I fell in love with Montana 30 years ago. It was 1994. August 19.
I’d spent the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college in Wyoming and Utah doing a NOLS course. Three months of deep immersion into the Intermountain West. After spending the month of June immersed in the Wind River Mountains backpacking a crisscross across most of the spine of the range, hiking, climbing, learning about mountain ecosystems and the culture of the west, we returned to Lander for a few days before setting off down the Green River. One of those nights I called home. It was a phone attached to a wall in the upstairs of the place we were staying. Everyone on the course had taken a turn there. I called and my folks were nervous, was it going well? Did I like being that deep in the mountains? Up until this point in my life, a month had been the longest they had not had a son talk to them. Same for me. But it had been incredible. The solitude of it was new, wild, and something I knew I needed. An envelope had come for me from the University of Montana. I hadn’t told my parents I’d applied there.
Do you want me to open it, my mom asked. Yes. I’d been accepted. I smiled.
When does school start? I asked. I’d be getting home from NOLS in mid August. I’d be leaving for Montana immediately.
But we don’t know anyone in Montana, my dad noted. We’ve never even been there. I don’t even know exactly where it is other than a vague large outline on a map.
I was going. Something in the word alone drew me. And I’d heard from instructors on the course that it was like Wyoming, but even bigger. Sign me up.
When I pulled in Missoula on August 19 I stopped at the holiday gas station at 4th and Higgins. I got out, looked around, the parking lot was hot, the air dry, a slight breeze, and there was this town like so many other’s I’d seen stopping for gas in towns around America, with one major difference. There were mountains in the background. And that dry air. That is something you don’t ever get in the midwest. I could feel my skin losing water by the second, and it felt great. I’d be staying here, I thought with the certainty of a 20 year old. And to my credit, I was right.
I’ve moved around the western part of this state over the years. And while I lived some places longer than others, and while I have my favorite spots scattered across the secret map in my mind, it is not just one place I am in love with here, it is the whole. It is the weather. It is the extremes. The uncertainty.
It’s June 15, and two days ago it was in the mid-80s here. I wore shorts and a t-shirt and was a little hot. The hills began within days of the heat turning from their spring green to a slight amber that will eventually turn to a full yellow, dried out with tumbling weeds flying about. But then Montana decided to be Montana. Today was a high of 56. Tomorrow there is a winter storm warning. Snow is expected to fall heavy down to 6000 feet. Valleys can expect freezing temperatures and rain. I’ll take it.
When I moved here, the state itself felt like a complete unknown. I’d grown up in Indiana. I spent a few weeks each summer at a cabin in Minnesota. I’d been to the east coast and to florida. I’d once flown to California. And I’d driven across Iowa and Kansas to get to Colorado a few times. I’d been in mountains, but always with a busy and strict agenda. Skiing. A fast few days and then back in the van for two days of steady driving. I’d never just spent time in the mountains. And while I’d hiked in Tennessee and Kentucky, I’d never spent any real time in the west or the western mountains. Montana, was a myth. An unknown. An adventure in that I knew no one that had even been there, let alone that could tell me what to expect. There is a magic in life when you decide to dive into this sort of thing. These opportunities don’t seem to come along very often. When they do our tendency is to hold back. But sometimes, when you go, something incredible happens. Montana happened to me.
And as I was saying, not just one spot. The whole. Montana in the 90’s was very different than the Montana of today. With it’s yet to boom population it was a mix of very rural and very small town. Not much more. Rural was ranching and logging. There weren’t many millionaire ranches other than the famous CNN guy down south of Bozeman. What’s his name? Ted Turner. There was no Paws Up. There was no Ranch at Rock Creek. Bozeman was still known for ranching and agriculture rather than its new claim to fame, Bozeangelas. Whitefish was a logging community with an awesome little Big Mountain. The Big Hole was empty. Butte, well, for all the things that have changed in the last two decades in Montana, Butte seems to have changed the least.
