NotWriting, the blog

Hello, and welcome to the forty-second installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

This spring, I did something that all married men would like to do, but that very few get the opportunity to——I took a ten-day trip alone to a place I'd always wanted to go: Montana.

The multi-part travelogue that follows is a chronicle of the adventures I had and the personal discoveries I made. For all of you married men out there, I hope it inspires you to take your own journeys.

And for all of you wives of married men, I hope it encourages you to let go of your husbands for a while because, like those Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus books all say, men are rubber-bands——we may seem to pull away from you, but we always spring back. (Unless of course we break, like Gaugin did, and sail away to Tahiti and live with the native, topless women there. But this is rare.)

And so, without further ado, here is the first installment of MONTANA!

Culture shock didn’t even begin to describe it. From the moment the pilot announced we were making our final approach into Missoula and I looked out the window and saw those mountains, I knew I was about to enter a world unlike anything I’d ever known.

No skyscrapers, no ocean, no endless ribbons of traffic. Just a circle of mountains around a speck of a settlement, like a brood of big brothers protecting their baby sister. I rifled through my bank of images for something back east to compare it to, but no place I’d been before seemed to match up. New York, Boston, the Cape––the entire East Coast for that matter––they all seemed inadequate to explain what I was seeing, as if the East had one set of standards and Montana another.

The weather didn't bode well for my trip when the plane landed. Thick overcast sky and a mist waited for me outside. I picked up the duffel on the luggage carousel and wandered through the open terminal looking for a cabstand.

If nothing else, Missoula International Airport had the most down-home terminal I'd ever seen. Great vaulted ceilings, supported by giant beams, towered above me. The walls were paneled with knotty pine and adorned with elk and deer heads, and rearing up on its hind legs at the foot of the staircase was a full-grown stuffed grizzly. Not something I cared to see in person.

In the main hall, a massive stone hearth fireplace had a real log fire burning. The airport was surprisingly busy for a weekday in mid-May, and everyone who had been on the plane with me was quickly met by a friend or loved one. Within ten minutes of retrieving my duffel and putting it on a luggage cart, I was the only non-employee in the place.

Suddenly a man in his twenties came through the automatic doors and nodded at me. He had blonde hair and wore a navy blue baseball cap with a capital "M" on it——the University of Montana, I surmised.

"Need a ride?"

I said I was looking for a cab.

"Well, I'm it," the kid said, picking up the duffel like it was filled with confetti. "Shuttle service. Where you going?"

"Renting a car, actually," I said. "Avis."

"No prob. Follow me."

So I did. The kid, this Brad Pitt lookalike, led me to a white minivan with a magnetic sign on the door——"Airport Shuttle"——and rolled the side door open for him. While I got in, Brad Pitt put my gear in the back, and a moment later we were rolling down a two-lane highway, presumably toward the Avis dealer.

I leaned over and took in the view. The clouds had begun to lift, the sun peeking through, illuminating gently rolling green hills with grazing cattle, and in the distance, dark, jagged, snow-capped masses that I knew were the Rocky Mountains.

"It's just like I imagined it," I said. "From the commercials, you know?"

"Oh, those," the kid said. "Yeah, lot of folks talk about those commercials. And they're pretty accurate from what I hear."

"This state is beautiful," he said, as though I had disagreed.

"I can see that."

The mountains almost didn't seem real, as if they were parts of a humongous movie set someone had forgotten to take down.

After checking in at the Red Roof Inn, I drove into downtown Missoula, a cute grid of broad streets and four-story brick buildings from the early 1900s. According to an article I'd browsed on the plane, the city had been built primarily by logging and the railroads, with a little mining thrown in for color. The place was clean and sleek and prosperous, and honestly, nothing like what I'd expected.

What I'd expected was a shit-kicking little hole-in-the-wall of a town, so I was stunned to see how hip the business establishments were: an Internet café, tanning salon, art supply shop, natural foods store and, as I swung the rental car into a parking space, a place called The Missoula Club. The guy back at the Red Roof had recommended the place. Said it had the best burgers and shakes anywhere. Anywhere, he said. Well, we'd see about that.

Well, they were. The food was tantamount to a religious experience. That's all I'm going to say.

I went back to the hotel and slept like a homeless guy on the subway until the alarm went off the next morning. My adventure had begun.

Stay tuned for Part II: BUFFALO STAMPEDE!