Lane Edward Coulston, 1942 — 2023

Reflecting on the moment of my father…

Lane. Photo by Paul Tryba, 2017

Where to begin?…

With a little stillness, I suppose; a moment’s notice to feel the sensations of the body, a gentle tending to any emotions stirring, or thoughts flickering through to disturb the mirror of reflection.

I invite you to run through that last sentence again for yourself as next we are stepping off into a simple series of words, the palest of poetry, in brief consideration of the boundless depths of a life. How best to receive the fullness, but in stillness?

My father, Lane Edward Coulston, passed away in the evening hours between May 3 and 4^th, 2023. He was sleeping peacefully and content as the spirit of life left quietly from the sacred matter that so many came to recognize as our friend.

He is survived by his wife Linda, whom he loved very dearly, and who misses him very much. He is also survived by his five siblings, Ann, John, William, Robert, and Mary; two sons, Kabir and Ira, and two grandchildren, Jett and Everett. He is survived also by the countless people and ways in which he touched the world with his care and wisdom.

Though born in Terry Montana in a time and place when the stuff that made his body quite literally lifted up from the soil and blood and bones of the Great Plains, the soul of Lane raised up that earth into the sky and sun and carried it forth into the world.

He lived a time in Brazil serving in the Peace Corps, and some moments of his life in Washington and Oregon and Arizona states, all journeys which wove themselves back and forth through his home state of Montana. He came finally to rest in the town that was his true home, Missoula, Montana, a place to which he returned again and again.

While Lane was easily at home quite anywhere in the world, he had a particular relationship to Missoula, as if the town itself were among his closest family. This is a care and love, among many others, which he gifted to and instilled in me.

Lane never lost his connection to that Montana soil, and indeed his love for the earth grew from there, maintaining a fidelity, but not limited to those political boundaries.

A more serious, or perhaps more disciplined mind than my own might pour more carefully over the details of the life of Lane Coulston. Where he went, what he did, with whom he worked, and just exactly which lives did he touch and how? Such a series might even be a “more proper” reflection of the mind that lived his life; he was crisp and clear with an intent for a just humanity living in gentle stewardship and harmony with the earth.

He was a voracious mind, for literature and news and politics and history. He cared to know about geology and geography and the ways in which the weather worked, and yet… His mind was also poetic and you might just as easily catch him gazing long into the color and the way the light reflected off the clouds as much as “knowing” which way the wind was blowing. It is perhaps that aspect of his mind which I might more closely be reflecting here.

On the morning of his passing, after receiving the news, someone asked me for a memory of him, something that stood out for me. I went looking. At first, I thought I might settle upon some scene, some imagery of camping, or working the ranch, walking through town, meeting with people, sitting around the table with food and conversation… But it was something else that alighted for me, not something one sees when looking directly at a person, but more what appears when following the finger of their outstretched hand, pointing.

It was the early 90s, Lane, my dad, had not long before started his new endeavor, American Conservation Real Estate which was a skillful means to lend some compassionate touch to the way the land and the families that lived so intimately upon it were beginning to suffer from the increasing demands of a culture of commodity.

As I searched for a memory, what stood out was the way this man leaned forward and though it might be a quality not easily noticed, he leaned forward into what was coming, and how we might well be with it. It was 1993, or maybe 1994, and it was his website that I remembered.

For most of us the web was new, barely even scraping the early days of novelty. The idea of words upon which one could click and make their way to another page entirely to fill out the detail of that word, itself was cutting-edge. When one navigated to the website for ACRE however, it was not words highlighted in blue and underlined that one found, but rather actual sound and moving pictures springing to life, like television, but not.

From an elegant blank white space (Lane was nothing if not elegant), spacious images, simple pictographs, more white space, photos of landscapes, more white space, quiet and gentle sound and thoughtful spoken word emerged. It might’ve been a full minute, or was it two or three or four, I don’t recall, but landing on this page in the new world of hypertext markup, and one could simply sit back and feel the reverence for and care in which Lane held the earth and the land upon it.

“Oh my, was he a very technical person?” My friend asked.

“No,” came the reply. For all his careful and meticulous observances, my father also embodied an openness to what was coming, and kept a keen eye on the horizon, and close friends of those who could see differently than he.

It strikes me that, in a sense, there is only one day in each life, if we are lucky (or rather if they are), on which our fathers pass away. What to make of this moment? What to make of this time?

