2:08 NSG - Montana

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The invite to join NSG in her annual adventure to visit her Adventure Buddies in Montana and Wyoming was short notice. It took burning many brownie points to make it happen on my end, but it felt very right to chase this particular rainbow.

The drive to Montana would be 15 hours each way. Based on how conversations with NSG typically went, I was ecstatic for the opportunity. Talking with her is something to savour, like an endless unwrapping of silken philosophy and reason that is beautiful and soothing to engage with. Plus, of course, the whole being awkwardly in love with this incredibly beautiful woman was also pretty enjoyable, despite being resigned in the corner of the friendzone wearing my fucktard crown.

One oddity was that before we left, NSG asked me not to discuss or pursue the possibility of us having a relationship before or during the Montana Adventure. This makes perfect sense as translated into the friendzone: Don't make things weird while we're engaging with old friends during a special time. I further translated this as being her enjoying my company as a friend and adventure buddy, and her not wanting to quash either of those with needing to shoot down my obviously budding hopes until after we've had adventures - so then I can sulk on my own later. So it goes.

Except it didn't go like that at all. We barely made it half-way through Washington state before we found ourselves unable to resist talking about "us". A tearful blend of pain and joy unfurled for us both, as she clarified that relationship injunction was because she did indeed want to explore a relationship with me but didn't want it to overshadow this special event. The joy aspect of that might be obvious: I was already crazy about NSG, and she seemed very affected by me too. The pain part was more complicated. I think that, for NSG, it was based on being afraid of all the uncertainty, and how many compromises she was setting herself up for by virtue of my limited ability to enmesh lives at that moment. For me, the pain was recognizing the difficulty in communicating clearly, which has deeply-rooted worries about how that can go wrong for me.

The power of our camaraderie and enjoyment of each other let us work ourselves back to a friendly détente. And an agreement to focus on the adventure before us. Plus the adorable power of her dog Murphy, the elderly Ridgeback mutt along for perhaps his last big adventure, kept us grounded in the present.

Before delving into the Beartooth Lake Campground in Yellowstone (across the border into Wyoming), we took a detour to see NSG's brother in Billings - at the bar he owns. It was a poignant and brave sharing of aspects of NSG's former life in Montana, and a way of orienting many of her tales in the real world. The feeling was that it was a bonus level of real content she was willing to let me hold, and it let her soothe many of her own needs for connection with the place and her brother.

Finally, after two days of travelling and conversing, we managed to drive into the majesty of the Beartooth mountain pass (listening to the Beatles) and met up with NSG's adventure buddies.

They were awesome. Hilarious and kind, and totally kick-ass in a responsible-adult-adventure sort of way. Right away, things were kicked off with a hike/mountain bike ride. Paradoxically, I was glad to not have brought my bike, because it was not my kind of riding, plus there was waaaaay too much scenery to take in to focus on riding a line. Breaking off on our own (or so we thought), NSG and I skinny-dipped in a freezing alpine lake and had snacks. Then we met up with the adventure buddies again at the turn-around point, and re-lived the wonder again.

Back at the campsite, dinner was a fun collaborative affair, that quickly transformed into competitive embarrassment challenges with alcohol. There are things you don't get see often, and some of those were recorded on video that night. I simply couldn't keep up, either on the drinking or the embarrassment. But it was fun to be present.

After the fires died down and the fun was getting outweighed by the not-fun consequences, we disbanded back to our respective sleeping arrangements. The adventure buddies to their campers, Murphy into a pile of blankets in the back of the car, and NSG and I curled up in our mummy bags in a tent. Tipsy Clayton and Drunken NSG were chastely mindful of their agreed upon boundaries, but feeling good. And then NSG told me that she loved me, and that she would wait for me. And I was incredibly happy.

The next day the sun rose on another glorious high-altitude day, with plans for a day-long hike so that the adventure buddies could fish some remote lakes. The beauty of the hike cannot be easily captured in words or pictures. The brash beauty of NSG leading me to another skinny-dipping opportunity fed the flames of my smoldering hopes. But it was the jaw dropping special-ness of a moment climbing up to a waterfall together to survey the scenery that nearly made my heart burst. I actually couldn't stand it; I wanted to kiss NSG so much, but dare not trespass any of our negotiated boundaries. It has become the sigil of my conceptualization of the "brilliant impossibility" that NSG and I were.

So much was a blur after that. Driving through the sunset and dusk, past herds of bison, to start our trek back to Oregon. All the singing we did, listening to NSG's style of techno-jazz. The deep and hard considerations about NSG finding a way for her and her daughter to take advanced yoga teacher training. It all cumulated into one of my favourite adventures. It was definitely a thing to remember.



With a little space, it must also be admitted that difficulty communicating was also a feature far too often between NSG and myself. Most of it because I was still learning how to accept how right NSG's insights were. But also part of it being not heard and relegated to being a character in her story. I could see it, and felt myself accepting the work of it as being worthwhile in the face of my hopes.