My Gap Year in Montana

1,357 Miles West:

 How a Girl Lost Herself, Found Herself, and Became a Woman Along the Way During a Gap Year in the Mountains

As of the time I am writing this, it has been exactly 8 months and 26 days since I loaded my whole life (and way too many clothes in my mom’s opinion) into a red Ford Escape in Peru, Illinois (which boasts a hefty population of all of 9,000 people) and ended up in the mountainous resort town of Big Sky, Montana three days later blasting “Wide Open Spaces” by The Dixie Chicks on the car stereo. We turned what was supposed to be a 24-hour road trip into 36 hours of adventure by heading for the Black Hills of South Dakota, hiking around the base of Devil’s Tower (during which my community college class was walking the stage at our graduation ceremony), stopping at 1880 Town where we were greeted by a small herd of goats at the gas station (the highlight of our day), and making it to Custer’s Last Stand Battlefield and Cemetery right as dusk set in — the solemness of which was slightly curbed by the dozens of prairie dogs that were popping up and down out of their burrows like a life-size Whac-A-Mole game.

After arriving and a day of unloading and moving into my new “home” (a 20-square-foot bedroom that I shared with a roommate), I dropped my mom off at the airport and watched her walk into the terminal. A few tears followed, and then an unexpected emotion swept in like a tide — confusion. It was the emotion of, “What do I do now?” I had never been on my own before. Back home, I lived with my mom, and my grandparents lived one street down in the same neighborhood. Now my family was 1,357 miles away. My friends were about the same distance. I knew nothing about the area yet. I didn’t know what the local culture was like. I didn’t have a sense of who I was here, but that was what I wanted.

You see, I had gone through a life-altering faith crisis (not something that comes easy to someone whose middle name is literally an acronym for “Jesus Is Lord. Love Is Always Near.”) accompanied by being in an abusive romantic relationship with a deployed military member (during increasing tensions and rumors of war amongst China, Russia, North Korea, and the US nonetheless) as well as experiencing serious stress over selecting a major and college to commit to for my Junior year. Everything about my life before Montana gave me a need to change and start over, and that’s why I moved. So, this feeling of “What now?” was both daunting and freeing. To quote one of my favorite authors, Rob Bell:

 “It can be terrifying,

and lonely,

not knowing what’s next,

or what the costs will be,

or how you’re going to figure it out,

or how you’re going to pay the bills.

It can also be electrifying,

for the very same reasons.”   (Everything is Spiritual: Who We Are and What We're Doing Here)

It became apparent to me very quickly that the answer to “What now?” included learning to do things alone — something I’d never enjoyed before. Back home, why go to high school football games if I didn’t have a clique to go with? Back home, why try out the new coffee shop in town if I didn’t have a friend to sit with me at the table? Back home, why go out to dinner unless there was a date to take me? But here… here, I didn’t have anyone yet. The only way to meet them was to go out alone, to eat at restaurants alone, to check out the local social swing dancing scene at the honkytonks alone (and most women know that walking into a bar alone as a female can feel like being hunted as prey by the male species). I hiked all the local trails I wanted to try on my own (with the help of bear spray). I dressed up and went to brunch by myself and made friends with my waitress. I introduced myself to strangers when they asked me if I wanted to dance a song or two with them (a gracious ask given I was a beginner and had not fixed my two left feet yet), and if no one asked me, I took the first leap and asked them myself (reversing the typical role of lead-asks-follow). And along the way, I learned to make friends with one very crucial person: myself.

I made several good friends by taking the leap to put myself out there, but it also conversely taught me the importance of learning to enjoy my own company. Suddenly, loneliness turned to solitude. Being alone felt less like isolation and more like spending time with myself — getting to know myself better like meeting an old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time to catch up. I learned who I was when no one else was watching. I feel proud to say that I have never really put on a mask or alternative persona in front of others. I have always stayed authentic to myself no matter how unpopular it made me (and in high school, it did). But there is a subconscious part of every one of us that is aware others are watching us when we are in public, and it acts accordingly. Once I truly got alone — out in the middle of the woods on a backtrail that was miles away from the nearest roadway, the only company being the swaying pines and nearby elk — I got to meet the person I was when no one was watching— when there was no subconscious role I was performing for others.

