When we lived in Montana we became friendly with two much older couples. Kenny and Verna Trowbridge lived a few miles south in the little town of Darby. Carl and Billie Hopkins lived there as well. Kenny broke horses for the army in WW1. He taught me how to hand load. Billie, as a bride, came to Jenny Lake in the Tetons, one of the first white settlers in the area. Billie gave Jamie her famous recipe for corn pudding which has become Jamie's famous recipe for corn pudding.
One day Kenny and I were in a corral, leaning on the top rail, looking out over the wide Bitterroot Valley - a stupendous sight. "Beautiful, isn't it?" I said to Kenny. He hesitated then replied, "Seems just like bein' in a corral to me." One night, when the six of us were together, Billie described what it was like being a new bride in the Wyoming wilderness. After she got over her fear of a horse drawn sled falling through the ice, she grew to love the place. Imagine the Tetons and the lake. Imagine you are there by yourself. Alone, alone and filled with the delicious happiness of solitude. "Has she ever been back?" we asked. "Once," she said, "but no more." "Why not?" "I can't recognize the place anymore. Too many roads. I get lost." A woman who could find her way through the hills and dales of the Teton wilderness when there were no roads, now gets lost and confused by them.
When we moved to the Catskills going on forty years ago, our road was a quiet country road. If three vehicles came by in an hour we'd call it gridlock, and we could often tell which neighbor it was by the sound of their engine. It started with 9/11 and continues with the pandemic: folks from NYC began buying property up here. A hedge fund guy has bought up a goodly portion of our valley and tunneled into the mountain he bought to build his getaway. A micro-brewery up the valley and a lovely inn 1/2 mile east of us are wonderful additions as is a neighbor's charming guest cottage a bit to the west, but this has helped turn our little piece of heaven into a destination venue - who doesn't want to be here? - more traffic, more money, more houses, less country. There is a push in our small town to limit further B'n'B's and slow the traffic. I've been dreaming of those police straps embedded with nails that stretch across the road. Speed bumps have been suggested, but they would make it impossible to plow. I guess, in its way, we are becoming gentrified. I can imagine now how the locals must have felt when we first moved here. Did they think, "There goes the neighborhood?" Only, there weren't that many of us then. At our end of the valley, I counted two - me and J, and then Bev moved here with her horses. At the village end, five miles west, six people, sometime eight. Barely a dent; not even a dozen.
But, there are pluses as well. This does not include the McMansion being built by the hedge fund manager's architect fully visible through the trees 500 yards across the creek. Suddenly, a familiar old walk becomes trespassing, but I was talking about the pluses.
People! People are the pluses.
I've gotten to be quite comfortable discussing pick-up trucks and bullet trajectories. It's fun but it's limited. Recently, at the local farmer's market, I actually heard two people talking about the Colbert show. There are literally six writers within a quarter mile of each other. We were invited to dinner and had cuisine and proper wines. These folks are smart and sassy and don't let their city ways keep them from diving head-long into country. We enjoy each other. Came Rosh Hashana the tiny pod of Jewish folks met on a small bridge over our creek and tossed the contents of our pockets into the water as is the ancient custom, and the larger pod celebrates Halloween and New Year's with gusto, 4th of July and Labor Day week-end. Bourbon for an hour. A snack. We even have our own brand of Meals-n-Wheels. One of the women is an extraordinarily good and adventurous cook, and very, very generous. She'll make brisket, for example, and put a serving in each of our mailboxes. Many do maple syrup come March. I love it when a local I know well stops by for a sit/chat on our front porch, and I love it when a writer or a psychologist or an architect or an artist stops by for the same reason. We don't trespass. We live off the land and the land is us. We find ourselves part of a community, and that ain't bad, not at this stage of my game. I've surprised myself by enjoying myself. I mean, aren't Russian Jewish Intellectuals supposed to be misanthropes? So much for self awareness.
For a long time now, most of my life, I've felt a part of more than one world. I've always been able to talk with anyone - a president of the United States and the state trooper whose mother I've known forever, movie stars and mercenaries, book worms and jocks. I've tried to raise my children to be comfortable anywhere with anyone. We're no better than the next guy, and we're certainly no worse. A dear uncle, Uncle Milton, once told me that if I wanted other people to find me interesting, get them to talk about themselves. I've discovered some great stuff that way. I know what I think, but what do you think?
Back at Yale, Sartre's, "No Exit", seemed profound to me. Its last line - "Hell is other people" - struck me as God's proof. Years and years later, I've changed my mind. Heaven is other people, too.
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