Topic: "There are places we can never return"

[jamie]

I was just about to try and go to bed and stop thinking about the story (psh, as if that's going to happen) and something else struck my mind and I had to put it somewhere and this seemed like just about the only place I could.

The whole "you can never return," thing, in the trailer. I think that's part of what's so beautiful about Brokeback Mountain. I realize they don't even return to Brokeback itself, but returning to the Wyoming mountains... having one place in the entire world where you can go and for a few precious moments not lie, one place where you can find solace and love and be who you truly are and were always called to be. Just thinking about it makes me cry. Imagine only having one place and having to confine almost everything about who you are to that place, perhaps even to just one moment of brief truth in your life (the first meeting on the mountain)...

It's all just beyond me, I should probably just go to bed.

Night, all.

[Kindred]

Don't be sad for them  :'(

Be happy that they found that perfect moment and place.  Many people may never achieve what Ennis and Jack had together.  However, it gives us all a goal to aim for.

[bnjmn3]

You know. In the short story, they never get back to BBM. But, there are some scenes late in the film, one in particular where the reunited guys are riding horses up a mountain that is exactly the same as the beginning. Same shot, same place and everything.
Don't get me started on the BMM as a representing things you never get back to..too much..

[backtobrokeback]

GAH! I thought I'd do a little checking and now I'm all sad again!

No, they never did get back there, not in life

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

I love this passage.  It seems so silly and list-like and excessive at first, but it actually tells you so much about their lives, their dedication to each other, their way of finding freedom, their persistence, and their travels (those places are ALL OVER Wyoming).  :wave of sadness:

Nor did they get back there in death

Lureen: He use to say he wanted to be cremated, ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain.
John Twist: "Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mountain is. He thought he was too goddamn special to be buried in the family plot."  "Tell you what, we got a family plot and he's goin in it."

Bumping down the washboard road Ennis passed the country cemetery fenced with sagging sheep wire, a tiny fenced square on the welling prairie, a few graves bright with plastic flowers, and didn't want to know Jack was going in there, to be buried on the grieving plain.

I hated his father so much at this point - he denied Ennis and Jack their one place of peace, and Ennis his one chance to give Jack a true sign of love and some closure.  The shirts had to take the place of the ashes and the postcard the place of the last visit.

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

-backtobrokeback

[proulxfan]

backtobrokeback
But think about it buddy; as my sister pointed out to me, the shirts are better. "What can you do with ashes??" True, its sad that Jack's remains have to go in that god-forsaken family cemetery, but Jack's mom conspiring to give Ennis the shirts-I still half-think she sent him up there knowing he would find them- is a nice counter-balance, since she probably knew stud-duck a**hole would never consent to give Ennis the ashes. He can at least embrace the shirts and leave them as "two-in-one", a much more fitting way to remember Jack than an urn of ashes,  cause it's both of them together, the way they were meant to be, as Ennis finally realizes.

I too wondered about that passage citing what appears to be the whole list of mountain ranges in Wyoming. I don't really have an answer as to why they are listed that way, but that list reads like poetry.   

[backtobrokeback]

Thanks.  That cleared up some of the sadness.  You're right (or your sister is ;-) ) that what he got out of it is so much more.  I wonder if he ever did / would go back up there.  I don't think he could. 

-btb

[proulxfan]

Me neither! :'(

[sam]

"There are places we can never return"...

That's why we treasure our "memories"...
(Very often, that's all we have left...)

sam

[ethan]

And knowing there are places we can never return, we should treasure every moment so we can have memories.

[Cowboy Cody]

And knowing there are places we can never return, we should treasure every moment so we can have memories.

Ethan - Thanks, but if i linger too long on this tonight, I'm gonna start cryin.

[greenfrog]

And knowing there are places we can never return, we should treasure every moment so we can have memories.

Ethan - Thanks, but if i linger too long on this tonight, I'm gonna start cryin.

