of use made it out of town around 7 am, clicked in and started the skin up to the powder. couple hours later we were gliding down, making soft turns the whole way down. Moose followed Ben over some cliffs on Out of Sight and dropped it, no problem. fearless super dog.

I love the fact that I don’t have to get to work any any real schedule. I love the fact that I can take time in the morning to clean up my place or run errands. I love the fact that I can walk or bike to work when I want. and I have options. I love that I live in a small town. I love that there are vast sunny skies and mountains around. I love that there’s no hurry. I love the fact that I can go skiing in the morning for a few hours and work in the afternoon. I love the little place I live in. I love the fact that my dog is little, mellow and well behaved so he fits well in that little place of mine. if fact, all three of us fit well in there. I love the fact that I can bring moose to work. I also love the fact that I work right above the brewery. I love the fact that I can drive to amazing hot springs any day I want. I love the fact that I have backyard and a fire pit. I love the fact that I am making money doing the simple things I do. and I must say, I love the fact that I have a career. I love the simplicity and the abundance of it all. I love the fact that James and I can just live here. just live. nothing is ever complicated. in some different way. you don’t really begin to understand how montana culture is different until you’ve lived here for a bit. the difference may seem obvious, but it still never is what you think it is. life is just different. slower.

who would have thought, a little girl from Finland to find herself here, in paradise.