Missoula on My Mind...

I have been missing Missoula, Montana lately. Missing the feel, the smell, the way the sky looks.

Perhaps it is because I have recently exchanged greetings with an old friend who lives there. My younger sister lived there for years and recently moved back east. While she was there, I would go visit for a few weeks and it is the only place over the years where I really felt as though I was getting away from it all. Maybe it is so different from Maine. Maybe it is just so far away. Maybe the people really are so different...

Maybe I am different when I am there...

Some of my favorite places I recall in my mind:Hell Gate Canyon, the Bitterroot National Forest, Crazy Horse House of Mystery (don't ask, you had to be there), Garnet Ghost Town (always to be visited at nightfall-I dare you to get out of the car!) Glacier National Park-the Going to the Sun Road...my sister showed me my first Grizzly bear there. And my first mountain goat. I saw my first elk and bison...and gazelle in Montana. I mean real ones, not in a zoo, or animal refuge. Not that those in captivity (poor things) aren't real, but there is just something different about a creature in the wild, you know?!?

I miss my sister's little house, with the lilacs, big back yard and Hobo spiders...I yearn for fries and a burger at Nap's (R.I.P) and the Big Sky Drive-In. I miss the Safeway grocery store. (" I just love Safeway, it is a wonderful grocery store"-Linda Smith) ( Again, don't ask, you really just had to be there) Some of my favorite adventures, memories and times were with my sister in Montana.

The House of Mystery-many hours of research went into my husband and sister attempting to crack the mystery...the mystery of the vortex...

I am so proud of my sister for forging her own path and going west to sow her oats. How brave, how wild and how important for her. She was able to come into herself out there I think, break away from her old life and start anew-she was in the wild, with horses, elk and bears-in her element I believe. She took me to visit the horses she rode and cared for on a ranch-I felt honored to be privy to her far away life.

I always yearned to have her back in my clutches, and would tease her about this constantly on our many -hours- long phone conversations every week. Okay, maybe it was more like almost every day! Thank goodness for nationwide free long distance calling plans. So many times, one of our cell phone's batteries would run out and that would end our call. Sweet times, ones that I treasure, though I am so grateful that she is actually back in Maine now, officially back in my clutches. How I missed her! I am delighted that she brought her sense of wonder and appreciation for the wild back with her, she is working for an environmental consulting firm, writing wildlife articles for Vermont Main Streets and Backroads magazine (scroll down to page 10 for her article), adding new bird species to her life list to see and still her crazed and perfect self.

I miss just being there. It is funny because my friend in Missoula, who I just heard from, told me she misses Maine in autumn, the smell of the leaves, the colors, the pumpkins. I guess anywhere you go, there you are. I like to believe that everywhere we go, we collect a bit of the place, and it goes into the weaving of the fabric of who you are, as a life experience. It changes you a bit, the hand of your cloth, the texture of your weaving.

The texture of my cloth has been altered by visiting Montana, lately I have had Missoula on my mind...