Home At Last

We've done it. After six weeks, more than 10,000 miles, trying to ignore my bad back and Tom's foot injury (he sprained his foot trying to step delicately over a bunch of stuff I'd left on the stairs during the move), we have finally finished moving. We arrived from Boise at 1:30 this morning. The last part of the drive included glowering, dramatic thunder clouds with lightning flashing in them (we just missed the rainstorm coming over the Continental Divide), one flat tire on each of the vehicles, gusty winds that pushed the top-heavy loaded Beastie all over the road, and heavy Labor Day Weekend traffic in the darkness of the Gallatin Canyon highway. But we made it through all of it, and now we are done with moving. Hooray!

We unloaded the immediately necessary stuff (the cooler with perishable food, the plants out of the hot little car, the cardboard boxes that wouldn't weather any rain that might come) crunching around in the bushes in the dark. As I was coming up the steps to the porch with the last box, I heard a sound that made me pause. It was a dry rattle which continued as I stood there listening and trying to think of a nocturnal animal that made a noise like that. It sounded like a rattlesnake, but surely not - I don't think of this as rattlesnake country. Finally, I put down the box and picked up a flashlight and shone it where the sound was coming from and there was the tail of a large rattlesnake disappearing under the house rattling lethargically as it went. Wonderful. The hole it disappeared into was home to a bushy-tailed woodrat last year, but we trapped him and it had been vacant since then. Now, apparently, a timber rattler has moved in. Tom says some people have house cats to rid themselves of mice, and now we have a snake to do the same job, and we won't have to feed it or take it to the vet. I'm not so pleased. I'm glad I didn't step on it wandering back and forth to the car in the dark. One more thing to be alert for when going out to the bathhouse. Well, we hoped for wildlife and adventure, and I guess a rattlesnake under the house qualifies somehow.

Anyway, we were so pleased to be finished with the marathon move that we celebrated this morning by lazing around in bed half the morning congratulating ourselves, then having a champagne brunch on the deck. After toasting our new home and wolfing down pancakes with Vermont maple syrup (thanks to my sister-in-law Sue whose family in Vermont has a maple syrup business) and yogurt with blackberries, we found that champagne for breakfast makes you basically worthless for anything else all day. We deserved a rest anyway, so we hung out all day on the deck reading, watching the clouds float by in the blue Montana sky, and relaxing.

Tom finally had enough time to waste that he allowed himself to enjoy his favorite computer game (and you thought this was a picture of him working).

While we were gone (10 days), the season in Montana has changed from high summer to autumn.

The buckbrush has turned red and everything else is crunchy and dry. The flowers are all gone, even the yarrow. It is funny that we started this move at the very beginning of summer here with the last of the spring flowers blooming and everything green, and now we have finished it at the onset of fall. Summer goes by quickly up here in the mountains. It is cool enough for sweatshirts and long jeans and the elk should start bugling soon. Time to stop all this moving nonsense and start putting up more firewood and getting the plumbing done before winter arrives.