The older I get the more nostalgic and emotional I’ve become. I think that’s common for a lot of people. My father and mother did and I’ve spoken with friends who are older too, and they’ve said the same thing. One has a daughter who left for her first year of college and for weeks afterwards he’d spend time in her old room every day because he missed her so much. I was surprised he told me about such intimate moments and relieved he did because I experienced that too. For months after our daughter left for her gap year to the other side of the world, I took much longer naps, welled with tears, told stories about her to anyone who’d listen, and made certain the plants she left behind were well tended.
As much as I’m nostalgic about people and animals, I’m just as nostalgic about places— places I’ve lived, read about, and some just briefly passed through. Places like Jordon, Montana where I refueled once, parts of Ohio, white sand beaches in Florida, and the drive into the Potomac east of Missoula with a sister and brother-in-law five decades ago. I hopped into the bed of the pick-up truck once we exited the highway and headed south deeper into the valley. The smell of pine and sweetgrass was fresh and the Doobie Brothers were loud enough for me to hear them playing in the cab. It was a perfect day and our trail of road dust through the lush green pastures revealed our path that led straight into the mountains and cooler air.
I spent a lot of time in Missoula during my youth, sometimes visiting for weeks. I heard the new Fleetwood Mac album in 1975 for the first time sitting on a couch at the Pine Palace house one summer. Fleetwood Mac was playing at the university field house the following night and everyone I knew in town was going. Halfway through the concert, I found myself on someone’s shoulders not far from the front of the stage and almost eye level with Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. She wore a flowing white skirt, white top, tall boots, sleeves that looked like scarves, and a tambourine in one hand.
The railroad bridge we jumped off the next afternoon smelled of creosote and spanned the Clark Fork River. It was fast with rapids, ragged boulders, rocky beaches, and cottonwood trees along the shore. There was a deep green pool directly below the bridge and we were there to jump into it. We accessed the road level tracks high above the river and from there, shimmied up a diagonal timber truss to the top where we balanced ourselves. I squatted nervously there for at least ten minutes before gathering the courage to jump. Eventually I did and entered the water yelling feet first, then surfaced and dog paddled quickly to shore to avoid being swept downstream because I wasn’t a strong swimmer.
I didn’t know then that this valley I spent so much time in had been part of a giant two-thousand-foot-deep lake once and Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo were underwater. I didn’t realize that the horizontal lines etched on many of the foothills in the area were where Lake Missoula had once lapped against their shores as the water drained, and refilled dozens of times over thousands of years. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of those massive geological changes, but that history pales compared to the sweet thick aroma of herbs and teas my sister-in-law filled their houses with during the nineteen-seventies.
For Carol, Ray, Marilyn, Russ, Scott, Sharon, Tim, Vicki, Buck, Lindy, and various friends, friends of friends, and anonymous citizens of Missoula during the nineteen-seventies.
Songs :: Indian Summer by Joe Walsh, Show Me Some Affection by Dave Mason, South City Midnight Lady and Without You by The Doobie Brothers, Wooden Ships by Jefferson Airplane, See The Changes by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the entire Fleetwood Mac album from 1975
© C. Davidson