Friday, March 1, 2019

From Beach Bum to Mountain Man

It had been a good day, all things considered. The tourist season was just beginning to take off again and I'd happily spent my morning taking tourists kayaking in Salt Run off of Saint Augustine Beach. With the warmer weather already here, I was looking forward to a nice long season of guiding. 
 

Things had changed a little bit from my time living in Casa De Pantelones. I still hung out with all my usual friends, but as crazy as it sounds (really crazy actually), now that I simply lived on the other side of A1A with no regular beach access, I hardly spent time on the actual beach. If anything, I'd walk down to the neighborhood pool and relax there. So yes, I lived within 600 yards of the ocean, but no, I rarely wandered across the highway, down several blocks, and then over the sand dunes to the water. When you're that big of a bum, you can't be bothered. 

We were living in a gated community just off A1A and given that it was gated, we were the youngest residents in the neighborhood by about an eon. There were a few decent neighbors, but absolutely no shortage of nosy ancients who had nothing better to do than watch our every move and write HOA about the slightest infractions. Nastygram letters never ceased to arrive in the mail, and we even had one neighbor who went so far as to dig through our recycle, discover we were putting pizza boxes in said recycle bin, and write us a letter explaining how we aren't supposed to do that (you can recycle them, FYI). 

There was one afternoon, in fact, where my roommate Brad and I were swimming at the pool and enjoying a beer. Two older men walked into the pool deck, picked where they were going to sit, then proceeded to give us the stink eye for a while. After finally realizing that awkwardly staring at us wasn't effective, one of  them finally piped up. 

"How'd y'all get in here?" he asked, rather uppity. 

"Through...The gate?" I responded, taking a swig of beer and motioning toward the pool gate. 

"No, smartass. How'd you get into Seagate (the community)?" 

And with giant grins, both Brad and I responded, 

"We live here"

"Where?" asked the now grumpier old man

"Clambake Court", I told him flatly. (Yes I realize all the jokes you can make from Clambake, we already made them all)

It took the old man a second to register what he'd heard, and he disbelievingly removed his sunglasses to reveal a pair of untanned, sunken, and wrinkly eyes. 

"Holy shit. There's people living in Seagate under the age of 50?"

Interactions like this became relatively common. At least until the whole neighborhood knew who we were. But the nosiness and rude letters never ended. 

It wasn't until I got home from my day of guiding that I checked my mail to discover a letter from our landlord. And upon reading it, my day went from pretty good, to pretty awful. For the SECOND time, our landlord was reneging on our lease agreement and kicking us out early so he and his wife could move back in. 

I won't bore you with the details of the following weeks, but just know that Bruce Philips of Saint Augustine is right up there was some of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. 

So we were all set to be homeless. Again. And the thought of going through the motions of finding a new place made me physically ill. 

From the time I moved away for college in 2009 until this particular day in 2017, I had moved at least twice a year, every year. I didn't own many things, in order to make moving that much less painful. But it's painful regardless. I was exhausted. 

Over the past two years I had visited Montana a couple of times and began seriously wondering if it was a place I could live in. I knew the winters would be brutal for someone like myself, but the place seemed awesome. So I told myself if I had to move one more time, I was going to just pack it all up and go to Montana to give it a try. 

So as I sat there, reading the letter informing us that we were getting kicked out, I realized what was about to happen. 

"Looks like I'm moving to Montana". 

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Everything from that point on happened pretty fast. I sold the Gheenoe along with most of my other junk. I kept a dresser, some clothes, my kayaks/fishing gear, and my fish tank. I shotgunned my resume out to a bunch of different employers within the Wildlife Ecology field (I spent all that time getting the degree afterall), and within a couple of weeks had received an offer from the Bureau of Land Management in Butte, MT as a seasonal wildlife technician. 

Aside from being two hours from Missoula MT, I knew nothing about Butte. And to be honest, I didn't really care. It was a job that I managed to land before I even had a place to stay. So I took it. I soon found a place to rent in Missoula and before I knew it, I had loaded everything into the truck and was driving west.   

If you've never physically driven across our great country, consider yourself lucky. Its terrible. Just fly for Christ's sake. 

I lucked out in that I have friends scattered all across the country. So I made the drive from Saint Augustine to Pensacola to see my family. Then Pensacola to Bentonville Arkansas to stay with a friend. Then Arkansas to Denver to stay with others. Finally Denver to Missoula. 

When I finally arrived in Missoula, I swore to myself that I'd never drive anywhere ever again. I really didn't enjoy the drive. But I was now in a new city, and excited to be there. Sure I'd moved a ton in Florida. But aside from -barely- living in southern Georgia, I'd never resided outside of the sunshine state. 

My "new" place was (and still is at the time of writing this), just an old house right in the middle of town. But it's close enough to downtown to walk, and I have a little yard with a garden, and a garage for my kayaks and my brand new toy:


No sense in having a Gheenoe out here, so why not a raft? Over the years I learned to not only appreciate but also enjoy coldwater fly fishing, so it only seemed logical to own a raft. 


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The job with BLM was actually pretty fun. I dealt with Aspen research and to make a long story short, I essentially got paid to hike around the mountains with a chainsaw. 


The only drawback of the job was that it was in Butte. Not only is Butte and pretty terrible town to begin with, it's also two hours from Missoula; a daily commute I couldn't commit to. So rather than drive back and forth, I opted to use the camper shell on the back of the truck for its intended use and actually camp. I'd leave Missoula at 4am Monday mornings, camp out of the truck Tuesday through Thursday night, then drive back after work on Friday evening. 

The whole concept doesn't sound too terrible on paper. But the logistics and reality of it got old VERY quickly. I'd wrap up a long day of working in the woods only to drive back into the woods again to camp. I was lucky enough to have access to a shower at work, but there's certainly no toilet out in the woods. Fun fact: it can start snowing in AUGUST. I woke up one morning to discover snow had built up enough outside to seal the tailgate shut and trapped me inside. Cooking? I either had to pick up fast food while I was in town, or...


Bottom line, it got old. So as thankful as I was to have had such an easy transition across the country, I was thankful when the job ended and I found myself back in Missoula full time. With hunting season right around the corner, I looked forward to what this new change in lifestyle would bring, and couldn't help but think how different things were going to be now that I wasn't a beach bum anymore. 


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