I will too. That one line from the trailer always tugs at my heart (and gets the waterworks a-flowing).  :'(

[TJ]

It was alway Ennis Del Mar who decided where they would meet up after the reunion in June 1967.

For some reason, Ennis never chose to go back to Brokeback Mountain.

Maybe it was because his older brother, K.E., lived in Signal and after Ennis got divorced, he went to work at the Stoutamire Ranch in/near Signal. The Wolf Ears bar girl to whom Ennis had been putting the blocks lived in Signal.

When the boys were up on Brokeback Mountain, Ennis told Jack the first time they really had a conversation, that his brother lived in Signal and his sister in Calgary.

I think that Ennis did not want anyone to know that he was "dating" a bull riding cowboy, or any man for that matter.

In how Ennis felt that first night when both of the guys opened up to each other in 1963, I feel that Ennis had "felt at home" with Jack Twist who became his first "best friend."

I think that Ennis did not want to "go home again." But, he actually could have gone up on Brokeback Mountain again since it was on federal land.

[*Froggy*]

It was alway Ennis Del Mar who decided where they would meet up after the reunion in June 1967.

Really how do we know that? (Genuine question)

[bnjmn3]

It was alway Ennis Del Mar who decided where they would meet up after the reunion in June 1967.

For some reason, Ennis never chose to go back to Brokeback Mountain.

Maybe it was because his older brother, K.E., lived in Signal and after Ennis got divorced, he went to work at the Stoutamire Ranch in/near Signal. The Wolf Ears bar girl to whom Ennis had been putting the blocks lived in Signal.

When the boys were up on Brokeback Mountain, Ennis told Jack the first time they really had a conversation, that his brother lived in Signal and his sister in Calgary.

I think that Ennis did not want anyone to know that he was "dating" a bull riding cowboy, or any man for that matter.

In how Ennis felt that first night when both of the guys opened up to each other in 1963, I feel that Ennis had "felt at home" with Jack Twist who became his first "best friend."

I think that Ennis did not want to "go home again." But, he actually could have gone up on Brokeback Mountain again since it was on federal land.

Calgary..or was it Casper?

[bram]

And knowing there are places we can never return, we should treasure every moment so we can have memories.

Ethan - Thanks, but if i linger too long on this tonight, I'm gonna start cryin.

I'm on the verge of tears at this moment. I gotta leave this thread before someone sees me.

[matsuki33]

"There are places we can never return"...

That's why we treasure our "memories"...
(Very often, that's all we have left...)

sam

And knowing there are places we can never return, we should treasure every moment so we can have memories.

Both of you agree, in that we should treasure the memories brokeback was their most treasure memory but no matter how much you wanted you can't go back to the past unless you have that magic, or a time machine. if they go back to brokeback it would have never be the same they were not the same. they went to other places like in som way showing that they were trying to move on but keeping brokeback on memory

"Brokeback did us good" was something that Jack said on the short story and the movie and it was right it opened them for that love that would be their happiness and their doom.

Brokeback for them is their symbolic: Eden, Shangri la, nirvana a place where they started and have a joyfull life until Aguirre told them to go that like expelling them from that paradise they have there. but they were unable to return there because paradise just happen one time in our life

[welshwitch]

The section where they leave Signal reminds me forcibly of the expulsion from Eden in "Parasice Lost" - but then there seems to be a whole Biblical thread running through the movie. Of course you can never go back to Eden - it is lost irrevocably. They did return to some of the other places catalogued  (an ancient and classic technique, sort of incantatory), for example, the Wind Rivers. but to return to Brokeback would have been a travesty. There was a uniqueness and innocence about it that could never have been recovered in other, pre-arranged visits, I think.
I asssumed that the scenery in the later movie shots was the same area and that they'd been shot in the same place to save money, mundane but possibly necessary.

[TJ]

Oh, I meant "Casper, Wyoming," not "Calgary, Alberta." I did not realize that the short-circuit in my brain caused my fingers to type the wrong words. That is not exactly a joke, I sustained a head injury in '93 and it does make my fingers make spelling mistakes and even correctly spell the wrong words, too.

