18 Hours in Bozeman
This past Saturday Chloe and I went on a proper stroll through Golden Gate park. We talked about how going away some place for a weekend is absolutely doable. I brought up how I had spent 18 hours in Bozeman and Chloe said, “That would be a really great title for something.” I rarely if ever write fiction so, that why this feels half baked—I just like the title!
I only spent 18 hours in Bozeman because 24 hours would have been too long and 12 was not enough and I had time on my side.
I got there sometime after the moon and before the sun because an alarm did not go off when it was supposed to. For the majority of the past week I have been sleeping in the back of the econoline that my Grandfather’s will bequeathed me six weeks ago. Ten weeks ago I woke up to pink carnations and a letter that let me know I am both too good for him and mean so much to him so he had to let me go. The flowers belonged to any roadside diner’s bud vase. The letter lacked something and I think that was the point.
Two weeks ago I got a phone call with some news and the econoline keys arrived shortly after. I found my sleeping bag and started driving up the coast. I had only gone as far as Point Reyes before, so I wanted to keep going. Trading one foggy salty town for another until I was thirsty for some mountains.
When California became something geographically below me the stops for gas and leg stretching featured the same kind of conversations. Oregonians are polite and tend to be missing teeth. Oregon was on fire because it was September and I kept getting asked,
“Where are ya headed?”
I kept answering,
“Seattle” (this was a lie)
or
“Portland” (also a lie)
or
“Canada” (I did not have my passport)
or
“Home” (another lie)
I should have said,
“I do not know yet”, because this was true. I did not know what I did not know.
Oregonians kept telling me,
“Drive safe.”
I spent two nights at a campsite in Cottage Grove, Oregon. When the sun fell I craved sherbert, but only got to hear cicadas. The majority of the Oregon I saw was double yellow lines, potholes, and lumber being towed on the highway.
One road sign indicated Idaho so I went that way because I had never been there and there was no better time than then to go to some place I have only ever heard of.
I stopped in Boise long enough to get a fridge magnet and to overhear some guy mention the word Bozeman, a place about an eight hour trip in the econoline away from me.
I slept Boise’s finest Bed and Breakfast and was supposed to wake up at five in the morning. Instead I woke up at noon and did not leave until just after 6 because of one thing I cannot remember entirely. Something about forgetting where I put the keys and how my bra was still air drying in the bathroom and the Seinfeld reruns on the boxy TV set.
The first portion towards Bozeman the sky exploded in salmon tangerine colored shades that promptly faded to black. I was occasionally greeted by West bound semi truck headlights and occasional radio static. I listened to Phil from Missouri call in about crop circles and say the word probe. Stacy from Texas got nicknamed “betrayed betrothed” because she found a cocktail napkin with a red lipstick stamp in her fiance’s wallet and he told her he had no idea how it ended up there. I wondered if she woke up to carnations and a letter too. I wondered if she had to get out of town again and again and again all the way to Montana from California.
When the radio was only broadcasting the sounds of a static television I started to remember what was following me into these unknown places. It was about how I tilted my head when certain people said my name or how certain people’s palms felt when pressed against my own or how someone who is supposed to always be there because they always have been is no longer there anymore. These images started to develop in the liminal two lane highway moments that are only illuminated by the econoline’s headlights. .
***
The entrance to Bozeman started with a suggestion of blue sky. I drove down main street seeing a few staggering drunk cowboys. I parked the econoline and reclined my seat.
***
Bozeman was the first place I felt funny being alone. For walking around alone. For driving a god awful amount of hours alone. For being alone because as much as I wanted to be alone, I felt lonely, the feeling I have been doing my best to beat to the punchline.
18 hours went by and featured a conversation at a bar with a polished wood counter and perfect jukebox. The bartender asked me,
“What brings you in?”
It was not what can I get you.
“Oh, just passing through.”
“On the way to Yellowstone?”
“Maybe.”
“What about something to drink?”
I drank beer because I never really do, and Bozeman sounds like whiskey or beer and I really do not do whiskey. I drank more than I should and kept locking eyes with myself in the mirror behind the skyline of liquor bottles. Here I was in a bar just like any other bar except I was in Montana instead of California or Oregon or the driver’s seat of the econoline. It seems to be a matter of neither here nor there and time keeps passing because the sun rises and falls and clocks have hands that move according to 60 second increments. After 18 hours it was time to go because I could.