Although she isn’t much different from the me I am when I am in public, she showed me all her little quirks and the things she says out loud even though there is no one to hear her. She still shouts, “Sick truck,” from the inside of her car when no one is in the passenger seat to turn and look at it when an old square-body Ford drives past. She makes sarcastic comments about herself in jest when she messes up a project and cracks jokes about her park jobs when she steps out solo to admire her terrible parallel parking skills. She drinks those free little creamer cups you can get at the gas station’s coffee section like shots. She turns the heat on full blast in her truck so she can still drive with all the windows down in the dead of winter, and she talks to squirrels. She is me, but she also shows me things I hadn’t realized about myself before. And that is a beautiful gift I have the privilege of unwrapping. Nowadays, I can’t wait for my weekly scheduled alone time on a hiking trail, parked in my truck somewhere scenic, or sitting in my favorite coffee shop working on my poetry and prose (a hobby I took up because the more I learned about myself and became introspective, the more writing I felt compelled to do).

Now, I take that most authentic version of me with me everywhere I go. I’ve found that the old cliche is true — authenticity is a magnet for the right kind of friends. If learning to be comfortable with being alone taught me how to be friends with myself, being friends with myself taught me how to make friends with others more easily— a skill that used to be my strong suit but that I’ve had to regain over the years.

Growing up, I always tended to talk to strangers (and my mom will be the first to tell you how frustrating that is for a parent trying to teach their children to do anything BUT talk to rando’s on the street). I am certain I inherited that trait from my “papa” (my very Italian and fiercely amicable grandfather). There isn’t a cashier, dietitian, or florist at our local grocery store whom he doesn’t know by name and who doesn’t know him in return. All the children in our neighborhood call him by his first name, “Ron”, and know that he likes to give out golf balls with smiley faces on them or other trinkets to any little hands that may show up on his porch. And every dog — Pomeranian, Husky, Labrador, or mut — instinctively trots up his driveway when his garage door is open, where he usually sits with a cigar and some Sinatra on the radio, to grab a treat from the little ashtray he uses as a biscuit holder. I swear the neighborhood dogs have been “Pavlov-ed” by my papa. If you played any one of Old Blue Eye’s songs, they’d start to salivate.

His spirit was always very strong in me, but high school can be cruel, and it does what high school does — sometimes introducing otherwise outgoing individuals to their shells where they find it much safer than out in the unforgiving social circle of cliquey high schoolers. While I’d like to think it hasn’t affected my social habits much, I would be wrong to omit the fact that it did make me at least feel less willing to put myself out there. But as I mentioned before, relearning to put myself out there reintroduced me to my old, extroverted self — to the granddaughter my grandfather raised. I have Montana to thank for that, and the connections I’ve made have been unexpected but overwhelmingly positive.

For example, I was working my hostess job one day at the ranch, and a man who went by the name of Mark and possessed an outstanding handlebar mustache walked through the heavy, carved wooden doors toward me. He had just come to check out the place for a bite of food, but upon seeing me decked out in my usual work attire (which typically involved a lot of fringe and a big belt buckle topped off with boots and a cowboy hat) he said, “Well aren’t you a real cowgirl!” I laughed and joked with him that I was all hat and no cattle — the ranch “fake,” if you will, decked out in some stolen glory.

To tell the truth, I loved wearing western wear even back home in Northern Illinois, but I always felt a tad guilty. The Western way of life can be brutal (long days and non-existent sleep at night). After meeting a few real cowboys who spend their days wrangling cattle out here, I learned how deep the lifestyle runs in their veins and the sacrifices they make each day to live it. So, wearing the get-up without living the life felt a little wrong. People joke that this area of Montana (known as a tourist spot for the ultra-rich) is just a bunch of Californian trust-fund babies wearing backward cowboy hats and some flashy boughten belt buckles. Well even though I grew up the daughter of a single mother, getting needs-based scholarships to put myself through community college, riding horses, and working at a farm cleaning stalls, I couldn’t help but feel like the typical “high-society” fake compared to the real deals.

So, I politely informed Mr. Mustache Mark that I was indeed not a cowgirl like I wish I was — the outfit was just for aesthetics. However, he stopped me and informed me that I indeed did fit the part and that I was looking into the eyes of an old cowboy. His family owned farmland AND worked cattle. He spent long days plowing fields, bailing hay, and turning cows into food to put on the table. So, Mark had some serious cowboy clout behind his name and opinions, and this real cowboy thought I had that grit and determination in my eye to qualify me? That little interaction meant the world to me and was the highlight of my day because, as Willie Nelson sang, “My heroes have always been cowboys.” (0:57)

A couple of nights later, I was nervously walking into a local bar alone because I heard they had line dancing, and as if the universe was nudging me a little sign that I was doing something right, I saw a familiar mustache in the window of a truck driving by. Could it be? My question was answered when the truck started reversing back down the street towards me. Indeed, it was my cowboy friend Mark, and I had the privilege of exchanging pleasantries with him again (and the flattery of being memorable enough that he had recognized me).

