The Mountains Are Calling, and I Must Go

My friends, I have some big news.

Charles, Angel, Fergus, and I are moving back to Montana.

I can hear you all now: “But why?!?”

Well, we always knew we were going back someday. Charles is a seventh-generation Montanan, and his entire family is there. I feel blessed to count them as family, too, in addition to my own aunt and uncle who live Out West. It’s fair to say Charles and I built a life together in the mountains at the beginning of our relationship.

In fairness, we had originally planned on staying in Wisconsin longer, or even relocating a few times before wending our way back to the mountains.

But every time we visited for holidays or family events, we were struck by just how much we missed Montana.

Everything came really clear to us one day last July when Charles, Angel, and I were hiking in the Bitterroot Mountains with Charles’ dad.

At one point, the rest of the party had hiked ahead (including Angel; she had missed her “grandpa” and was glued to his side). I sat alone on a rock and took in the view of snow-dusted peaks, evergreen forests, and a remote alpine lake. I knew there were other people around—a handful of campers and fishers at a lower lake tucked around a bend in the mountains—but where I sat, I could neither see nor hear another human being.

It was just me, an insignificant speck nestled in the grandeur of the mountains, soaking in the silence.

This was that view:

Such moments were once a perfectly regular part of my life. And I found I missed them. I am, by nature, a solitary creature. Few things delight me more than being the only human being as far as my eye can see.

Charles and I joke how crowded it is in the Wisconsin countryside; that you can see from one farmhouse porch to the next, and you can’t have two highways intersect without a bar and a gas station springing up around them.

Meanwhile, here’s what one stretch of the Montana Interstate looks like:

My friends, that was the “holiday rush” on the weekend before Christmas.

Many people find such isolation intimidating—and that doesn’t shock me. Places like Montana and my own home state of North Dakota are highly conducive to self-reliance.

But Charles and I feel rejuvenated by that kind of loneliness.

We’ve come to realize that Montana is our happy place. And when we contemplated moving back sooner or moving back later—we asked ourselves why we would deprive ourselves of our joy.

From that day till this, we’ve been planning our return to Montana. As the naturalist John Muir observed, “The mountains are calling, and we must go.”

Having said that…

I tend to run my life on routines, and moving is of itself anathema to routines.

The good news is that we’re moving back to the place where I first developed, polished, and perfected the routines that help me write my books. My co-working space is waiting for me. The library and the coffee shop where I wrote five of six books are waiting for me. I can skip entirely the long, frustrating process of finding places that suit my needs, and simply pick up right where I left off. For that, I’m unspeakably grateful.

Even so, I acknowledge that I’m going to feel tumbled around for a little while.

What does this all mean for my fans?

In addition to working around my recent health issues, I’ll also now be devoting time to moving activities, as well as the stress around moving activities.

Those feel like a lot of things stacked against me. But over the course of my life, I’ve always managed to put ‘er in low gear and find a way forward.

I’ve stripped back many of my tasks so I can focus as much as possible on the parts that matter to me most: Writing Mailboat VI and posting regular updates on Patreon. (I learned through Mailboat V what a difference it made to share the writing journey. I now consider it almost intrinsic.)

Also, I did consider it polite to inform my many event hosts that I’m leaving.

Many of my event hosts wanted to have me one more time. (And one location wanted to snag me for the first time before I was gone!) I’ve posted those event dates, and we would be delighted if you could make it out to say good-bye.

Good-bye for now, I should emphasize.

I’m sure I’ll be back for book tours pursuant to new book releases. I’d miss Lake Geneva too much otherwise! In fact, my frequent writing sessions in Lake Geneva are the thing I will miss most. For years, I’ve wanted the time to simply sit near the shore and write—but I was always too busy during book tours. Hence, I aimed to maximize writing sessions in Lake Geneva during our time in Wisconsin.

At that, I succeeded. In fact, from my writing chair, I could watch the Mailboat herself come and go, and it was incredibly special.

I’m annoyed that two places so important to me are so far apart from each other. But the good news is that I enjoy the adventure of hopping into the driver’s seat of my four-wheeled bestie and watching the miles fly by.

In short, what will change for my fans (in Wisconsin, at least) is that I won’t be here for public or private events year-round, though I’ll still try to make it back yearly or thereabouts.

Meanwhile, the move will assuredly come between me and my pen at times.

But I’ll keep writing, when I can, as much as I can. And I’ll be providing monthly writing updates over on Patreon, which are available at the “free” tier on up.

And while I won’t be gazing across Geneva Lake watching the Mailboat herself during my writing sessions, you can know that the weekends will frequently find Charles, Angel, and me deep in the mountains, soaking up the majesty and the solitude.