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Why are you where you are? How did you get there? Do you plan on staying? Have you ever visited a place and thought... man, if I could just go back.... Where was that place? IS there a perfect utopia, or are we naively spinning our wheels? Is it worth packing everything up and starting over again?

These were the questions my friend Cassie posed to her friends and family the other day. After a year discovering the trials and tribulations of the all-too-hip city of Portland, Oregon, Cassie is considering moving on... but to where?

I suppose my desire to live here in Bozeman can be said to border on the maniacal. After all, I had a lot of things going for me in Sonoma when I left -- good job, a great deal of respect in the community, a swell new girlfriend -- so a lot of people were amazed that I'd pack all that in and head to... where? Montana? Are you out of your mind?

Yes, I'm out of my mind. The job situation for here has ranged from sporadic to pathetic. The winters are long and brutal. It's a pain in the ass to get to here or get out of here. Housing prices are running amok. And romantically... well, that could be a book in itself. A tragedy, naturally.

So, why? Hell, I don't know. It's home, is all.

Maybe I should tell the story from the beginning.

Summer, 1989. My first summer out west, spent in Jackson, Wyoming. A co-worker, Aleece Erskin, mentions that the town of Bozeman, Montana has excellent thrift stores, good bands, and cheap housing.

May, 1991. I move to Montana. Big Sky, that is, the ski resort 50 miles south of Bozeman. Aleece has since moved to Bozeman with her new fiance, Chick Kurowski, and I spent my weekends couch surfing at their seedy dive apartment on North Black Avenue. As long as I brought a 12-pack of Schmitty's they were happy, and I spent many good weekends mountain biking, hot springing, and sitting on the porch drinking beer. Later they moved to a house (since condemned and demolished) at the foot of Peet's Hill, and we'd watch bikers attempt to launch off the ski jump, usually landing on their heads.

This was my introduction to Bozeman, and what I encountered with Aleece and Chick remain some of its most powerful selling points to me. Chick was a serious abstract painter, working as a line cook at the Cowboy Cafe. Aleece was a backpack sewer at Dana Designs. Both were dedicated to outdoor recreation, art, music, drinking beer, and living on the cheap. They were underemployed but it didn't matter because so was everyone. They were ornery, but usually in a good way. They kept a pistol in the silverware drawer. Although neither was from Montana, they seemed to embody the spirit that I found in Bozeman: as long as you weren't going to wreck it, you were pretty much okay in their book.

But I really wanted to move to Colorado. See, I just moved to Big Sky as a way of getting out west, but when the summer season was over I headed to Steamboat Springs, CO, which my calculations had designated with utopia potential: skiing, artsy, not too big, not too small. I got there in early November, and landed a job as a lift operator before the season opened. I stuck around a while longer, waiting to see if I could get in on the employee housing. I had to stay there several days for the answer, which finally came in: None of us with jobs would get employee housing. They were saving it for the late-arrival employees.

What about us on-time arrival employees? We were out on the street. I was so pissed off I immediately left Colorado, vowing never to return (which I actually managed to do for about five years or so).

I would go where they cared about me. I would return to Montana.

End of Part I

Climb every mountain... ?

(Photo: The Tetons, with Jackson Lake Lodge in the foreground)



It's that time of year again: the time when I have to figure out what I'm gonna do when the ski season's over.

As many of you know, I returned to Bozeman fully intent on making it as a freelance writer. While I am working and getting paid for that to a certain extent, it hasn't been the flag-waving success I'd been hoping for. So, in January I took up my old job waiting tables at Jimmy B's Bar and Grill at the Bridger Bowl Ski Area.

Which has been great. I'm really happy to be back at work there; I had forgotten what an integral part of my social life it was, much like working at Murphy's Irish Pub was for me in Sonoma. Plus, I come home with my pockets filled with cash, and I get to ski for free on a regular basis.

But the ski season doesn't last forever. It lasts until mid-April. After that, they boot us off the hill and we're made to fend for ourselves.

In the past Bridger Bowl has had a Thursday-Sunday summer season in which the mid-mountain lodge is opened to the public as a restaurant and for weddings, but that plan has already been downsized to weddings only for this summer.

That leaves the following choices: a) Crank up the querying a notch and get more freelancing gigs. Which I should be doing anyway, but I'm having way too much fun with skiing and ice climbing. In the summer I'll be having way too much fun with hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, and kayaking.

