{"id":9196,"date":"2015-11-20T07:04:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T14:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=9196"},"modified":"2015-11-21T07:58:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T14:58:46","slug":"an-authors-love-letter-to-his-native-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/11\/an-authors-love-letter-to-his-native-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"An author’s love letter to his native Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mountains\"<\/a>

Photo by Paula Krugerud<\/p>

Snow and clouds obscure the Deerlodge National Forest in southwestern Montana.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dear Montana,<\/p>\n

You stole my heart. You own my soul.<\/p>\n

Can you help me understand why I left your embrace, crossing over your borders to places far from the rhythm of your waters and the beckoning from your tallest peaks? To live apart from you for all these years?<\/p>\n

Like many before me, I moved away but never really left. I grew up in a working-class family in a blue-collar town where magnificent mountain ranges surrounded us. In the midst of that splendor we thought we were the richest people on earth.<\/p>\n

In my exploration of our nation I\u2019ve found large cosmopolitan cities and ocean vistas and incredible peace on the prairie where it stretches to infinity. I\u2019ve found other mountains that whisper to me, in other states and countries, in regions so different from Montana that after visiting them I pronounced myself an educated traveler.<\/p>\n

But you, Montana, it\u2019s you that calls me home.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Do you remember me, Montana? I\u2019ve wandered far from you in definitions of geography, but what\u2019s a few miles\u2019 distance between friends? Yes, I\u2019m one of those natives who fondly repeats that Montana is a \u201cstate of mind\u201d and that gives me license to tout your virtues at will. Do you hear my voice?<\/p>\n

As a boy in Western Montana I knew little of the outside world, but that\u2019s not the point. Montana was never about what we didn\u2019t have. It was a journey into one\u2019s soul, a three-dimensional experience in nature, a whispering of wind in lofty firs and pines, an eye candy of mountain ranges unblemished by man or time. It was knowing the land around us by names given to creeks and mountains and old logging roads that faded into tangles of fallen trees. It was peace in the silence of a forest. It was an intuitive love affair with belonging to something that felt spiritual and ours alone.<\/p>\n

When I seek solace from an angry world, I think of you. When traffic and noise overwhelm me, my mind turns to the vast empty landscape that\u2019s Montana. When I need a touchstone to remind me of my purpose, I recall my boyhood under your watchful eyes when life felt unburdened and full of wonder. It\u2019s important, Montana, that I tell you that I\u2019ve never lost sight of my origins on that hard road called life.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Montana.<\/p>\n

Kevin S. Giles wrote the novel Summer of the Black Chevy<\/u><\/a>, and Jerry\u2019s Riot<\/a>, the examination of Montana\u2019s 1959 prison disturbance. He also wrote the biography Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin<\/a>. He is one of those Montana writers who finds stories in the woods and valleys and streams and small towns of Western Montana. This piece originally appeared on his blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Montana, You stole my heart. You own my soul. Can you help me understand why I left your embrace, crossing over your borders to places far from the rhythm of your waters and the beckoning from your tallest peaks? To live apart from you for all these years? Like many before me, I moved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":9197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3405,3148],"class_list":["post-9196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","tag-kevin-s-giles","tag-montana","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}