So far, this Montana adventure of ours sounds pretty idyllic, I imagine? A beautiful ranch with majestic horses, affectionate donkeys, a sustainably built home with beautiful views from the upstairs deck. Sweet deal, right?
This is part four of the Remembering Montana series of posts reflecting on my family’s three weeks on a small Montana ranch in the fall of 2018. Scroll down then navigate back to read previous posts.
This sweet deal was not all it was cracked up to be. It would be our first (and so far only) foray from the guest side of the Trusted Housesitters platform (we’ve had great success from the host side,) and while we knew it wouldn’t all be cake, this adventure had some pretty crazy components.Â
This is a post outside of those I wrote and shared last year; I’ll include a few of these in this Remembering Montana series. Last year, I purposely left out some of the more trying aspects of our adventure for a variety of reasons. I’ll try to clearly distinguish between these reflections and the more social media-friendly posts I wrote and shared during our actual stay. (I have changed the names of our host and her animals.)
So…let’s get real:
Our host, Jane, had completely lost her hearing about ten years prior to our meeting her; I learned this detail after she and I had moved our communication from the housesitters platform to emails that grew longer with each exchange. It was soon evident how solitary her Montana life was, and she seemed a bit starved for quality human interaction.
I was surprised how easy it had been to get buy-in from the family on this adventure, and I’d nervously (but excitedly) agreed via email to take the sit after Jane’s reassurance that we could handle the chores though we had no experience with caring for horses. She and I set up a time to “chat” via Skype to talk about what the duties would entail.
It could hardly be called a conversation because while Jane’s able to speak clearly, I was limited to using the chat feature which only seemed to display the first sentence or two of my responses. Essentially, she’d talk for long stretches with me trying to communicate with facial expressions (ineffective for reasons you’ll discover in the next paragraph) and a few typed words here and there. I also quickly deduced she was more comfortable communicating with her animals than with humans, and probably preferred their company. With that said, she seemed to like me and that turned into a pretty painful two hours with dawning realization of just how challenging this sit would be.
Jane had already had one sitter back out and she was up against the wire with a pretty big investment in her airfare. I had already promised we’d take the gig, and frankly, I thought the challenge would be good for my family and an excellent addition to our worldschooling adventures. Plus, I wanted to do something generous for this woman who seemed to be losing faith in humankind.
Once there, the extent of Jane’s communication deficits quickly became clear. She handed me an ipad to capture my voice, but it was constantly riddled with errors–really frustrating because of the high chance and risks of miscommunication. One would think that she’d adapt to her hearing deficit by depending on visual cues, right? Instead, she’d avert her eyes and talk until she was finished with her thoughts, which could trail on and on for many minutes, before she’d look my way indicating she was ready for a response. Then, once I started speaking into the ipad, she’d look away and start talking again which would mess up the recording.
The rest of my family quickly gave up trying to communicate with her, making me the designated mouthpiece. It was an exercise in patience and a good one at that. I definitely had lots of sympathy for her situation and respected her lifestyle and how she managed to run this ranch (I’ll do another reflection on Jane’s minimalist practices.) I had no choice but to quickly develop efficient ways to express my mind. I pretty much stuck to the necessities, which is not the way I typically communicate. If you’ve followed me for long you know I like to wax philosophical.
She left us the phone numbers of her two sons that she would be visiting (each in a different state,) and this would be the only way for us to contact her in an emergency. That emergency happened while the boy and I were away for three days in Helena on a little side adventure. Stay tuned for more on the emergency, and on the Helena side adventure…
Restoring Justis 