These chance meetings and unlikely friendships kept occurring the more I fostered friendliness in my everyday routine. I had a great conversation about the social effects of shared community dances with a boy around my age, who happened to be standing next to me in the baggage line at the Bozeman airport. At the end of our conversation, I commented about trying to be more outgoing and he replied, “It seems to me you have that part figured out already.” Yet another moment that I felt defined my self-concept because it allowed me to see myself through the eyes of a stranger.

At the laundromat, I met a traveler — a van-lifer — a dirtbag. He started the conversation, and we ended up hitting topics from snowboarding on the mountain to working odd jobs to his newest adventure: flying to Costa Rica the next morning. We exchanged numbers and have plans to snowboard together when he is back in town. Of course, it’d be amiss to not mention the two pack-tripping cowboys I met while hiking and collecting animal bones at Porcupine Creek, the roughnecks I beat in a game of pool at the dodgiest dive bar I’ve ever been in (known for its fights between drunken cowboys and ski bums), and the Christians with an affinity for booty-shaking line dances to Pitbull songs I’ve met during my time in the social dance community (one that is thriving and growing exponentially in the western college town scene). This is community. This is what we’ve lost through social media. This is the art of community: talking to strangers, dancing with strangers, laughing with strangers, and realizing that we are not all so “strange” after all.

(Note: While writing this very paragraph about making new friends and putting myself out there, I am in a coffee shop where I periodically hear turkey noises coming from the seat next to me. Looking around and there being no turkeys in sight, I am confused. I continue looking around. Finally, I notice the man next to me is working on editing a video, which caught my eye because of my interest in videography and because the turkeys on his screen are the answer to my previous search. I am curious so I asked him if I could intrude and see what he was working on. He explained it’s a YouTube video and that he is a full-time hunting videographer. What followed was a half-hour-long conversation about our homes, jobs, family, why hunters wear neon orange on top of camo if the point is to blend in, college, skiing, the best places to grab drinks in town, and the turkey convention in Nashville. The engaging conversation brightened my day, and he gained a new loyal YouTube subscriber. The universe has a funny way of lining things up just right— ironic timing at its finest.)

Wow, wasn’t that kind of poetic and sappy? If you answered yes, I agree, but there’s also more where that came from, because I came to learn during my time here in “The Last Best Place” that quality friends will help you find yourself. Remember those booty-shaking, line-dancing, Pitbull-loving Christians I mentioned earlier? Well, I became fast friends with one of them — an anomaly of a man named Andrew. I say anomaly because he is a college math teacher by day and swing dance instructor by night, whose Rate My Professor ratings are full of more comments about his “sick moves” than his mathematical prowess. He’s got what I would call “math nerd” glasses, but also a sleeve tattoo on his arm and another large tattoo on his leg. He plays Zach Bryan songs on his guitar and writes his own, but he also named his dog “Euler” after Leonard Euler (a math and physics prodigy who devised Euler’s formula). Never have I met a geek with so much swag.

Maybe that’s why we became friends: I consider myself a pretty cool nerd (sometimes more or less of the “cool” part). We also shared a love for music with clever lyrics, and that’s why, when he had an extra ticket for a Wyatt Flores concert (an artist I had never heard of before), he asked me to join him. Never one to turn down a chance to feel the bass from a live band reverberating off the walls and through the ground, I accepted, not sure what kind of music I would experience that night. Even though I’d never heard his music before, I found some album art of Wyatt’s I liked and matched my outfit to the cover. That night, I stood there in my black fringe dress, floral wild rag, and hand-painted leather vest as I took in some of the most electric live music I’ve heard to date. The crowd around me, I swear, never missed a word as they sang along in an angelic karaoke choir consisting of blue-collar cowboys and Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Californians. Floral prints and leather work boots took the place of choral robes. And in this moment, a realization hit me like a ton of bricks when all I had been looking for was a slight inkling — this is the environment I want to be a part of. A project I want to be involved in. The movement I want to play a role in.