I use the "short leash" complaint that Jack has when the guys are last seen together as part of my argument for Ennis setting up the meeting dates. If Jack had been able to share in the decisions, they would not have always had to have those high-altitude encounters where they would not be seen by others.

While there is a certain spirituality throughout the story, in both the book and the movie, I would not make it comparable to the Eden story in the Bible.

Since Brokeback Mountain was on open federal land in Wyoming, Ennis could have chosen to go back up there for a meeting. Apparently Brokeback was not a single peak type of mountain but a very wide one with several peaks.

IMO, Ennis was afraid of going back up to Brokeback with Jack; but, I doubt that Jack would have cared. But, Ennis substituted other mountains as stand-ins for Brokeback.

Jack did complain that all they had was "Brokeback Mountain;" other than that, neither of them actually had a life.

[backtobrokeback]

Proulx describes their meetings after Brokeback in a unique way, one that I found a bit off-putting at first, almost too detail-focused and "local", until I finally realized what she was doing and why.  She writes their visits in later years this way:

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

- certainly one of the many interesting sentences she's given us.  What this tells me, other than the sad, and somewhat ominous last five words, is that they WERE together, always, and all over the map.  Every one of those names means time together, never enough but still time together.  Year after year, always riding, always camping, always holding each other in the tent, or the cabin, or under the stars.  That's a commitment - that long recitation of geography IS their love.  "Long as we can ride it..."

 :'( crap, crying again

-backtobrokeback

[NoReins]

Proulx describes their meetings after Brokeback in a unique way, one that I found a bit off-putting at first, almost too detail-focused and "local", until I finally realized what she was doing and why.  She writes their visits in later years this way:

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

- certainly one of the many interesting sentences she's given us.  What this tells me, other than the sad, and somewhat ominous last five words, is that they WERE together, always, and all over the map.  Every one of those names means time together, never enough but still time together.  Year after year, always riding, always camping, always holding each other in the tent, or the cabin, or under the stars.  That's a commitment - that long recitation of geography IS their love.  "Long as we can ride it..."

 :'( crap, crying again

-backtobrokeback

Jeez, I never even thought about that. Always wondered why the long list of mountain ranges, without really giving it too much thought - but you're absolutely right. If they covered all those ranges - and she even says "the Wind Rivers over and again" so more than once in some places - then they really did have much more time together than I previously thought, with the same feeling of freedom out in the open spaces.

Thanks so much for pointing that out - even if it did bring a lump to my throat.

[TJ]

Ennis was afraid of going back to Brokeback Mountain. I seriously doubt that the Forest Service would have forbidden them to ride their horses and camp out up there.

If Ennis had gone back to the mountain with Jack, he might have given in to his feelings for Jack and they would have had a life together.

When Ennis kept claiming that "you can't fix it," he did not know that his relationship with Jack could have been fixed perfectly but he was suffering from internalized homophobia and just knew that if anyone found out that he was queer, he would be murdered like Earl was.

[Patriot1]

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

Jeez, I never even thought about that. Always wondered why the long list of mountain ranges, without really giving it too much thought - but you're absolutely right. If they covered all those ranges - and she even says "the Wind Rivers over and again" so more than once in some places - then they really did have much more time together than I previously thought, with the same feeling of freedom out in the open spaces.

Thanks so much for pointing that out - even if it did bring a lump to my throat.

I am confused NoReins.  Just once or twice a year for a week each time is not very long.  She only mentions 17 mountains or mountain ranges...in twenty years.   What did you mean when you said, "...then they really did have much more time together than I previously thought...."  How much time did you think they were together?  Or, am I reading this all wrong?  (It is late and I am tired) 

I certainly do not believe 2 weeks out of a year is very much time to be together.  That is one vacation period where I worked.  I always thought it was too short of a time for vacation.  Much less being with the person you love.

