A New Light

A love letter to my hometown.

When I was young, I read The Outsiders for a school project, and it had a much more profound impact on me than I’m proud to admit. There’s a great romance within the tortured teenage mind in the idea that life begins 40 miles from here, regardless of where “here” is. That book taught me that if I could get away from home, everything would somehow be better.

The problem is, I grew up in Bozeman. Books like The Outsiders aren’t set in Bozeman, and for good reason. This is already a good place to be. But that was just the problem—I felt disconnected, like I didn’t see this place the way everyone else did. Bozeman was just home to me, every street sign and shrub too deeply stained with memories for me to stay even a minute longer than necessary.

There was nothing more enticing than getting out. But at 15, my dad told me that MSU was the only financially-viable option for college, at 17 I resigned myself to a single application, and at 19 I dropped out after just two poorly-performed, academically-underwhelming semesters. I ran away from the Bridgers, looking for I-don’t-know-what in I-don’t-know-where. I spent the bulk of that time searching for the “somewhere better” my books had promised to me.

One morning, I woke up earlier than usual. The flat light of a cloudy dawn was barely filtering through my van’s window. There was no point in going back to sleep, so I yawned and pressed my palms against the surfboard strapped to the roof above me. The sand was still cool from the night before as I clambered out to walk down Ninety-Mile Beach—an incredible vastness of never-ending shoreline running along the northernmost peninsula of New Zealand’s North Island.

I rubbed sleep from my eyes as I meandered down the bank, stopping when I came across the carcass of a mako shark. I sat down next to him for a closer examination. He was a juvenile, no larger than a good-sized trout. I looked at him and he looked at the sea: mouth agape, black eyes fixed on the horizon, fins tucked pathetically beneath bloated ribs. I couldn’t help but think if I picked him up and tossed him into the waves, he would just pick right back up swimming. Hot sand must look so tempting from underwater.

Instead, I looked on with him, out across the waves where my own home was continuing on without me 8,000 miles away. In reality, we were looking toward Australia, but the intention behind my gaze held firmly. There I was in all my escapism, wearing my proverbial dunce cap, sitting next to a dead shark, dreaming about going home. That’s the thing about roots, I suppose—you don’t see them until you’ve pulled them up.

I wanted to stand at the top of the M and say “Wow! What a freakin’ sunset! Do you guys see this sunset? There will never be a more incredible sunset!”

A month later, I was on a redeye back home—in the pale pink of the early morning, the Bridger Mountains were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. This was the place I had heard about. This was the place the tourists talked about as they tucked their jeans into new boots and checked into guest ranches. God, they’d never let me forget it while I served them beer and pizza in the summers of my teenage years, delivering the hallmark “You’re so lucky to live here” as they signed the check. I didn’t feel lucky. I just felt like I lived here.

I’ve heard people say that of all 50 states, Montanans are some of the least friendly people you could come across. In our defense, it’s easy to grow resentful of the fair-weather fans. They don’t have to drive to work in the eighth month of winter. They have a different frame of reference, a home likely less beautiful than ours. We laugh at them for being so awestruck, but they’re none the wiser as they waltz home in custom-made felt hats and reminisce on their time in Po-Dunk, Montana.

But these people truly marvel at the things we find mundane: the deer & magpies, the view from the top of the M, snow. I wanted to see this place from their perspective. I wanted to stand at the top of the M and say “Wow! What a freakin’ sunset! Do you guys see this sunset? There will never be a more incredible sunset!” But I know there will be another sunset. One even more spectacularly colorful, which throws a fiery light onto the mountains and tints the clouds purple. And that sunset will happen tomorrow. The worst part is, it’ll probably happen the next day, too.

I must admit that my moment of out-of-state awe faded rather quickly. After all, this is my home, not just some cowboy Shangri-La. I will still be here when August has faded into a dry September, and when the only thing that remains from a long and happy winter are mud-lined scars in the land from last season’s fires. Still, it was enough to rub the dust from my eyes. I won’t ever see postcard-pretty Bozeman, but that’s because my relationship with this place runs much deeper. I drove the same roads after my first breakup that I take now to visit friends in Emigrant. I remember, as I stand at the top of the Ridge, how scared I once was to ski down the South Bowl. My relationship to this town is in every bike ride, bonfire, and boat trip I’ve ever had in Hyalite Canyon. The sting of memory starts to soften over time, as it blends with every great day I’ve had in this little town. To love something is to accept it for what it is: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Last week, I hiked the M after work, something I hadn’t done since I was 12. I stood at the top, breathing in the juniper and pine, looking down across waves of grass rippling in the cool autumn breeze. The alpenglow was just starting to crest on the peaks behind me.

“Wow,” I said to no one, “What a freakin’ sunset.”