I’ve been called intense. Dramatic. In Montana, I started to see it in the context that I am a cowboy at heart. I’m a force. And eventually I stopped trying to shrink myself into a palatable draft. That last time a drizzle man told me to be easy and breezy, I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “I’m windy and complicated.” And I meant it.
Montana cracked something open in me. It was the land that first pulled me in. The big sky. The horses. The sacred silence. But it was also the resistance. The tension. The pushback from locals who didn’t want outsiders like me arriving with license plates from California. It was subtle at first, then not. Cars keyed. Passive aggressive signs. Glares at the gas station.