Credit Morgan Philips

There must be something in the water in Montana. It changed my life. It set the stage for this tragic love story. And it recently humbled one individual who was previously indifferent to nature. 

“(Montana) is beautiful, almost heartbreakingly so, but that’s an idealized portrayal, and such a superficial description of what nature is like here,” writes Amanda Fortini for Good Magazine. “It assumes that nature is solely pictorial and visual—an image on a postcard, an object you appreciate, an amenity. But in Montana, nature is forceful, astronomical in its magnitude and scale, powerful in its ability to dictate your daily life.”

She thoughtfully continues, “If this seems like a story about a city person who finally becomes aware of the planet she has always lived on, that’s only partly true… It’s a story about how there are still some places where nature is so extreme and dramatic that it persists in pushing through the cracks, forcing you to obey its rhythms, and not the other way around.”

Understanding that you’re not the center of the universe—literally and figuratively—is one of the greatest things anyone can learn. I am in awe of this planet’s ability to teach that lesson again and again and again.

However we arrived here, our Earthly birthright is proof we won the universal lottery.