Montana Identity

This is one of the questions I pose in the Montana Questionnaire... a survey I created to get some insight on how people frame Montana identity for themselves.

There's no right answer.

What does living in Montana mean to me, right now? I am living in my childhood home, amid the family debris of forty years, familiar and

comfortable, though the suburban solitude doesn't suit me at midlife. I am here enacting a duty to maintain a family place, a foothold we wish to preserve until we feel otherwise.

I am not sure whether Montana will ultimately feel like a loving embrace. Maybe it was never meant to.

The surrounding mountains and hillsides are familiar peripheries, etched in my psyche, for sure. They are a comfort, knowing that - bar meteor strike - they will outlast us all. Their orientation to daily celestial events continually delights with dramatic light shows, and I am probably most attached to this quality of the Missoula valley. Sideways evening sunlight on the faces of Sentinel and Jumbo against dark skies.

Culturally, I am still investigating this place and to what extent I still (if I ever did) belong, beyond a child's knowing of a place. The town is renewed, and not the place of my earlier knowing. And I have changed. Much remains, but much has changed and after nearly a year here, I cannot say I yet feel at home.

Is it me? Is it you, Missoula? Though yes, I do still feel I am from Montana. What is this Montana identity that I've clung to for nearly fifty years...? I am no closer to an answer.

The landscape continues to stun and humble me. The history I continue to learn is a gut punch. I am not sure whether Montana will ultimately feel like a loving embrace. Maybe it was never meant to.