By Jennifer Savage
Saturday, Seth and I started hiking up a drainage in the Mission mountains at 7:30 a.m. It was our sixth wedding anniversary. The trail was steep and familiar and we moved slowly as Eliza and Lucille lay sleeping at the house of dear friends who’d agreed to watch them so we could have a kid-free night and day. Around 9 a.m. we came out of the trees and onto a rocky alpine ridge. As I stood looking at the curved mountain meadows to either side, the jagged outline of Graywolf Peak, the tiny lakes that had just barely begun to thaw, I thought about how in our modern lives there are so few opportunities to touch something ancient.
Birth. Mountains. Death. Ocean.
To experience these things we place our hands, even if for a moment, on that place inside us that needs to connect with something primal.
It got me thinking about the choices we make: where we live, how we treat ourselves, those in our lives and how they treat us. I thought about how it is okay to choose to make something a part of your life just because it’s beautiful, just because it fulfills in you some unexplainable need.
It’s important to be surrounded by beauty.
I found myself saying all of this to Seth.
This idea of beauty is why we lived in Arlee for so long. It’s in the seasons laid bare across a landscape that could be harsh and lonely, awake and vibrant but always honest. It’s in raising your eyes and looking at something inspiring every time you open the door. It’s in the constant, grounding calm of mountains in the distance. It’s why it was so hard to answer when people would ask why we lived so far out of town. It’s why we let ourselves talk of going back.
This beauty was in training and running the Missoula marathon without the self-flagellation that has existed for me when I’ve run races before. I knew I could run the distance but, this time, I wanted to foster a sense of gentle acceptance about my body and abilities. I wanted to take it easy on myself. I wanted to see if I could accomplish this goal from a place of love.
So when I felt like I was pushing it just a little too far, instead of pushing farther like I would have in the past, I took a break. I skipped a 20-mile training run. I iced, I massaged, I took naps. I listened to my body, I fed it well and often, and the experience fed me in so many meaningful ways. Seeing my body through a lens of gratitude rather than through one of judgment is where I found true beauty in the experience.
This beauty is in the people with whom we choose to spend our time, it in the community that surrounds our children. It’s in fostering deep friendships based on love, common experience and joy. It’s in giving space to those friendships that need it and coming back a few years later to a richer, more complete connection. It’s in letting fall away toxic encounters, bald competition and grown-up games. It’s being willing to let the relationships that cultivated those things fall away too.
It’s in reading something from one woman to another about struggle and survival, forgiveness and reaching. It’s knowing when to stop and read it again. And again.
This kind of beauty is in the choosing. And Saturday, in the Missions with the man I married six years ago while looking at those very mountains, it was everywhere I laid my eyes.
Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she's learning to be a city girl. She writes from her home in Missoula, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode's favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at Jennifer-Savage.com Read more of Jennifer's mamalode articles here.
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Very special. It is hard to imagine that it was six years ago we all celebrated your marriage in that ideal setting. Amazing. I have recently come to the place you mention — looking at my body with gratitude rather than judgment. You are learning that much earlier than I am. It’s quite a special awakening.
Hope we see you all before too long.
xoxo
Sid
love it. thanks so much for sharing this, all of it and you.
Just lovely my dear, and so true.
Amen amen, Savage! Thank you for this reminder. And so glad you will Yes! with us. I have been a slacker… will write back soon! xoxxoo b
So glad that you and Seth had this time together, with just each other to honor your anniversary–and how inspiring you two are!
Beautiful, honest, and wonderfully wise. Thank you!
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