Some places are so vivid they remain in your memories forever, ready to be conjured up whenever you need them. Paris is one such place for me. But the most intense relationship I have with any place is, like John Steinbeck, the love affair I have with Montana.
It began early. I was only in my twenties when I first arrived on a plan squealing down a runway on a bluff overlooking Billings. I was there for a job interview. I only meant to be there for a year. I stayed for four, three of them in the tiny town of E. Glacier Park on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Even though I left—that’s another story—I left a piece of myself on the Rocky Mountain Front where the gray peaks of Glacier National Park drop abruptly to the high grassy plains of Blackfeet country. But I do not write of that country. That is a sacred place to me.
Instead, the reader must travel to the other side of the divide, on the highway the Montana locals call the High Line. The road twists through the mountains before opening up to a four-lane by the West Glacier entrance to the park. In the summer it’s stacked with strangers from other states. These people provide fodder for the other businesses on the road to the western edge of the park: bear zoos, lodging, rafting expeditions down the Middle Fork, horseback rides, helicopter rides, and trading posts of every size and style. Huckleberry ice cream for all!
Past all the tourist destinations, northwest through the more upscale town of Whitefish, Montana, which is dependent on summer tourists for only half its income. A good-sized ski run, also beloved by out-of-towners, provides the other half.
Keep going northwest from Whitefish and eventually you’ll come to the small, make-believe town of Promise Cove, Montana. Be sure to stop at the general store and the ART gallery.
But don’t stay too long. Or you may find yourself falling in love.
Click here to purchase Return to Promise Cove, the first book in the series.
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