You see, I had been struggling — wrestling. hard. — with what I wanted to go to college for. I had already finished two years of community college without declaring a specific major. This meant I now had an Associate of Arts degree, but I was approaching my Junior year transferring into a four-year college. I had been accepted into all the colleges I wanted, including some pretty prestigious ones such as UNC-Chapel Hill (a “Southern Ivy League” school that boasts a 13-15% out-of-state acceptance rate) and Hillsdale College (a private college known for its rigorous, classical education style and highly selective application process). This meant I had to pick a major. I had to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my 50-60ish years of life at the age of 20 while committing to being at least $20,000 in debt after graduation. Who set up this system? How am I supposed to know what I want to do when I haven’t experienced life because I’ve spent the last 14 years holed up in a school building? And all this pressure to choose — all this pressure to lock in my fate as either a 9-to-5 desk worker, or a welder, or semi-truck driver, or professional tight-rope walker when I inevitably give up on higher education due to this pressure and run away with the circus bringing my mother’s worst dreams into fruition (aside from me converting to Satanism or something) — it was crushing me. I almost gave up all together, but there in that cacophony of voices singing, “Most people die at 27 and get buried at 72” (Flores 1:04), I realized that this is what I’d been searching for. I didn’t want to give up on my dreams after a few years of college and working a corporate job. I didn’t want to die at 27 and live dormant in a proverbial six-foot-under on autopilot until 72 when I got my taste of real dirt instead of the metaphorical kind. This was the moment that a switch flipped. I want to go back to school to be able to do this — make moments like these happen for others.

See some bucket-list places on a grand road trip? Check.

Get away from my early-life crisis and start new? Check.

Learn to enjoy solitude? Check.

Find myself? Check.

Make new friends? Check.

Figure out what I want to do with school and the rest of my life? Check.

Hey, this whole Montana thing is really working out.

But remember what I said about the universe having ironic timing? It still does even when it’s not the kind of timing you want. Just when I was starting to wonder why I didn’t move out here sooner, reality slapped me in the face. I got a call from my mom. Usually when she calls it’s to do some light-hearted catching up and to remind me to be frugal with my spending so I can save for college. This time there was a different timbre to her voice. I sensed it before she told me she had bad news. Then she broke it: my great aunt (who lived very close to us and whom I often spent time with growing up) had passed away the night before in the emergency room. She had lived a good life. She was 99. When she passed, she was still living alone, unassisted, and driving herself everywhere. At 99. She had family living close by and two adopted granddaughters she was so proud to talk about. She was healthy. Oh, and earlier in life she beat cancer. Twice.

            She was strong and resilient. And now she was gone. And I wasn’t there for it. I wasn’t there for her. I was 1,357 miles away. Just when life was going great and I felt like I was finally catching up to it — like I was finally running my life instead of it running me over, nipping at my heels — I was shaken awake by the shoulders. Life doesn’t stop for any man. (I have a coworker that has that tattooed on his wrist in Latin.) It’s a cliche phrase that people get in stick-and-poke style similar to “Memento Mori” or “YOLO.” But, god, if it’s not the truth. Life doesn’t wait. It doesn’t stop walking when you bend down to tie your shoe. It carries on. It doesn’t pause to hold your hand before you both cross the street. It continues.

You know, it’s like playing guitar. I’ve just started learning how, so I spend a lot of my time practicing changing chords to every 4th beat of the metronome. I’m slow and uncoordinated in my hands. It often takes me longer than one beat in 55 bpm time to change from C to G. But the metronome doesn’t stop. It keeps ticking.

All right, this time I’ve got it.

Tick.

There’s the third beat.

Tick.

There’s the fourth.

All right, now C Major.

Tick.

            (I strike 2 incorrect notes turning the whole chord sour.)

Tick.

            (I strum again — still incorrect.)

Tick.

It never waits. It never hesitates. The metronome carries on. And life is the metronome. It doesn’t stop. You move away. Tick. You start a new job. Tick. You get caught up in the new places and people and responsibilities. Tick. Tick. Tick. And then someone dies. Tick. And you aren’t there. Tick. And other relatives are growing older. Tick. And you aren’t there.