[NoReins]

Patriot, I guess when I was reading the list I was looking at the fact that they're all plural and thinking that they might have covered different bits of the ranges each time, meaning many more than 17 trips. I don't know anything about any of these ranges - how big they are, whether you could cover a whole range in just a few days or whether you could go back to different parts on each trip.

I was taking the "once or twice a year" from the confrontation speech and thinking that maybe wouldn't be enough to cover all of those mountain ranges - so they must have had more time than that. I guess maybe I was talking rubbish though (wouldn't be the first time!)

[Patriot1]

Patriot, I guess when I was reading the list I was looking at the fact that they're all plural and thinking that they might have covered different bits of the ranges each time, meaning many more than 17 trips. I don't know anything about any of these ranges - how big they are, whether you could cover a whole range in just a few days or whether you could go back to different parts on each trip.

I was taking the "once or twice a year" from the confrontation speech and thinking that maybe wouldn't be enough to cover all of those mountain ranges - so they must have had more time than that. I guess maybe I was talking rubbish though (wouldn't be the first time!)

Mountain ranges can be big or small.  The Rocky Mountain Range runs from Canada to Mexico and I doubt could be covered in a week.  Also, inside the Rockies there are smaller ranges. But, I didn't get the impression the boys covered every inch of the ranges mentioned.  I just got the impression they had gone to those ranges.  Was there something I missed that suggested they covered the whole range?

Guess it really doesn't matter though.  One or two weeks out of 52 a year isn't very much time to be with the person you love.

[NoReins]

Guess it really doesn't matter though.  One or two weeks out of 52 a year isn't very much time to be with the person you love.

Hell, anything short of 52 weeks out of 52 a year is too little time to be with the person you love.

[proulxfan]

Proulx describes their meetings after Brokeback in a unique way, one that I found a bit off-putting at first, almost too detail-focused and "local", until I finally realized what she was doing and why.  She writes their visits in later years this way:

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.

- certainly one of the many interesting sentences she's given us.  What this tells me, other than the sad, and somewhat ominous last five words, is that they WERE together, always, and all over the map.  Every one of those names means time together, never enough but still time together.  Year after year, always riding, always camping, always holding each other in the tent, or the cabin, or under the stars.  That's a commitment - that long recitation of geography IS their love.  "Long as we can ride it..."

 :'( crap, crying again

-backtobrokeback

Nice way to look at it. It certainly is suggestive of the vastness of their love for each other.

[backtobrokeback]

Patriot1: I'm not saying that it was a lot of time per year, and certainly not ENOUGH time.  Jack is quite bitter about that, and I fully agree with him.  But that doesn't diminish what they had.  What the passage I described shows (me, anyway) is that for two men who could NEVER truly be together forever, they did a pretty good job of being together regularly (sparsely, but continually) for twenty years.  When you have only a few weeks a year, and you give that time to the one you love, that's saying a lot.  That time becomes your memory and your hope.  What's more, they never stood each other up - Jack sat there by the river waiting for Ennis to arrive and he ALWAYS did.  Given what they faced internally and externally, that paragraph by Proulx shows me a lasting commitment.  It gives me a way to imagine their happiness beyond Brokeback Mountain in a way that the film only showed three or four examples of (IIRC).

-backtobrokeback

[welshwitch]

In reality if you do go back, it's often a disappointment; on the other hand, you feel that BBM may have become idealised in their memories ( or at least in Jack's). I fell they couldn't literally go back in the sense that they couldn;t bring themsleves to, after that parting where ennis just says "See you around" and walks away, and Jack drives off almost in tears. How could you overcome that? I often thin of all the other places as being new starts, full of hope and promise and optimism, as well as a series of escapes from the real world.

[backtobrokeback]

Nicely put.  Keep BB for what it was, look for new ways to be free. 

[jeffjoe]

That line is truly right, as Ennis And Jack never return of the moments on Brokeback mountain, i will never return from ennisjack.com it's more stronger than me