Montana

Just when I resolve to do better and write on my blog more, I end up going to Montana for 8 weeks and my resolutions go down the drain. At least it was never said that if you fail, you can never try again. Does that make sense? I am so blessed that I am able to call Montana home, in a roundabout way. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE living in Cache Valley and I know we are so blessed to be here. But there is just something about Montana that grabs you and doesn't let go. I have noticed that if I don't make it back there at least every few years, I start to feel an aching and a need in my gut. It doesn't really go away until I cross that Montana state line. I know it sounds weird, but that is how it is. Maybe it's the wide, rolling fields.....

(This is a photo of Toole CO., where I grew up. You can see the Sweetgrass Hills in the distance.) Or maybe it's St. Mary's lake, and Glacier Park...easily one of the most beautiful places on the planet....

(St. Mary's at sunrise...) Or Going to the Sun Road....simultaneously one of the most breathtaking and terrifying stretches of road I have ever been on....especially in the middle of a blizzard and an 18 wheeler coming at you from the other direction...

Or Huckleberries....they taste the best in Montana. :)

(There is a little place right outside of Glacier Park that makes the BEST Huckleberry shakes.) Or it could be Flathead Lake...

Or Missoula...(I have a love affair with this town...it's where I discovered ME.)

Or The Sleeping Giant, just outside of Helena....

Can you see him?

 Or Gates of the Mountains....

Also outside of Helena. You can take a boat tour on the river and while you are going down the river the mountains literally look like a gate opening up. Or maybe it's just that it is home, and that is where my people are. My mom is there, my dad is buried there, my sister and her kids are there. Friends that I have known almost my whole life. People that I grew up with, laughed with, saw me at my worst and at my best. There are those people in Utah also, but there is something about the ones that were with you when you discovered yourself, and loved you no matter what. Ones who decided to be your friend on the first day of high school, in a new town going to school with kids who had all gone to school together since they were five. Or the friends that were with you when you wanted to impress a boy and decided to jump off the rope swing into the river, but ended up somersaulting down instead and knocking out two teeth and breaking your nose and jaw and needing 200 stitches to reattach your nose and lip to the rest of your face. Trust me, it wasn't pretty. Or maybe it's because it's the place where you fell in love for the first time, really in love, and regret not telling him how you really felt. It might not have made a difference, but maybe it would have. As John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and countless others once said, "I'm in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it.  Forever a Griz,