It’s been a wild love affair with Montana. While my relationship with towns have changed and how I see the people in towns has changed, the landscape remains the same. No matter what the people do to this place, the mountains, as soon as you get away from the towns, are still the same quiet. The same wide open. The same extreme weather.
Montana was doing extreme weather events well before it came in to fashion to blame extreme weather events on climate change. Montana is defined by extreme and fluctuation. I’ve experienced snow in August. Heat waves in February. All well before we blamed those things on humans. Here it is the mountains that produce such events. Mountains make up a third of the western part of this state, but different than Colorado. Here with wider valleys, long slopes and far horizons. But don’t be deceived, just over that horizon is mountains and those mountains produce weather all their own. Like Colorado or Wyoming, shifts happen just over the hill and can change everything in moments. Rain. Snow. Wind. Heat. All the things.
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In the last 30 years I’ve explore the west quite a bit. And to be perfectly fair to the other states and other landscapes, when I really think about it, it is not just Montana I’m in love with, but rather, it is the open west. I love the places where Mountain meets meadow. I love the open. I love the high. I love the western dry and grit. I love the heat contrasted with the cold. The snow in June. The snow in February. I love hating the gray. I love being cold and hot and parched. I love the cracked skin. The sun in my eyes. I love the granite. I don’t have to be in Montana’s state lines to find this love. I’ve found it in Utah. In Wyoming. In Colorado and Idaho. I’ve found it in Nevada. Hell even parts of California and Oregon and Washington. Montana if anything has become a little sad in places as the thing I loved in some specific corners have now been pushed out by discovery of the masses. People who have come not to be part of it but to have their picture taken in part of it. That has been the wildest part of the shift. It’s not just an increase in population, but a shift in the personalities of the people arriving. It’s gone from a place people want to join and be part of to more of an attitude of “this place is awesome, let’s make it just like where we came from though.” When I arrived here from Indiana I loved it because it was not like Indiana. It didn’t have the things Indiana had, and I liked their absences. But those things have shown up now. So when you bump into it in Bozeman, Kalispell, Moab, Spokane, Jackson, you realize how much these towns have changed. And they have. Tremendously. In places they are unrecognizable were it not for the backdrop. Missoula has changed immensely even if it doesn’t look it from the highway. Missoula was known for hippies, but hippies meant something far different 30 years ago than it does today. When I think of Missoula now, hippies is no where on the list of descriptors. But for all the change there is still some magic here. I think some of us take it for granted. We think about how much this place has sped up, while if you are comparing it to the outside world it is still relatively slow. I was talking to some visitors the other night and they were telling me all the incredible things they had seen that day. Things I take for granted as just part of my day to day. They had seen the same mountain I saw the day I’d pulled into town. They had experienced the same heat. Been enamored with the dry. The river that cuts through town. (You may have heard, a river runs through it.)
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I just took Acre for a walk down the creek. The cold clouds were spitting rain and in the mountains it looks like snow. It’s blustery out right now. Spring trees bent in the wind showing their lighter green undersides. My grandma always told me that meant rain was coming. It’s almost always an accurate indicator it seems. It’s been a wild week. Weather shifts. Reminders of the unknowns around the corner. It’s the things I love about Montana, about the west. The unpredictable nature. It keeps me on my toes. Allows me to feel connected but reminds me to keep moving. It’s exciting. Snow by Tuesday maybe.
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The sun is almost down. I’m tired from a busy week. And rambling. But I wanted to get some words on a page, no matter how rambled. My brain feels a little like the tumbleweed blowing around the mountain side right now. I’m ok with that even though I have doubts that it makes for good reading. But I’d committed to trying to get something up here every week and I missed this last week due to just sheer busyness. I actually quite like being busy but don’t like when I don’t have time to write. It’s a love hate. But this week I’m hoping to get a review up here. It’s time to start writing about more than ramblings.
Always enjoy reading your writings. This one especially, about Missoula, about Montana, and especially about wide open places in the west. :)