Anywhere you drift, the most tangible frontier between the city and the country side, is the relationship to old. When you live close to the land, connected to the earth, mindful of the power of nature and its changing seasons, exposed to its wrath and ruthlessness, conscious of your place within the circle of life, you are more likely to accept death. It is neither hidden nor a taboo. Urban life worships youth, abides by glitter and gold and goes through enormous efforts to fix or hide the old, to remove death from its moral landscape. However far from coastal cities, you don’t ignore the old, or try to hide it, you just live with it. It is in the fabric of existence itself. Old people, old machines, old buildings, old animals… They all have their place and function.

Drifting through the great plains, old and rust dance everywhere, imbedded in every fold of the experience, waltzing around my five senses. Coastal urban life spends an insane amount of time and energy hiding it. It’s a shame. I grew up with my grand-parents, in touch with the past, taught faded traditions, History and lore of bygones. Dust and obsolescence enchanted my imagination and invigorated my desire for creativity in a flowing way rather than a search for rupture. My grand-parents transmitted to me the gift of continuance, the notion that the passage of time is to be embraced not escaped. I grew up playing hours in their attic, buried in old cardboard boxes and beat up chests full of useless treasures. I grew up roaming their libraries inhabited by forgotten books about outdated subject, populated by characters living incomprehensible lives. I grew up using their out-of-fashion chipped furniture with eccentric colors and ridiculous shapes. I grew up riding their noisy, smoky, shaky cars. I grew up traveling in the wrinkles of their faces, living thousands of adventures in their bony, veiny, leathered hands. I grew up drinking wisdom and absorbing lost skills. I grew up worshipping the old because it always has stories to tell, breeds unquenchable curiosity and an appreciation for patience. I grew up to be grateful.

Riding through the sandhills of Nebraska, the Badlands of South Dakota, the plains of Montana and the forests of Wyoming, I am back in the attic, the smell of old wood, mold and freshly baked apple pie infiltrating my soul as I see abandoned houses or cars in the middle of nowhere, as I discover rusted railroad bridges that haven’t seen a train in decades and now blends in green vegetation, as I get drinks in old bars that have long outlived their prime and survived the demographic decline of their town, as I meet old people, guardians of our collective memory, living testimony of our history, endless supply of inspiration and stories.

Day after day on the road I come across stories of discarded and forgotten, I meet those and that left to rust away. I was groomed and raised to seek it and love it and yet there always was some degree of melancholy attached to it, as if the relentless work of erosion of time was sad in itself. As a matter of fact, in the great plains, perpetual poetry and shape-shifting beauty never dance far from tragedy. The seemingly endless perspectives, the supra-normal power of nature, the mysteriously purposeful mountains, the furiously free rivers and lakes that can deeply soothe the soul and energize a man might as well burden him with a sense of infinity that becomes an abyss for his sorrows. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate in rural America is 45% higher than in large urban areas. It also seems that Montana has the highest suicide rate in the nation compared to other stats, and farming along with fishing and forestry also share that first rank among all other occupations.

Nevertheless, sadness and tragedy do not seem to overflow the emotional balance as acceptance and equanimity also arise from the same land, the same reality… We will return to the earth eventually. Far from any religious or spiritual consideration, the simple but inescapable laws of biology, chemistry and physics that govern the universe establish a wholesome consciousness that country folks and drifters invariably access. It diffuses the dismal and emphasize the beautiful in the time that blossoms and fades all.

Old is majestic, rust is magic, dust is glorious.