How do you want to be known? - #61

Small town guarantees.

It’s happened every single month since we moved here. It’s come up on trails, at the library, and in soft whispers as a friend and I stared at the owl staring back at us.

“Do you know Matt*?”

I don’t know Matt. But every person in this town does, and they all want to know if we know him. At this point, so many people have asked if we know Matt that it’s starting to feel like we do. We know his hobbies, his house, his truck, where he’s from, what he’s involved in — we know all about Matt. And as my friend and I stared at the owl, she said, “he knows all about you guys, too.” 

Some 15 years ago, I was in Idaho with my dad. We were visiting the town he considered his home so he could walk me through the memories that made him. We walked into a sandwich shop and heard a voice from the corner. 

“Clay?” 

My dad spun around. It had been a long 20 years since he’d been able to call that town home.

“Hah! You look exactly the same!” the man bellowed as my dad searched for context clues. 

My dad is quick to say it’s easy to look the same when you lose all your hair at 20. But this is also the town where my dad spent a great deal of his childhood, where he ski raced, where he worked at the laundromat, the mill, and the smokejumper base. Where he met my mom. Where he married her. Where they had their first kid. Where they spend their days now. You can leave a small town but if you carve your initials into it, they don’t leave with you. Write yourself into enough stories and you become canon. 

I don’t know Matt, but this is what I imagine his existence is like. Not born here, but of here. Whatever I imagine of Beloved and Widely Known Matt, he also imagines something about me, because he knows me, but hasn’t met me. “He knows all about you guys.”

There's a certain inevitably to being known in a small town. Even the hermits in our town have names and cars and schedules that crawl through the grass to your feet. There they go in their 2011 Tacoma with the new topper. There they are again, turning their backs when you walk by as they load their skis. Up early again, riding their motorcycle in neutral to not disturb anyone as they roll down the hill out of town. Sitting in their car again, letting the song finish again. Washing the dishes again in the only window you ever see them in. Walking the dog again and again and again. 

When Ben and I lived in Topanga, we knew people by car. Whether it was bumper stickers or modifications or custom plates, we came to know the rhythm of the cars around us — when they left for work, if they had kids, where they lived. It’s not dissimilar here, just faster. Our town is split in half by an avalanche field, some 30 houses on this side of town and around 40 on the other side. Out of the 30 houses on our side, I can name who lives in around 25 of them after only one year of living here. The rest I can identify by vehicle and/or dog. I can name every dog on this side of town. 

Last Halloween, I could hear children I’d never seen before call Cooper by name, earning his own reputation alongside ours. I could hear them debating whether or not they should knock on our door, if we would be nice, what kind of candy we might have. I was waiting with Reese’s and Snickers. I was waiting for the approval of children like some kind of tiny foreboding council of goblins.

The wind is battering the house tonight — a storm is promised and there is the buzz of another winter, another season, another chance to renew who you are and how you spend your time and what you’re like at the parties no one throws anymore. It’s an illusion I’m not willing to abandon yet. 

The other day, I was at our local dump — a shed in the center of town — getting rid of accumulated boxes and garbage. I was parked outside, slicing packing tape with my knife and collapsing boxes into a stack when a car pulled up and stopped. It was my neighbor and my husband.

“Need any help, little lady?” they teased. 

“Yeah, I need help getting all these assholes to break down their boxes.” I launched into a rant. “The bins are full of uncrushed cans and boxes! There are signs all over this stupid building telling people to crush their cans and break down their boxes! Why are people so impotent! It’s a tiny town! I’m about to sit in here with this knife and threaten the next asshole who just haphazardly tosses their trash like it's someone else’s problem.”

“No, you know what you do?” my neighbor offered. “You take the boxes out, check who they’re addressed to, and then just leave them back on that person’s doorstep.” 

I thought about it, nestling in the cold and coursing river of that fantasy, long enough for them to wave and drive away, leaving me with a tightened grip on my knife.

A small town is not a bastion of accountability. People are people wherever you find them. And fishing trash out of a dumpster for a righteous cause is still fishing for trash. I crushed my cans and my boxes and sorted through my own trash while I picked a different fantasy to get lost in. What would be worse? To be known as a person who doesn’t crush their cans or to be known as the girl who pulls trash out to drag it back to your house?

How do you want to be known? Because here you will be — not for a curated version, but for the speed you drive through town, the lights you leave on at night, the pajamas you wear when you walk your cats, the places you frequent in town, the bumper stickers on your car, and whether or not you wave from the kitchen window when someone walks by. 

