The Secrets in Seeley Lake

Miserable snow fell in unimaginable wet billows of grave layers of mystery, in the secluded mountains of Seeley lake, Montana, where I hid away from life with my babies. I sat near the window, it was late and I was cold, just staring out into the abyss of wooded isolation in my blood red barn house, peeling its years back and revealing a haunted place. My God where am I? Just last night I tried to light a fire in the old wood burning stove, and huddled with my babies on the livingroom floor, putrid carpet and cold hard floors that spoke to me, and I begged God to die. I could hear the coyotes howling their screams in the thick black night in those woods, as if they were warning me. I pondered as I looked out at the old shed in the shadows of the trees and its limbs swaying in the frigid, what it might be like to hang myself in that barn, my unborn child in my womb. I have failed to find my children a decent home on our travels to be safe from yesterday's woes and violent seperation from their father, and I landed in this old rickety, desolute town in Montana's bitter cold. There was an unwelcoming embrace of: " Welcome to Montana, Now Get Out," sentiment. How would I, a single Mother of 5 small children, and my unborn, fit in to the jowls of their fierce disdain for any outsiders in a place, much like traveling back in time, where hate is in the fabric that binds the locals and their snarky frowns to my friendly greetings. I have befallen upon a small town in Montana and our journey would take us into the thicket of the woods, where murder is in secret whispers amongst the locals, who do not welcome outsiders meddling.

I began in Seeley lake as an Outback teacher, hired to go up into the mountains and visit the homes of the preschool children and help prepare them for their journey into kindergarten. It would take me in my ridiculous small economy car, down twists and turns on narrow roads hidden in the wilderness, where snowmobiles and great big All American pick up trucks pass through on the dirt roads and spit brown slush and murky road debris onto the windshield, in fierce slaps. I knew all at once that I was lost in another time, and I didnt belong on those winding backroads, and I was not in the present. Through the brush of fir trees and herds of elk I would cross over into the netherworld of this hidden country. It was home to 3rd generation mill workers, most of whom still lived in dilapidated trailers, with chicken coops and dogs left outdoors on large chains. I'm still haunted by the dogs.

My first visit in the outback was a kind of trailer house where I was greeted by a man that appeared to me holding a shotgun, as he roared, " Gonna get me that fuckin bear that been rummaging through my garbage again!" He was marching through 15 inches of blanketed snow in the sunless woods, in big splashes of rubber boots with his rifle leaning and swaying on his shoulder, as he was jerking his head from left to right in search of his hunt. His blue jean overalls stained in oil and grease, and his suspenders unleashed as his stomach protruded forward like a bowl of mashed potatoes overflowing with gravy. He was everything I had only seen in the movies, but real, and dirty and wanting to kill a bear for rummaging through his deplorable yard, littered in trash. His wife greeted me at the entrance into their home, where I was seated at a wooden table, like park bench with splintered wood, and its table, to teach their child. The house sizzled with an iron skillet making a racket as it cooked what was once a live deer, likely that morning she ran in those same woods. And so I taught the child the simple pleasures of singing a song and hearing a story amidst the scent of death, frying nearby, in my mind. One after the next I visited the poorest homes in Seeley lake, and I sang to their children while many mothers smoked their pot in the next room, or their pitbulls glared at me in their living rooms, cautioning me, while I performed a puppet show, merrily.

It was the last house I visited to sing and dance for a small child likely deprived of any such bliss, where I was met with an impoverished woman, who asked me if I knew how many sexual predators stalked these very woods. She gloated about the websites that revealed Seeley to be a safe haven for those living off the grid. She stood on her porch sucking her cigarette casually, and looking out into the mountains to remind me where I was, amongst the worst kind of people, and as the cold condensation drifted from her breath, she exhaled words I would forever be haunted by..." Have you heard of the teacher out here Clint Neelson? " " Yea well, they shot him up...that faggot. He had it comin. That's what we do to faggots up here..." I was freezing from where my soul stood in awe of her words. The bear sprawled over the trailer's wood paneling walls, was but a cub...as I looked around for some way to forget what she told me. " That bear was shot by my husband", she proudly shifted towards my stare. "He wouldnt die. Their skulls are really hard, ya know? We shot him 3 times and he he thrashed and moaned...bastard just wouldnt die..." She bragged about the baby pinned to her wall, to my horror. The job didnt last. The locals said I ...wasnt a good fit.

I learned to live in the woods of Seeley lake, isolated, for 9 years with my children, as I withered from a California light hearted mom, to a hardened and calloused woman because of the painstaking journey of mean spirited people, which I encounter in the woods, hidden away. Nine years after the visits in the homes of the preschool children, while cursing at the radio in the car for any godforsaken song that wasn't country or Christian music....a news story came on to ask if anyone had any information about the murdered teacher in Seeley lake. I shuddered and snapped back from the radio as if it would kill me too. As if...my God, the murder of an innocent man, in these woods. He was murdered they said on the radio. He was beloved by many of his students. He was a sweet man, it was reported. I have lived in these woods a long time now. My hands and heart are calloused from shoveling snow and hate. My home a small sanctuary where on the outside there is nothing to dream, but on the inside, a medley of music plays in a rainbow of celebrations for my now young adult children who also overcame hate, racial prejudice in their Puerto Rican skin, and overwhelming gossip from the unwelcoming locals. It is inside our home where New York city and California and everything in between is ours to drink, breathe, and relish. I am nine years in these woods trying to survive raising children all alone, while being hated by the leatherback faces of Seeley lake women and their not so devoted husbands. Here I have listened to the whispers of tales of murders...and there are many more then the teacher that lay dead, unsolved mysteries that only the locals hold secret and in whispers. I know about the teacher. I've heard the tales of murder, and I have gone to sleep in my home ashamed of where I am. I could never tell the world what I learned in the lake of the woods, for in doing so, I would lay beneath these trees forever. Some secrets are too difficult to bear.