Montana, My Home

Is there a place where you find peace? A place you visit in your mind and wish you were there? I have many such places: sunset on the Minnesota lake residence of my youth, a mountaintop in Alaska after first frost when the tundra is painted red, an island in the Bering Sea with nesting puffins everywhere, an inland marshy saltwater stream at St. Michael where Ancients dried their salmon for winter on racks still standing and where sun-bleached whale bones strew the shoreline, the sugar sand and rock formations of Canon Beach Oregon against an orange winter sky, white sandstone formations above the Missouri River breaks at dawn — and in my own back yard, where five deer, some fawns, are resting with pheasants in the shade of apple trees.

When I completed medical training, we could have lived anywhere. After 26 years in Montana, we can’t leave. There are few places on earth that provide such stark and beautiful scenery, moderate weather, camaraderie of so many friends and — peace.

 Visions of life experiences swirl in the brains of writers as they wait to be chosen and become part of a novel, a memoir. Montana is a perfect place for those stories to finally find themselves in print to share with others less fortunate, those who have not found peace in the midst of world chaos. In the peacefulness of Montana, write on, Ladies, write on.

 Betty Kuffel