I spent the last week at my parents’ cabin in that small town in Idaho, where my parents finally returned after I left for college. We went to dinner with some friends of theirs. 

“Was that you we saw running?”

It was.

“We figured. You always know someone young is in town when you see people running on the road.” There are only maybe 10 houses on the whole street. You always know when anyone is in town. When a car turns onto the road kicking up too much dust, my parents look through their binoculars to see who it is. 

In Idaho, the license plates are delineated by county. My useless party trick is that I can name all of them, but the ones I see the most are 1A, 2C, V, and 5B. That’s Ada, Canyon, Valley, and Blaine. And each of those plates tells you something about the person driving. We see 5Bs all over Colorado — the ski resort Sun Valley is in 5B. 5Bs are nearly always on sprinter vans, Range Rovers, imported cars. But in V, Valley County, most of the vehicles are trucks and often the biggest trucks I’ve ever seen: Ford F-350 Super Duty Tremor, Dodge Mega Cab RAM 3500, Nissan Titan King Cab. It’s not just the county letter that gives away whether someone is a city slicker or a mountain lover, but the number. The lower the plate number, the earlier you were there. Someone with the plate “V 678” will always win a locals’ argument against “V 51325”. 

It’s like adorning a letter jacket and then simply never taking it off. 

An eye on the dirt road.

We have more general anonymity here, but even on the way out of town earlier this week when we stopped for coffee before hitting the road, I knew both the woman serving the coffee and the woman in front of me. You can guess a local just by a glance.

Last month, a friend suggested I attend an event at the local library — a long table dinner meant to introduce members of the community to one another. At my randomly assigned table, one of the girls lived in my small town. Two others had done work for the van builders I do part-time work for. At the end, right as I was mustering the courage to ask for their numbers, one of the girls said, “now that we know each other, we’ll see each other everywhere.” And that was that, because that’s all there needed to be. I have and will see them again, and like the wildflowers here, friendship will grow with time. You just have to show yourself hardy enough.

Two new neighbors moved in behind us. They followed me on Instagram, and I followed them back. Same with a few other people in town. All of our Instagrams look identical: mountains, windswept faces, wildflowers, dogs, wildlife. But maybe we vet and memorize each there. Maybe that’s how we say “you seem worth knowing” without the weight of bringing someone in.

Winter looms on the forecast, some 13 inches forecasted for tomorrow, and I am thinking about the backcountry and the years of skill and talent I have to make up for. All the cool kids are ready. They’re not too cold or too scared. They’re avi-ready, sponsored by Flylow and Helly Hansen, up early with headlamps and fresh powder. I am nervous, intimidated less by their depth of experience but more by my own lack of it.

I made a friend in town this summer long after the snow melted and the sports changed. I asked her last week if she was a good skier or a really good skier and she chuckled before saying, “the really good one.” She saw my crestfallen face and quickly jumped in, “but I’m the best teacher.” 

The seasons are still novel. It feels too soon to table all the progress I made on the mountain bike to regress back to being a beginner again in the powder. But when I look out my window at the mountains, I see myself in them. I see lines. I see couloirs. I see risk and reward and I see myself immersed in them. And I cannot do that alone.

Everyone who lives here chooses to. It’s not a place you end up for a job that you didn’t design your life around. It’s not where you live because it’s cheap. It’s not a place that’ll do for now. It’s a place you hunt down, crave, and work for. And because of that, almost everyone has the same interests: big mountains, big adventure, bigger than last year, bigger than ever, the biggest you there can be.

That risk and reward I seek isn’t novel. If anything, it’s the dominant bumper stick, the ever-present Instagram bio. It’s no wonder it’s slow to make friends — not only do you need to know if they’ll show up to brunch on time, but if they’ll know how to find a beacon under 6 feet of snow with enough time to save your life.

So how do you want to be known in the meantime?

I am still making friends. I always will be. But I know the girl who makes coffee, and I know who works at the library, and I get called when there’s an injured animal. I drive the speed limit and I crush my cans and I share lost pet posters and maybe I don’t say hi every time but I’m working up the courage to. When winter settles in for its long haul, I will still be flopping like a fish out of water on the unfamiliar powder, but this year, it’s looking like I will have some friends laughing with me. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll even meet the ubiquitous Matt.

Maybe he’ll meet me. 

*not his real name