Growing up in Montana, I felt the isolation most sharply when I left. My childhood wasn’t riddled with horrible cabin-fever traumas, and the local movie theatre played titles much the same as anywhere else. I didn’t ride horses, I didn’t wear cowboy hats, and I do own an iPhone. But still, leaving Montana as a child made me submissive and wary. I went to cities where the people had no connection to the earth below them. I went to the the oceans and saw nothing but tan and materialism obsessed communities. I watched as California’s culture capitalized and commodified the California Grizzly Bear—a breed entirely extinct—on their flag, with only a phony sense of the wild and absolutely no ecological agenda in mind.

I felt capable of blending in anywhere I went, but I felt different. My brain was crafted by the mountains and the sublime quiet of the forests. What sorts of things did other people think of when they thought of home if they had no wild?

I grew and matured, and I began dreaming of other places. I started to see the flaws in my beloved home: the lack of diversity, the lack of culture, a small but prevalent group of people selfish and unwelcoming to their core. And I began to recognize something more terrifying, a nagging problem that fleshed itself out more and more each time I ran into it: Montana was breeding a chary and unadventurous mindset. Montana, home of the only organic wild in the lower 48, was willing its children to explore less and stick to known quantities. It was blasphemous.

The more I looked around, the more I found people totally unconcerned with what the rest of the world was doing with itself. Sometimes I wondered if people even knew about that other world at all. There was such a deep disconnect from culture and all of its issues amongst my peers, and even within myself, it was shocking. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to leave.

My senior year approached, and I found my friends hesitating and withdrawing from their ideas of far-away colleges and travels, and I met them with strained panic as they told me that, well, they really didn’t want to leave after all. I saw my self-proclaimed ‘Vagabond Soul’ friends recede into themselves and their familiars out of fear of experiencing anything new. I smiled weakly as I reminded myself that everyone was entitled to exactly whatever they wanted to do with themselves, and that I was no great hero for feeling claustrophobic in my tiny town. But still I felt vaguely sad for them.

In the days leading up to my collegiate departure, I too began to feel rushed and doubtful. The feelings weren’t profound and they were outnumbered by my thoughts of excitement for the future, but they were there, and I found myself memorizing every mountain outline and the way the dry air felt around me. I was plagued with nightmares about being somehow lesser if I left, and I’d wake up feeling hypocritical and sullen.

I said goodbye to my jagged piece of earth with grace and poise, and I reminded myself that I’d have to wait until it was snow covered before I could be with it again. The thought both satisfied and haunted me.