Vacations are odd beasts.  They have a way of both recharging and draining the batteries all at once.  This vacation was probably a little heavy on the draining, no doubt due to traveling with a toddler.  And an unscheduled stop at the doctor’s office that was my own fault.  And traveling with a toddler.

That being said, a week in Montana with no phone service and a very limited internet connection is sometimes just… well, I was going to say what the doctor ordered, but the doctor ordered medical glue and a week’s worth of antibiotics, so maybe not.

My aunt lives in a small log cabin.  You look out one window, you see the shimmer of a nearby (and in April, very cold) lake.  Turn 180 and look out another window, and you see distant mountains.  Town is a ten minute drive down and a two minute drive through, if that.  The doctor is a forty minute drive with a kleenex tucked behind your ear.

Montana is a different life.  I may look like a big city girl most of the time, but god – I miss those mountains.  I’m not sure why they sing for me, but they always have, for as long as I can remember.  And each time I head out to places like that, it gets a little harder to turn around again.  I clearly need to become a famous author just so I can run off into the woods and never look back.

It’s the little things that make me smile about life in the middle of nowhere.  It’s that ten minute drive to town, or the occasional run to the town dump, since there’s no garbage pickup.  It’s the high fences around your garden so the deer can’t eat your greens, or sending the dog out to chase the creatures from the yard.  It’s the way life seems to revolve around the seasons, like time actually means something, measured in more than the mere passage of repeating days.  And it’s the way my aunt casually decides to sell an old pair of earrings from her own distant days as a city-dweller, saying she doesn’t wear them anymore, so they might as well pay for next month’s wine.

I realize that living in such a rural setting means not having the vast array of restaurants, shows, general entertainment I have here.  I know it means I can’t just walk to public transit and be lazy, going to and fro.  Somehow that doesn’t seem to matter to me all that much.  Maybe I love the mountains, the trees, the two lane highways and the speed of life.  And maybe I just love the idea of selling a pair of earrings to pay for alcohol.