The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Memorial Day Weekend will also be a celebration for the Virgelle Mercantile as it will be 40 years since he first opened the doors. Don told me he remembers his first customers Ruth and Angus Merrill and myself. He even remembered what we bought.

While driving to Virgelle I thought of the history I had found on their web site. The town and the Mercantile were "founded in 1912 by Virgil and Ella Blankenbaker along the tracks of the Great Northern Railroad near Coal Banks Landing on the Upper Missouri, Virgelle (pronounced ver-JILL), served as a shipping point and commercial center for homesteaders who were flooding in to settle Chouteau County. Blankenbakers also built a general store with upstairs living quarters. The business enjoyed many bustling decades, weathering several economic downturns before a dwindling population caused its doors to close in 1970."

Don Soreson opened the Mercantile nine years later. The advertisement says it is, "Remotely located in the heart of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, Virgelle Mercantile offers visitor's comfortable overnight accommodations in authentically restored B&B guest rooms and homestead cabins. The remote location makes for an exceptional choice for those seeking a respite from everyday life. There is no better place from which to see the nighttime sky or hear the quietness that's only available in the country."

"All overnight guests enjoy personalized service and fresh breakfast each morning in the dining room. Guests also receive a complimentary snack basket each evening in their room. Upstairs rooms in the mercantile offer an atmosphere from a bygone era, with today's queen-sized beds, wireless Internet and climate control. Homesteader cabins declare the simplicity of kerosene lights and wood-burning stoves from a century past, with the comfort of today's full-size beds and wireless Internet. 4 B&B guest rooms share a bath down the hall. Cabin guests share 2 centrally located modern baths. B&B guests are welcome to use any bath."

Although it is so close, I have yet to spend the night there. I need too! It is hoped we all support local businesses. When I drove up Don Sorenson was out working in the Virgelle Bank, which was established in 1913. According to him the highlight of 40 years is all the people he has gotten to know. People from all over the world. He loves how they love being at his little piece of paradise. Just two weekends ago a couple came to spend the weekend on their way to another destination. He told Don, "We have some great wine and cheese and we're looking forward to just sitting on the porch drinking wine." It rained that weekend, so no porch sitting, but Don taught them how to stoke a fire in the cabin's wood burning stove. The cabin's do have an electric heater, but the wood burning stove was perfect. "It was so cozy!" They loved every minute.

Don said his Grandmother, Clara Belschner, was his best promoter. Locally she kept telling everybody, you just have to go down there and see what he is doing.

When Don was younger, he did a lot of events. Currently, although they still bring to life old furniture that need small touches of care to become beautiful pieces again, they only have two events during the year; the Flea Market, and the Chouteau Country Christmas.

Jimmy Griffin came to Virgelle in the summer of 1987, to get ice cream and float the river. "I thought it was a stark, and dusty little place with not much to offer. But I wanted to live in Montana, and Don and the crew made me feel welcome and I was needed here, so I gave it a try. Virgelle consumed me. For 25 years I gave it everything I had, to maintain and improve the place. And I started to feel like Virgelle needed me. But now as my attention gets diverted more each year, and my physical energy becomes less, I feel that it is I who needs Virgelle."

One of Virgelle's greatest assets is just sitting rebooting through solitude, beauty, and peace. We need to take moments to breathe, to do nothing, to reconnect and let the stress go.

Psychology Today wrote this in an article, "What's really blocking our joy in relationships, our creativity, and our peace of mind? One surprising answer, in this age of alienation, is a lack of solitude.

Meaningful alone time, it turns out, is a powerful need and a necessary tonic in today's rapid-fire world. Indeed, solitude actually allows us to connect to others in a far richer way.

We live in a society that worships independence yet deeply fears alienation: our era is sped-up and over-connected. The earth's population has doubled since the 1950s, and in cities across the world, urban crowding and the new global economy have revolutionized social relationships. Cellular phones now extend the domain of the workplace into every part of our lives. We are heading toward a time when, according to the New York Times, "portable phones, pagers, and data transmission devices of every sort will keep us terminally in touch." Yet in another, more profound way, we are terminally out of touch. The need for genuine and constructive aloneness has gotten utterly lost, and, in the process, so have we.

Now, more than ever, we need our solitude. Being alone gives us the power to regulate and adjust our lives. It can teach us fortitude and the ability to satisfy our own needs. A restorer of energy, the stillness of alone experiences provides us with much-needed rest. It brings forth our longing to explore, our curiosity about the unknown, our will to be an individual, our hopes for freedom. Alone time is fuel for life.