A Wannabe Settler

I am reminiscing on my arrival to the west and how my first days are hardly comparable to my now existence.

I was dreamily greeted by stirring black wolves and sun bathing bison in yellow fields whose belly’s rose and fell with air as they gulped up the last bits of this sleepy summer. My neck would ache often from wondrous eyes peering up at peaks. In my first days here, I would meander into fly shops just to chit chat and be talked into spending my paycheck. I bought tea with lots of honey and milk often at a shop where I was certain the workers all slept at; purchased from this hole in the wall café with creaky wooden floor boards and homemade pottery for sale on the windowsills. I would walk through gazing at the art, wondering if the day's revenue was stashed under one of those loose floor boards. Life has come at me awfully fast since. I have spent the days in between then and now scattering shot gun pellets across a duck filled sky and hiking after mule deer. I’ve learned to fly fish in waders and in boats (with plenty of help and advice might I add). I’ve had strangers and coworkers and fly shop cashiers turned friends or at least to acquaintances, who are generous with their time and field tips, take me on a handful of hunting trips. I’ve spent many days hiking, hunting, fishing, working, and it isn’t until now, two and a half months in, that I am stopping for a moment to look around.

I’ve somehow let the blushing pink sky stretching over the mountain peaks in the morning grow normal. The second snowfall didn’t pull me from bed quite as quickly as the first, blanketing the nearby Bridger range in a romantic dusting. I’ve grown used to watching mule deer, like ballerinas, float across the field along the highway. I now call these empty two lane roads highways and I come from just north of Detroit, so that is in fact saying something. The stars seem spectacular still, but even as I stare up at them I wish for even more to appear. The sparkle of living somewhere new has dulled but the sense of home I feel here has settled and pulls me in. I feel sorry that my new hometown is now navigable by muscle memory and that I could get to work driving backwards, although I have a hard enough time driving forward so I’ll spare my neighbors. That said, it feels good. It feels good to know exactly which coulee the sun will rise over in the November mountains, looking at them from where I live. I enjoy being on a first name basis with the fly shop cashier. I love that I know where to get a cheap burger and two or three beers for that matter. While I am settling in, I am not bored. Montana has a way of easing your nerves and pulling you further and further across its landscape. What land does the big sky hang over east? north? And west of here? Where do the moose graze and wallow? Where do the trout fight best? How many stars are in this wide open sky when you dip just past the yelping coyotes cries and into the woods of the wolf?

There is this wild place, and they call it Montana. I was not born here but I reside here for

now and I must say it took no more than two months to say she’s worth sticking around for. Worth protecting. Worth the fast days under the rolling clouds heavy with snow, the frigid air whipping through the valley, untamed and grueling. She is a bitch and I’d like to have a drink with her just to say, I think I understand why. The longer you sit and chat and sip bourbon that was distilled in dusty buildings surrounded by huckleberry bushes, with her, the more you will find out just how funny she is and how good she is at telling stories. Stories of change and resilience to it. Stories of golden palomino horses and grizzly bears who have minded their own business, or not. Stories of a time long ago and stories from just yesterday, eerily comparable. Her beauty draws us all in, but it’s who can really handle her, who sees her for all she is and loves her anyways, that I believe will stay.