Time is cruel like that. I jolted awake to the enlightenment that, just like adults who seem so surprised by “how much you’ve grown” since they last saw you as if they were expecting you to be frozen in time and space until they saw you again, I was subconsciously expecting everything back home in Illinois to remain the same until I returned. How self-centered of me to assume the solar system of the whole state revolved around my presence! I expected my friends to be working the same jobs and living in the same houses. I assumed my grandparents wouldn’t age. My family pet wouldn’t get any older or frailer. But my grandparents get sick more easily now, it takes a heavier toll on them when they do, and they don’t drive at night anymore. My dog has hip issues. He walks with a very noticeable limp. My mom pushes him around the block in a stroller because he can’t walk that far anymore. Life doesn’t just not wait for me — it doesn’t wait for them either. We are all forced to make our choices about colleges and jobs and “start-overs” in new states, but we must keep in mind the limited time we have with each other and the persistent ticking metronome of life that numbers each of our days, that makes our grandparents age, and that makes us surprised when our little cousins aren’t so little the next time we see them.

Even with this tragedy, I don’t think I can say in good confidence that I’ve regretted moving although it has made me prioritize visiting home any chance I get. In many ways, it has strengthened my character and helped me become my own person. I feel as though Montana has helped me step across the line from girlhood to womanhood. However I have had to learn the hard truth and pain of being separated from the ones I love, and it has shifted my perspective on my move. With all the privileges and disadvantages laid out in front of me like cards on the table, I can evaluate in hindsight my time as an overall beautiful experience full of both loss and gain (and I always keep an ace up my sleeve in case the hand’s starting to look like the cards are stacked against me).

As the great Kenny Rogers said, “You got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run” (1:10). Well, I ran out of my home state in search of too many things for me to place my finger on — God, my old faith, myself, new friends, a new life. I walked into new honkytonks and ice rinks and swimming holes down 15-mile-long, cliff-side dirt roads. I folded the old hand I was dealt, and having picked up this new one in Montana, I know I’ve been given a good hand. They say, “The house always wins,” but looking back, I can see I won this time. I hold cards where huckleberries and aspens, cowboy boots and ski boots, draft horses and magpies take the places of aces and spades and clubs, and I am indescribably grateful to be living this life in Montana.

My mom taught me to never leave a “thank you” unsaid, so it’d be a true sin to not give due credit to some of the things I have not had the luxury of sharing in more detail for the sake of brevity. I will make short mention of them now because I would not be the woman I am today writing this essay without them:

Thank you to Charlie Russel (who, legend has it, God put in charge of painting the sunsets over Montana) for bestowing the sagebrush valleys, Bridgers, and the Grand Tetons with the fiery hues that have brought me to genuine tears on more than one occasion. Your handiwork is truly unmatched, and it is no wonder even God himself admits he cannot best it.

Thank you to the tattoo and piercing shop on West Main Street, which neighbors the Bridger Mountains, that I went to on impulse to get my second lobe piercings on a random Tuesday. It may seem trivial, but doing that gave me a sense that I am truly a grown-up in control of my own decisions about my body and my image. Having that autonomy meant a lot.

Thank you to every species of flora and fauna that is the living, breathing, pulsing heartbeat of Montana. She would not be the same without you, and I would not be the woman I am now without having had the communion I did with you on all those hot summer days I cooled myself alongside you in the frigid glacial lakes or dug my nails into the soil sitting on the ground after an exhausting hike.

Thank you specifically to Porcupine Creek, Fairy Lake, Palisade Falls, and Taylor Fork trails for reintroducing me to the beauty of living and putting fresh air in my lungs both literally and metaphorically.

Thank you to the dozens of colorful personalities that sat in the saloon while I was bar-backing and shared their knowledge, jokes, and hearts with me as I polished pint and rocks glasses. You have challenged me to think deeper, laugh harder, and love people more thoroughly.

Thank you to the ancient playwright, Terence, for introducing me to the saying, “Fortis Fortuna adiuvat” (Terence), which translates to “fortune favors the bold.” It has provided a north star for me to follow as I remind myself that half of those I consider “lucky” are simply the ones not afraid to take chances.

And most of all, thank you to my mom, who, when asked to let her baby girl move across the country, drove her all 1,357 miles in a loaded-down Escape and set her free in the west, believing in her crazy dream to do something wildly unfamiliar. Who, when told her daughter was skipping college for the next school year to continue working (past her original plan of only working there for the summer season), put her motherly worries and concerns aside to offer even more support. Your unwavering ability to let go even when it’s hard to allow me to soar has impacted me beyond description.

Finally, thank you. Yes, you, reading this. Fifteen pages is a lot to set aside time to read in a life full of a thousand little things vying to steal your attention. Thank you for allowing me to share my story, and I hope maybe just once, while you are writing your own story we call life, mine pops into your mind (even if it’s just the part about booty-shaking Christians… I know that part usually sticks). This is the sharing and mingling of stories. This is community. Thank you for participating in it with me.