Why We Go...

Every summer we find ourselves in Montana.

People always ask us why we come here. Why do we have this place up on a Mountain? What do we do there?

I think, in essence, they really want to know who we are.

Who are these people, this anomaly of a family who goes off every summer and lives on a mountain? Who are these people who own two homes, and why, and what does it mean to have a cabin…it sounds either so, Daniel Boone…or so, big luxurious home in the mountains.

Who are we?

Sometimes I wonder the same thing.

Mostly I start wondering a few months before we go….so much stuff to do…why in the heck do we need another place? I love our place! I love Kansas City. I love our home. I love our back yard. I love our neighborhood. Who are we that we need to travel across the country to go to…a cabin??? Sorting, packing, prepping….that, actually, is the easy part. It’s the explaining that is hard…having to frequently preface a conversations with,

“We spend summers in Montana.”

“We are the family that isn’t here in the summer because we spend summers in Montana.”

“I would prefer not to do the year contract because…well, we just aren’t here all year.” ARgggghhh.

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived. – Henry David Thoreau

When everything falls to the side, when the packing is done and the words have been said we take a journey, and we find this place. We find it each year.  In the 10 years that Scott and I have been married we have lived in different places but this place, this place remains the same. And so it shall be…as much as it depends on us, it will always be here.

 Every year, as the boys get older, as another day goes by, I realize what a gift this place is…this land…this part of us. I know I will not be with them forever…we will not be with them forever….but these memories, they are forever. I know that they will grow up here, I know that they will come here as boys time and time again…I know that one day they will come here as men. They will talk about these days, these fun days. These days without television…these days of our mountain. They will talk and remember and it will be theirs, it will all be theirs…land to walk on, land to think on, land to play on, explore on, take risks on…land that their parents have prayed on, loved each other on, invested their money and time and souls into. We will give them stories…they will remember.

 This is what we give them, each summer, each memory, each moment, each tree that we plant each picture that we take…is theirs to take and give.

Every time we do something I remember that it is a deposit into the cache of Montana memories. It is a rich gift. A place that is as forever, it will go from generation to generation…it is as much forever as we can touch or make in this life. It is for them and their children, and their children’s children…it is for the future, it is for the here and now, it is the quiet, it is the calm, it is the beauty…it is our place, it is our peace, God’s Peace.

And this, my friends, is why we go.