Off the grid

By Oona Skari Duroy

April 9^th, 2020

Sitting here in France, reading about the rapid spread of the Coronavirus in the United States, makes me feel like I've leaped into the future. A future that's not quite as stressful as those now discovering serious confinement. Born and raised in France to an American mother from Montana, I have two passports. So today, one half of me is in the future, settling into my third week of lockdown, while the other half is heading fast into it. My French side wants to warn the American one. But what will happen after the epidemic is over? How will both countries react? Will the crisis teach America the need to provide basic care for its citizens throughout their lives or will it only accentuate the on-going disparities between the rich and everybody else?

But back to the future. I am writing from an old barn built in 1764 in the village of Montroc, a mere twenty kilometers up the valley from Chamonix, which lies at the base of the Mont Blanc, western Europe’s tallest mountain. We are surrounded by white, razor-sharped peaks and old shepherds (as well as tourists that fled big cities to reach their vacation homes). Internationally known for its alpine glory, Chamonix is now empty. In the midst of the ski season, when the pint-and-sweet-potato-fries-stoke is high, streets are packed. You usually have to walk sideways to reach your destination. If you're a little too tipsy walking down the main street, you need to be careful not to wack little Jerome with the sharpened skis you've managed to pick up, in between two pints, at the local ski shop. But today, skis are stored away - as are ropes, crampons and ice axes. People wear their face masks and gloves to go vegetable shopping. The first couple days were hard for us ski bums. We complained about how we couldn't enjoy the beautiful days that were awaiting us. It felt like a test. Snow conditions were good and the sun was going to shine for days on end. The virus was just beginning to spread in France and faithful to our reputation we complained and underestimated the warnings. We tried to weasel around the restrictions and bargain with the local cops. But when the authorities forbid access to the mountains and raised the fines, people started taking it seriously. Today that tantrum has now ended. People from Chamonix have stopped grumbling about the change in lifestyle and are deeply concerned by the worldwide spread.

Last August my father and I drove across Montana and met up with people from very different backgrounds. We filmed, took pictures and I wrote about our encounters. We would meet them randomly, walking in the streets or going up to their front porch. I was curious about what it was like to be living in the United States in the Time of Trump. We met up with students, professors, artists, construction workers, homeless people, cooks and lonely souls living out of their trailers. The only one that had insurance was an artist whose wife worked in politics. In his earlier days he had worked for a theatre designing sets. He is now a painter and a tai-chi teacher. Fortunately his wife had a salary that enabled both of them to have health care. All the others I interviewed were living on the edge, "off the grid" for some of them, as Viv would put it. Some worked three jobs to pay the bills. I compared their situation to mine in France. I had done university studies for three hundred and eighty dollars a year and was able to pay for rent and have health care while trying to start a career as an artist. For my French friends who chose to have a steady job, rent and health care were definitely not an issue. Debt wasn't waiting for them at the end of the line. And if it was, they would pay it off quickly. Most of the American students I interviewed and who followed the same path struggled to pay for their undergraduate education. Yet they still went for a post-graduate degree. It is a risky bet to go for a masters degree, adding an extra fifty thousand dollar debt to the pre-existing one. But most of the time they felt it was necessary in order to find a job that would eventually pay off the bill. It seemed as if they were embedded in a gigantic web and stress was flowing from one thread to the other, across their body in a perpetual movement. Debt is your next door neighbor, if not your second roommate. During a late night conversation on my friends back porch, my two friends talked about their anxieties.

As the conversation built around their daily stress, I grew pissed and anger started to overflow. One was working more than sixty hours a week managing a restaurant team and still couldn't afford health insurance. Our other friend was seriously thinking of building a farm with everything she needed in order to cut herself off from American society. The American system's individualistic way of functioning had pushed her away into an even more solitary mode.

She wasn't the only one. When my father and I set off on our road trip we first visited Deer Lodge and ran into Joe and Viv, having a drink at the local downtown bar. After our first little chat we came back to town a few times and were able to go to their house. Joe had been a soldier in his early twenties. Following his years in combat he ended up going to prison a couple times, spending seventeen years in total. Today Joe is sixty years old, has just fought cancer and is infatuated with Viv. He works as a plumber but is ready to retire. Viv has had multiple jobs, including one working for the state. Unfortunately, she eventually ended up on the streets, homeless. Both now live together in a small white house. It has a kitchen and a living room with a couch that unfolds as a bed at night. Viv tries to keep their small kitchen clean. "I try to keep it clean you know? But it's hard". A small radio transistor blasts a good old bluegrass tune.

Both are on medicare. Half forgotten by the state, the town of Deer Lodge feels like a self-sufficient hub. The land that surrounds them is vast and wild. They are able to live "on the edge, off the grid". Most of the houses are decrepit. Huge amounts of stuff pile up in their yards and inside their small homes. The main street goes from one end of the town to the other in a long streak of bars, closed restaurants and second hand shops. If you take the corner of 1st, the Deer Lodge Hotel rises from the ground, in an imperial way. The old hotel has been abandoned for more than fifty years. When we went back this winter to meet up with Joe and Viv, they had disappeared. Their house was empty and clean and the kitchen window was shattered. It was a Tuesday morning, the sun was shining and snow covered the ground. We had brought a couple of pictures from this summer to give to them as a gift in memory of good moments. We started searching Deer Lodge, went to the Montana bar and asked around. The bar was packed with drunk old men and one woman. They said they had seen them that morning wandering around 2nd. They indicated toward their house in a vague sign. They probably didn't trust us. So we searched for their old couch. The one Joe was sitting in this summer when he told me he had just fought cancer but loved life. We took all the back alleys and peered inside every house and garden. The hours went by and we still saw no sign of our couple. So we went on to Butte to meet up with our second family. The H family. We knocked a couple times but no one answered. They were probably at work. At 5, the door finally opened. Father and daughter were inside watching TV. We gave each other the traditional American hug and handed them the pictures. They were happy to see us and so were we. The mother had left that autumn taking her son along. You could feel the tension. They had seemed in love last summer. But both stories had taken a sad turn. One couple had suddenly left their house with a broken window whilst the other one was separating. When I had asked Joe's Swedish friend, Rony, and Viv what freedom was, they answered, "The wild animals, the people, the plains. You can really live out here with no fucking money, but not really".

It feels like anything can happen. When we came back to Deer Lodge I felt the roaming vibes. This is the country of road trips. People go from one job to the other, from one state to the other. They change houses or move to a different town towing their house behind their car. I had a taste of that movement, of that freedom they all talk about. The one where you have the impression you can do whatever you want. The kind of freedom that only exists in Montana because there are more cows than men. Some of the scenes we stumbled upon felt like movie sets. One actually was, when I ran into Wim Wenders at breakfast in a small cafe in downtown Butte.

It has almost been a year since we met Joe and Viv and I'm impatient to go back and roam the surreal scenery. Surreal because you would never find such a scene in France. The lack of regulation and attention can create odd scenes. Sofas, gigantic stuffed animals, old tires and snowmen lie strewn about towns, in yards, back-alleys or behind glass windows. They could be props for a Wenders movie. Yet it is their reality. As if the people of Deer Lodge exist in a parallel world, half-forgotten and running wild. As Viv said " We've worked all our life and I don't know how we got in this situation. But it's a good one, whatever it is".