This must be the place: ‘Sounds you might hear when you’re opening up your window’
Somewhere in Montana.
Garret K. Woodward photo
Hello from 34,000 feet. I’m currently on a United Express flight from Asheville to Denver, Colorado. Probably somewhere over Kansas at the moment. Who knows? What awaits me is another adventure, this time to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. My first time there. Lifelong dream.
Since there’s no Wi-Fi on this particular flight, I have to resort to whatever is still left on my Apple iTunes, which was downloaded years (and years) ago. I’ve been streaming music for so long, I don’t even remember what’s on my iTunes. But, I was happily surprised to open my laptop and find a recording of That Toga Band from around 2006.
A long-gone trio, the jazz-fusion instrumental acoustic band was based out of Burlington, Vermont (right across Lake Champlain from where I grew up in Plattsburgh, New York). It featured one of my oldest friends, guitarist Tom Pearo, who I’ve known and loved like a brother since we first met in middle school up on the Canadian Border in the late 1990s.
Ah, the absolute power and surreal nature of music, eh? I remember seeing That Toga Band when I would be home for Christmas break of summer vacation while in college in Connecticut. Tom and his bandmates went to the University of Vermont in Burlington. Thus, we’d reconnect at whatever random pizza joint or dive bar they were playing.
It’s wild and weird to hear these live melodies that were captured almost 20 years ago, most likely at Manhattan Pizza in the heart of Burlington. It’s where the UVM students usually hangout, and where Tom worked back in the day. We’d get free cold cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon or a slice of pizza snuck over to us whenever we’d wander in.
I was 21 years old in those days of cheap domestic beer and greasy pizza. Now, at age 40, those days don’t seem that far away. Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. And yet, when I reflect, as I sip a Stella Artois in my economy seat on this United flight, it dawns on me that, that was almost half-a-lifetime ago based on my current age.
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Here I sit, in this chair in the bluebird sky, hurtling through the clouds from the mountains of Southern Appalachian to the mountains of the Western prairie. For the last 13 years, I’ve called Western North Carolina my home. And, within that time period thus far, I’ve wandered and pondered the vast majority of this country, even more so when I was a writer looking for gainful employment in my early 20s.
The written word has provided the vehicle, literally and figuratively, for yours truly to keep wandering and pondering. And The Smoky Mountain News remains my foundation by doing so, with this newspaper (and your support, dear readers and advertisers) keeping the lights on in my apartment, gas in the tank of my ole pickup truck, and a plentiful supply of Coors Light in the small fridge in the small kitchen in the small apartment I call my own in Waynesville.
That Toga Band echoes into the headphones. Voices of familiar, beloved faces are heard on the tracks. Music, laughter, and background noise of forgotten days now covered up by the sands of time, now crystalized in the form of an mp3 on iTunes. Where does the time go? Where did they all go? And what happened to all of us along the way, that continued journey of enlightenment, the quest for love and truth and finding solace within that has now reached the ledge of middle age?
And as I mentally prepare myself for rolling into Telluride this weekend, the inevitable serene chaos of people, places, and things, all under the banner of live music and fellowship, I can’t help but think of the last eight months. So much change, physically and emotionally, and here I am, still here and still willing to push forward, head held high.
This weekend will be, in essence, my first venture out into this big ole world since work burnout last summer, since the flood last fall, since the breakup (with her) last winter, since I started therapy. I already made note of this in last week’s column. But, no matter, for stream of consciousness resides at the core of this section of the newspaper.
And sure, I did venture up to my native North Country of Upstate New York for my 40th birthday in February to spend it with my parents, even though it was below zero and snowing most of the time (splendid nonetheless, especially in front of the farmhouse woodstove).
And yes, I did head for St. Augustine, Florida, in March to get some sun and put my toes in the sand all in the name of reclaiming my sanity for a hot minute. But, there was an utter fog within my mind, my heart hurting amid every mile driven, every jog taken through heavy snow in the woods or trot down some sandy beach.
This go-round is an active trek back out to the West, an assignment with a deadline looming in the coming days. One where I’ll have to file my story probably before the hotel kicks me out at 11 a.m. on Monday, in the fleeting minutes before the shuttle brings me to the Montrose, Colorado, airport, onward back to my humble abode Carolina home.
This is also the first trip back to the Rocky Mountains since she and I broke up. The West was always something we loved and shared together. Before we met, I had extensively traversed the Rockies. She’d really only been to Colorado. So, for the better part of the two years we were together, we’d bolt for the West whenever we could, mostly aligned with whatever Rolling Stone assignment I had out here.
Visions of our times in the West. Boulder, Colorado, with old friends of mine. Eating barbecue in Eastern Idaho at the same spot I used to inhabit when I was a rookie reporter for the Teton Valley News in 2008. Swimming in that river in middle of nowhere Montana. Long drives along the highways and backroads of South Dakota, North Dakota, etc. Oh, and that night we spent gazing up at the stars on a Utah ski slope.
I now fly solo this afternoon. Back out in the mountainous prairie of adventure, of legend and of lore. Alone, but more so in the name of solitude than in the name of loneliness. I’m curious as to what I may encounter on this trip, curious as to where I might find myself, and who I may befriend along the way. Thoughts race once again to the endless, unknown possibilities of the Universe when you wander.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
