By Oil Lamp and Laptop: Heart and Fingers

It's dark outside and I have my oil lamp lit while I type on my laptop. It is an incongruity that suits my mood.

I forgot how much I love oil lamps. They are a beacon of light in a way that candles can't cut it. They are less romantic and dreamy and much more practical and functional. They illuminate darkness enough that you can read and write and cook but without overwhelming you with their light. Oil lamps let you still respect darkness. It feels good; it feels right, to be writing by oil lamp now, even if it is on my laptop. The sound of the rain, the feel of the darkness, and the light from the oil lamp are familiar and comforting in ways that I've been missing pretty badly since moving out to Oregon.

When I woke up this morning, I decided to go get an oil lamp. I made myself some promises awhile back that included less electricity, phone calls, and emails and more oil lamps and written letters. I haven't been so good at doing those things recently because it is lonely sometimes to be in a new place, and phone calls are an easy way to remedy that.

Feelings don't always sneak up on you. This one hit me over the head and knocked me back into orbit. I have to thank Rick Bass' book, Winter: Notes from Montana. It made me miss Montana in all the right ways. It allowed me to reminisce and remember. That is always a good feeling.

I am back in my Montana headspace, the place I am happiest. When I get in this mood, or more accurately, when this mood overtakes me, I have to write. There is too much thought and feeling. I don't know how to get it out without talking everyone's ear off, so I write it. If I didn't have a way to let all these emotions and thoughts transcend me and escape, I'm pretty sure I'd turn into a scientific oddity: I'd burst into thin air and break into a million floating pieces or I'd sink into the ground, all my excitement, love, and awe, becoming part of the landscape, part of the earth.

As Rick Bass says: "I used to think it was, a failing, that I had to be in the wilderness to be happy -- away from most things. Now I'm starting to discover that's irrelevant -- whether it's good or bad, a failing or strength: totally irrelevant. It's just the way I am." As much as wilderness is how I define myself, when I am in it, it becomes irrelevant, incidental. It is when I am away from it and bombarded by things that don't fit right or feel right that I worry that there is something wrong with me. That is when I use wilderness like a blanket. But in the woods, I feel like poetry in motion; I move easily and I am at ease. It is beauty and truth and I know that Keats and the Romantics were right. Truth and Beauty: "The woods can be a bit strange. It takes a long time feel you beling there and then you never again really belong in town."

I think that I'm probably lucky to have such clarity about something. To feel something fully and simply. It is like the Northern Lights. There may be logical explanations but when you are watching it and part of it there are none. Electic and magical and only for you.