Detoxing from the City

I'd like to tell a little story about an experience I had when we first moved to where we live now. Its a small little rural mountain town in northwest Montana. We came from the bustling city and suburbs of Chicago. Big cultural/lifestyle change.

When we first moved here, I was surprised by how quietly everyone talked. Soft spoken, or like Jerry Seinfelds' bit, "quiet talkers." My wife and I laughed loud, talked loud, even moved loudly. We never noticed the contrast until we moved here and interacted with the local people. I couldn't understand how seemingly everyone talked in a diminished volume. Were they all telling secrets or spreading the latest gossip?
Many of the old timers just smiled at us upon first conversation. I thought they were just friendly folk.

One day, about a month after being here, enjoying the differences and pleasures of rural mountain living, contrasted to the daily grind of living against the city, we took a little mid-afternoon break from chores and headed up a mountain peak just to the northwest of where we live. Its called appropriately, Pulpit Mountain.
Its about a 14 mile trip as the gravel Forest Service road goes. Some spots are laced with shadows from the towering pines, others are sunny and open. The mountain side embankment is splattered with the tiniest most beautiful wild flowers and wild fruit bushes. The outer slope side is lined with the tops of Grand Fir, Cedar, Lodge Pole, Larch and Douglas fir trees, some over 200 yrs. old.
As you near the top of Pulpit mountain, the road segments get shorter and the incline gets a little steeper. The air seems crisp and cool at an approximate elevation of 3500 feet, maybe touching 4000. There are two spots up here I call Secret Spot #1 and Secret Spot #2. Yeah, I know, real poetic and original. I'll talk about Secret spot #2.

Pulpit mountain separates our homestead valley to the northwest from another valley containing Kilbrenan Lake. On the north view you can see the lake and the south boundaries of an area called "The Yaak." Tales of the "Yaak" are for another story.

To the south, from the top of Pulpit mountain, you can see our town, and all the mountain ranges to the south as far as the weather and your eye can see.

Upon reaching SS#2, the road levels out for quite a stretch as it follows the topographical contours of the peak. There is a graded out area for forest service trucks to turn around at this point. This is where we park the truck. On the journey up, we were distracted by the colors of the mountain and shade and sunlight patterns. We enjoyed the mountain air and breeze oblivious to the drone and grind of the truck engine.
Once at the top, we turned off the truck engine and stepped out onto the road. After taking a quick circular survey of the area, our gaze fell upon the image of the reason for making the trip.

Opening up in majestic splendor to the south of us was the most fantastic panoramic vision I had seen in a long time. I will liken it to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, except this is a far more intimate beauty.

The sun is brightly shinning and laying before us is a vast sea of mountain tops, silvery blue and deep purple in the shadows. A kaleidoscope of green and yellow and sienna hues paint the sides of the closer mountains down into the valley. The air is so crisp and clean it virtually hurts the inexperienced lungs.

My wife and I stand quietly, taking in the beauty in a stunned sort of silent reverence. It was like the whole world had slowed down if not stopped entirely. We were mesmerized by the spectacle, like campers are transfixed by a summer night campfire. We hardly breathed for fear it would disrupt the view as ripples disrupt the mirror surface of a lake. We were hushed by the magnitude of nature into silence.

I was so impressed with the scope of what I saw, the sheer, vastly stretching power of nature. I spoke aloud, " This is unbelievable." I thought I barley whispered it and my wife shushes me. " Quiet, why are you talking so loudly?" Then it dawned on me. One of the most powerful characteristics of nature is how quiet and still it is. There is no commuter noise, train clatter, construction din, electronic haze, babble of television or rude intrusion of cell phone conversations. There are no lawn mowers, leaf blowers, car stereos, or early morning garbage pick-up noise.

All of nature was laid out before us, multiple mountain ranges, thick forests, a veritable zoo of animals and birds, yet, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, literally. If you stood still long enough you would hear the grass and flowers grow. There was a natural symphony before our eyes and it mimed its overture.

We stayed up there about an hour, just sitting at the foot of a 300 year old Ponderosa pine and enjoyed in silence. After returning to our property I was more aware of the stillness and quietness around me. I heard where I was living so much more clearly now. I stood at the end of our long gravel driveway and just listened to the forest. I could hear everything. As the old saying goes, the silence was deafening and yet, comforting.

I now fully realized why people here talk so softly. If you stop and listen to nature around you, you hear everything worth hearing. Speaking is almost a rude intrusion. We speak softly here out of respect for the silence.

Now I've told this story to tell another.

After living here five years now, we have come to realize how this lifestyle has provided us with a means of "detoxing" from city life. Yes, you won't notice this need until you live somewhere outside of the city. Some may argue, "well, I enjoy the peace and quiet when I go on my two week fishing trips in the wilds of such and such a place." True, but not detoxifying enough, not hardly.

The pollutions of the city, especially for those of us who have lived most of our lives there are quite ingrained into our bodies and minds. The stress of the noise, the grind of the commutes, the intrusive practices of people under high density confinements. I truly liken it to a drug addiction.

Some people feel lost or frightened with out the "noises of humanity." They view it as a comfort, a reinforcement that they are not alone and all is going right with the world because the street lights come on, Starbucks makes a fresh morning latte, and other people are hustling here and there keeping the wheels of progress going. I lived under these circumstances for fifty years, I actually do understand.

Now I understand something else. In nature, your senses are bombarded with billions of images and sensations at once. You get to choose which ones you want to process or just let the experience wash over you in nature's fashion. In a city/suburban setting, the random noises of people making progress assault you in no rational pattern. Each intrusive stimulus, sight, sound, smell, invokes a fight or flight response to your physiology. When you are born and raised and work in this environment all your life, you don't notice it at all. I know, I used to live like that for fifty years.

After time, it takes a toll on your health. Most living this way attribute it to age. They have gotten used to living "against" natural ways. Progress begets its own unnatural patterns and forces you to live in compliance. Nature, invites you to live cooperatively within it.

After living in the middle of a temperate rain forest for five years, we have noticed we talk softer, move slower, use common sense on a daily basis, stop and take time to listen to nature and make it a priority to breathe it all in.
We don't have cell phones, we don't watch t.v. we drive 85% less, and we conserve, recycle and compost as much as we can.
I don't suffer migraine headaches every other day. I don't visit a Chiropractor once a week like I did living in the city. I feel less rage against my neighbor and I sense things more intuitively because the distractions of progress are missing here.

I write this not to criticize but to inform. I never realized the effect on my life of living in the middle of technological progress. It took five years of living another lifestyle to realize it.
My wife and I share a moment of private humor at friends and relatives from the city who come here and talk real loud.
I also contemplate when enjoying our secret spots of reverie, how the Native American Indians felt the first time an "iron horse" roared through the quiet solitude of their lives and how all our lives were changed forever by "progress."