So then there's b) Go back to my old summer job at the Pioneer Grill in Grand Teton National Park. There I'll be able to play in the mountains to my heart's content and then some, and make tons of dough for possible international travel after season's end.

It's tempting, isn't it? But what will happen to the fledgling freelance career I've put so much time into building? Will it fly straight out the window? Will I return to Bozeman starting at Square One again?

What to do, what to do...

I suppose I could work in a regular year-round restaurant in Bozeman... but that sounds too much like a real job. Lame!

If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

Leader Fall

Ice climbing, Pine Creek Falls, it's beautiful but scary. The upper falls is a gaping maw with frozen icicles for fangs. Ice cold water churns and spews. I lead that pitch, sidestepping gingerly in the soft snow-covered ice, careful not to break through.

The ice screws I've inserted form an "S" pattern from me crossing and recrossing the waterfall, and the friction from the carabiners makes pulling the rope difficult. The final stretch is straight up along the left-hand side of the falls. My left foot slips, but I recover.

Near the top, the ice is so thin I can see clearly to the water rushing underneath. It couldn't be more than an inch thick. To break through could spell disaster — it's bad enough to fall, but to fall into a waterfall and dangle under an ice-cold shower could be really unpleasant. I steer towards the far left of the ice, right against the rock wall, hoping for the best. My choices for pick placement are limited, but I'm nearly at the top. Just a couple more picks, a couple more steps.

Left pick. Fine. Right pick. Not so fine. Is it good enough? I raise a foot to test the balance, and feel myself leaning back, the picks sliding...

Oh, shit, I think. Here I go.

And away I went.

I must have fallen about 20 feet. It really wasn't bad at all — I stopped about an inch or two above the snowy ledge. I straightened out, stood up on the ledge, and waved to Craig that I was okay. Really, my first thought was that it was kind of funny. Then I noticed my hands and legs shaking from the adrenaline.

I belayed Craig up to the ledge, and he finished off the final section of the falls. He was a little sketched out by the water flowing right underneath, too, and used the rock wall to support him up the edge of the ice. Picks, crampons, even gloved hands right on the rock. I followed right behind him. I knew it was climbable. It was just harder than the climbs we had done in the past, and a lot scarier, but totally doable. Falling is part of the sport — that's why there's ropes and protection.

I think I'm learning.




Craig Hall on Pine Creek Falls

"Gee, Your Blog Smells Terrific!"

(For larger photo click here.)

"Pay it Forward Tuesday" is something Deborah Ng came up with on her Freelance Writing Jobs blog. Basically, it's a little of the old "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, and somebody else's as well" concept. So, today she's plugging my blog. In return, I'll plug somebody else's blog, and so on, and so on, and so on. Which actually sounds like a variation on the "and they told two friends, and so on" shampoo concept. (No one born after 1973 will know what I'm talking about. Basically there was some shampoo that, according to the commercial, was so great that the shampooee told two friends, and they told two friends, etc. I tried Googling this; there were many entries saying what a great advertising campaign this was, but ironically no one could agree on which shampoo was being advertised. Mentions included Faberge Organics, Pert (which I don't think existed yet), Clairol Herbal Essence, Wella Balsam, Body on Tap (made with beer), and my own selection, "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific!" (Apparently large caches of this are still available in the Phillipines. Along with Tab.))

That was a pretty wild tangent. What I'm getting to is that anyone out there who wants their blog plugged should contact me, and we'll all revisit the 70s together.

Bloom and grow, bloom and grow

The Sunflower Center puts its heart into its seedlings

(The following appeared in the February 2007 issue of the Tributary magazine, except for the secret parenthetical paragraph that was edited out.)

By Ray Sikorski

“There’s a reason why I chose Sunflower as the name,” said Dean Williamson, founder and director of the Sunflower Center for the Arts. “If you think about a sunflower, it sort of picks the sun, finds its source of energy and life, and follows that. And they look really wispy but they’re actually really strong, and they’ve got interrelated roots underneath the ground…”

This was all fine and good, but my assignment was not merely to report on the new creative writing center in town. Being the February issue of the Tributary, my editor had asked me to try to tie it all in with love.

I looked Williamson in the eye. “Are you in love with sunflowers?”

“I’m in love with sunflowers,” he confessed.

Now we were getting somewhere.

Williamson explained that the Sunflower Center opened in August 2006, offering workshops in poetry, fiction, script, and creative non-fiction. It also has begun a speaker series, in which successful artists are brought into conversation with members of the community. So far potter Josh DeWeese and Equinox Theatre co-founder Katie Goodman have been featured speakers.