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Come the words… Surely “loss” seems an adequate concept, and yet. When I peer into that space that is my heart and mind, looking for that place that is my father, Lane, I do not find emptiness, but the fullness of a wellspring that has given me so much, and is itself so filled with richness, that I cannot imagine I won’t be drinking from its beauty for lifetimes to come.

I received a great many privileged gifts from my dad. I enjoyed meals within eyeshot of the garden that produced the food. He gave me an education that taught me not to know, but to learn. He placed me in contexts that showed me the value of others and of being there for them, and serving in community together. He introduced me to animal husbandry, to work alongside our four-legged brethren, to know their lives, and with some of them to know their deaths as the food that nourished me. He took me out, past the city, past the road, past the trailhead and into the depths of the wildlands, the lakes and peaks and forest friends, and open skies, to know that too, perhaps above all as the true nature of my place in the world.

He enjoyed rich things, fine foods, fine drink, fine art, lingering meals around conversation, chocolate cake and coffee and elegant clothes. He may even have enjoyed these things to excess, but only barely, and rarely, and more likely so it was only the richness of excess itself that he was sampling.

with granddaughter, Jett

One cannot speak to these things that he enjoyed, however, without also mentioning the counterpoint within which he held them, simplicity. Lane embodied a careful wisdom and intelligence around the value of conservation. I don’t know that I ever saw him use more when less would do. This was true with spatial design and personal adornment; it was true for the way in which he walked upon the earth. I learned from him never to drive when walking (or biking) could do.

Thinking back to that poetic gaze, the one that takes in the light and poetry of a sprawling eternity in a moment, I remember also the conservation of ease. On the road trip, on the trail, or on the ski lift, or else, there was always just enough food and drink to make it to the next mile. This was true for him across scale.

Long after I had moved away from the property on which he did so much of his part in raising me, he demonstrated these wisdoms in what may be one of the quiet but great masterpieces of his life. Together, with a few of those keen-sighted friends, Lane and Linda remodeled the little parcel of land on which they lived in the lower Rattlesnake Valley, to be a perfect mirror of those values of richness and conservation.

I trust there are better places than this for the detail of that story has been (or may yet be) elucidated in its fullness, so I will not attempt an exhaustive display here. Let it be enough to say that on a little corner of Lilac Street, bounded by a small irrigation ditch that flowed through the neighborhood, an otherwise ordinary house and yard found itself transformed into an incredible model of “the good life” on earth.

The house was small and honest and lavishly comfortable, with elegant details throughout. The living space poured out onto the porch, and into the yard where, weather permitting, meals would be taken just as easily as in the little dining alcove at the edge of the kitchen.

The yard was a garden, filled with food and flowers, pathways and chickens and compost, and benches and a table for working the herbs. A small garage flanked one corner, and a windmill turned peacefully in another. The whole scene created as much energy as it used, with more to spare, and sat humbly but majestically at the foot of the mountain, towering wilderness overhead.

one of Lane’s favorites, imparting insight…

In itself, that might’ve been enough, but one more detail truly tells the story. Having constructed this cornerstone of the “Missoula Sustainable Homes Tour,” Lane and Linda did not grasp and cling to it, but rather give it back to the earth and perpetuity in the spirit of conservation and continuity. They sold the home, but smartly so.

They sold the home to a couple who would be seeking such peace and solace, but not that day, rather in a decade. Looking ahead to the course of their own lives, my father and his wife used the money to purchase a place that would be more suitable to the very end stages of life, but later. They bought a little condo on the fourth floor, just south of downtown, walking distance to everything, a view over the treetops to the University and Mount Sentinel to the east.

A perfectly small space, just suited to the two of them and occasional guests for wine and cheese and dinner. A beautiful and elegant home to which they did eventually move, about a decade later, surrendering the artwork that remains the corner lot on Lilac to new and grateful occupants, a gentle place that would be their home for the rest of their time together.

It was in that home, just the other day that my father sat on the couch in the evening enjoying his beloved, watching opera and eating a bowl of ice cream, and then to retire, and then to sleep and to surrender his time in this life to the river.

My father came from the earth, and points mysterious beyond, and he gave himself to this life in fullness. When it came time to pass on, he was under no illusions and returned his body and his gifts to the eternal dance, that we should make of them nothing more and nothing less than what we will.

Farewell good soul, never having parted, we will meet again.