Four Things I Learned this Month

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If the moon was a single pixel, the website of the solar system would be 1.7 million pixels wide. I know this because I spent a few minutes staring at a tediously accurate scale model of the solar system: “If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel,” by Josh Worth. I also know this because one of my co-workers did the math, and he also determined that the width in his browser was capped at 33,554,428 pixels, and then joked this would probably help when “I’m doing content strategy,” and I’m not sure if it will but I’m happy to have this new information.

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It takes 90 pounds of butter to sculpt each of the Minnesota State Fair’s daily butter princess sculptures, which are then housed in a refrigerated glass vault in the Minnesota State Fair Dairy Building — a vault that, at nearly all moments of the fair, is surrounded by hundreds of fair-goers. Now, imagine a great heist centered around that vault, and then get very excited because my friend and eternal dungeon master Amanda just introduced our group to Butter Princess, a table-top RPG based around the Minnesota State Fair. It sounds incredible — but, to be completely honest, I’m also hopefully holding out for a game based on the three-week-long 4-H teen musical camp: The Minnesota 4-H State Arts-In.

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Jerry Casale was at Kent State protesting both the invasion of Cambodia and the increasing military presence on campus when the National Guard opened fire and killed four of his classmates, two of whom he knew personally — the Kent State massacre. In response to this, Casale and his friends took the concept of “de-evolution” — a weird joke, probably! — and turned an eye on society’s threadbare empathy and commercialism. They stayed weird, though, and that’s why it worked: in the face of one of the nation’s most turbulent times, Devo kept being weird while also adding every band’s favorite tool: subversion. Anger is important, as is sadness and frustration, but let’s shout out “fucking with convention” as a new way to tackle life’s horrors. (The new documentary is very good, by the way.)

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If our eyes were the same ratio to our head as a great horned owl, our eyes would be the size of oranges. This would be weird, because none of our glasses would fit anymore. This is a new thing I learned about owls this week when reading Bridget A. Lyons’ book Entwined, a great book that uses animal metaphor to explain culture’s whole thing. From this, I also learned that while owls are solitary creatures, great horned owls mate for life. They do their spring duty, and then flit off to wherever they feel most comfortable, returning the next year to find their mate again. They are monogamous, but distant.

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I’m sorry. I’m just writing out facts because it feels good to know I learned something this month. In reality, we’re all hurting a bit.

This lack of narrative is because I’m in Idaho. I’m in Idaho because my aunt passed away earlier this month, and we’re celebrating with a memorial at my grandmother’s house. It’s really hard, especially for those that were always here — for those who spent the most time with my aunt. She was one of the most generous and fun people I ever knew — always with a gift, always dropping everything for those of us who’d kept out of the valley. We showed up, and so did she. That’s what I remember. That’s how I see her.

I’ve spent my entire life flitting in and out of both Teton Valleys — the Idaho side and the Wyoming side — enough that I consider it a deep part of my identity. I know that I’ve spent some small part in every nook and cranny, especially on the Idaho side, among the 450 square miles of flat land in between Victor and Driggs. My history is here. This is where my aunt chose to stay for as long as she could, just like my grandparents, just like my great aunts before.

I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll try to tell a quick story.

Yesterday, we ran a few errands before the memorial. We went to the grocery store, and a coffee shop, and eventually a flower shop and a clothing store. We picked up things from places we’ve known for years. We walked the same paths we walk every summer when we visit. And … it felt different. It’s been feeling different for a while. I can feel a distance that I don’t recognize; where I once felt confidence and a sense of pride, I now feel like I’m fading into the wallpaper.

On the way home yesterday, I might have it figured out: I still hold this place in my heart, unchanged, as if I was still 13 or 17 or 23 or whichever age I felt at most a part of the valley. But I’m not 13 or 17 or 23. I’m nearly 47, and these people have grown up and around and within this valley independent of that vision I still have.

This is not meant to be about me. None of this is. It’s just that my connection to this valley is the people I still know, and I can feel comfortable because I always know I have someplace to be. Not as a visitor, but as family. A birthright that remains as long as someone remembers where we came from.

And that’s when it kind of hits. That’s when I feel that loss. To me, my aunt was part of the valley — part of the fabric — and when I think about belonging in this valley, I know that I do so by the grace of those who still live here. Now, with our loss, that connection is a little thinner. Now, that connection is a bit smaller. And I’ll miss that connection, just as we all miss her as a person.

This is all heavy and it’s hard and we are all doing our best to figure out how to handle it — how to collect our feelings in the right buckets, I guess — and it’s good that we’re figuring it out because this is just how life goes. Regardless of what we do to prepare for our own futures, we’re waylaid by grief. Personal grief, societal grief; grief is here.

But also, around us, in billions of little streams, the world continues on, and I’ve always been told that it’s important to grasp onto the small joys. And, man, I know, that’s dangerously close to being something you’d hear from an instagram influencer but also … it’s still kind of true.

So anyway, I learned some things this month. I learned a lot, probably, but those four things were a way to distract me a bit. It helped a lot to write them out. It helped to remember that, like a great horned owl, we keep our connections for life, even if we’re flitting in and out. And it helps to know how much we’ll miss my aunt. It helps to know she’ll be here in the valley. It helps, a little.