“What we’re trying to do is send the ripple out and hopefully inspire more people to be more creative,” Williamson said.

That same ethic is what guides Williamson, a playwright who has taught English at MSU and Bozeman High, in leading the writing workshops.

“There’s nobody bringing along the next generation of David Quammens and Tom McGuanes and Pete Fromms,” he said.

“There’s a rich history here. What I’m fearful of is there’s nobody here to take their places.”

The workshops, which meet on the comfy red couches of the Sunflower office in the Emerson Cultural Center, take place one evening a week over the course of seven weeks. Writers submit poems, stories, or articles prior to each session, to which the others in the group offer constructive criticisms within the secure confines of the room.

The process, Williamson admitted (with a minimum of prodding), is a bit like love.

“I think this whole creative process is one of love and compassion, and trying to nurture something along that tends to be pretty delicate,” he said. “Imagination and creative stuff, these are beautiful things. But they also need to be tended to.”
Williamson wasn’t sure exactly what the future holds for the center, which as of yet remains a solo operation. (While he often used “we” to describe the center’s goings-on, Williamson explained that it’s the “royal” we.) He mentioned the possibility of a spoken-word series, a songwriting workshop, a publication, or even a film incubator, which would help screenwriters turn their scripts into movies.

“I’m purposely leaving a lot of spontaneity in the way this is playing out,” he said. “I like the idea of setting it in motion and sort of watching it unroll and seeing what happens, and not trying to necessarily know everything that’s gonna happen.”

“Is that like love?” I asked.

“I suppose,” he said. “If we must make it like love.”

Yes, we must!

(Note: Although Williamson would not reveal his relationship status in print, at one point in the interview the tall, dark, and handsome 39-year-old did blurt out his astrological sign. “I’m an Aquarius to a T,” he said, explaining that that means creative and spontaneous and also possessing a certain airiness. “Some people would call us flaky. I would choose, ‘interested in a lot of different things at the same time.’ Multi-interests.” He rattled off some of his interests: skiing, kayaking, canoeing, backpacking… “All the good stuff.”)

Williamson’s nurturing of his sprouts has already rendered results. Although the program is still in its infancy, already four of his students have had submissions that had been critiqued in the workshops published in literary journals and magazines.

“Part of the responsibility of the writers here is that they send stuff out for publication,” he said, explaining that he sees a national trend that’s antagonistic to the arts and free expression. “I think the stakes are way too high right now not to be contributing to the cultural dialogue.”

Although he uses his aesthetically crafted SunflowerCenter.org website as a tool, Williamson said he believes the Internet, and its hordes of lonely bloggers tapping at keyboards in darkened rooms, is detracting from the natural interaction of humanity.

“I still firmly believe in people sitting in the same room talking about writing. I still firmly believe in artists sitting in the same room talking about their creative processes. Because a lot happens in community,” he said. He added that conversing face-to-face is part of the idea behind the speaker’s series, as well as the workshops.

“There’s nothing that can replace human-to-human contact,” he said. Then, after thinking about it, added, “That’s kind of lovey. Isn’t it? Maybe that’s good enough for love.”


Ray Sikorski’s astrological sign is Cancer, which means he sits alone in his basement typing away at his blog: raysikorski.blogspot.com.

February Ray Update

My Stuart Smalley affirmations seem to have garnered some results, although not necessarily the ones I might have anticipated. For one thing, I'm now working three days a week back at my old job at Bridger Bowl, working at Jimmy B's Bar and Grill. And it's been great — it was like coming home all over again. I had forgotten how much working at a place like that — similar to Murphy's Irish Pub, where I worked in Sonoma — was integral not only as a job, but to my social life. Plus, free skiing!

I was a bit concerned that working at Bridger would distract me from pursuing my writing career, but so far I feel like I'm doing really well with both. The summer may pose a bigger question, when I have to decide if I should work back at Grand Teton. That place is like paradise to me, but I'd end up having to start my writing career pretty much from scratch again when I'd return to Bozeman.

In other news, the rail bike project is moving along like a coal train over Homestake Pass. Slow. It's been really warm lately so I should take advantage of it in our unheated garage, where the workshop is. I think I need old school skateboard wheels, instead of the ones I got for free from World Boards. I may have to go on eBay (scary!). Hopefully I'll be done by the time the snow melts.