I crack open another local beer. In Montana it’s Bayern. In Texas it was Lone Star. In Philly it was Yuengling. In Wyoming it was Teton Ale. Somewhere it’s always something. Something to drink, something to help me sleep. Something to help my brain go the way it needs to go. I’m with another courtesan. Another something. In another someplace. I find myself in Many Glacier. Glacier National Park. The season has yet to start, but the bears have awakened from their winter slumber. The goats with their wild eyes and young folk are moving about freely in the spring that they see. The mountain sheep still venture down to our altitude to scramble and look for easy delectable delights. I sit in my crazy dorm room thankfully alone somehow listening to the Pixies and trying like hell to actually understand my surroundings and my place of being. Big Bend was a vortex and this by all means is the ether. Within the vortex I could see the space around. I could contemplate my surroundings. This place has no place. I am nestled within mountains that intimidate me beyond belief. The lake that is a boundary is not as large as Lake Yellowstone, but it is demanding. It has killed a few. It is choppy almost always. The snow and clouds and rain seem to cloak everything in my immediate view in dark and ominous backdrops. Nothing wants to make sense. No matter how hard my imagination or heart or belief in my existence wants to produce, I am a product of the unknown. Nothing I can do will make this easier. I just have to be patient. I just have to wait. And not let this place get the better or the worst of me. I am listening but not fully. I do not know how. This is the biggest battle of fate in a sense. There are other forces at work here. And I can FEEL them but do not know them. They are strong and almighty under such a simple guise.
The hotel is a magnificent Beast, a hundred years old almost. Nothing has changed here. They have kept it preserved. And aside from the actual product and the employees and the visitors, the building really is the same it has always been. It is weather beaten. The décor is terribly outdated. The carpets and walls and floors reek of too many decades of harsh winters, too many footprints and too much abuse in the summer. Much too much neglect .The building is it’s own being entirely. It seems here that no one can actually make demands on it fully. It creaks and groans and moves in the way that it must. It was in fact designed and then, it seemed to own up to it’s creation. It became in a sense, what it’s builder wished it to be, and then it took on it’s own existence. Many Glacier Hotel BREATHES.
I am lucky to be here at the time that I am here. This part of the park is still unopened. As employees we are allowed to wander the grounds. All is open to us. The entire hotel is our playground. We hear stories. The stories are passed along, the stories of ghosts and of unexplained freakish accidents and deaths. And this dark mysterious weather is of no help. All is dark. Our imaginations move swiftly. And combined they create stories. And so we wander in packs through the old Swiss hotel. We make chills dance upon one another’s backs as we create our own fantastical fear. How wondrous to have such an opportunity to let our mind’s creations get the best of us. And how lucky we are to be able to do so with strangers from all over the country. We are in suspended living here. There are no consequences. How the young are able to run this place is beyond me. We are given a free card; a passport into a fantastical land. Wholly. Without a doubt. It is something out of an old timeless novel to be here at this moment. There seems to be no reality except that which we create. And I do sincerely feel that if the we did not open our location on Friday, it would in fact, turn into a Lord Of The Flies situation. Park life is ultimately a tiny Petri dish, a sample of the actual world at large. Again nothing makes sense. And again I am moving toward the oblivion. Seeking out the much alive beast that seems to be in these places. And still slightly finding the disappointment of the obvious. Even beautiful places have their flaws. This place however is ultimately demanding. It is ever crucial. And the wind is blowing harder than it ever could out there. It is howling. And I’m wondering when I will have the opportunity to go up those giant mountains that continually haunt me. And hope that a bear doesn’t eat me up. Out with the old, in with the new.
