The New American Road Trip Mixtape by Brendan Leonard

Author:Brendan Leonard [Leonard, Brendan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Semi-Rad Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

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The green mountains to the south of Missoula took shape in my passenger window as I rolled up the Bitterroot Valley on Highway 93. I waited for the ones I would recognize from all my time looking up at them from town—Mount Dean Stone, Mount Sentinel, Mount Jumbo. My first mountains as an adult, the first time I could see something like that and appreciate the majesty of it all, respect it. Montana was where I had dipped my toe into the mountain world for the first time, backpacking in Glacier National Park, hiking to the top of peaks near Missoula in the fall, catching the bug for peak bagging, flipping through guidebooks, checking maps for the next high place I wanted to go.

I drove closer to the center of the city, waiting for the skyline to click into a familiar place that matched my memory of it. How long ago was it that I left here? Seven years before, the last week of May, I’d driven out of town on I-90 West, headed toward Seattle and eventually Phoenix, to my then-girlfriend, who was now three years my ex-wife. I hadn’t been back to Missoula since then.

I knew where it was in my mind for the past seven years, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there again. I felt something like nostalgia, but more sad.

When I arrived in August 2002, I was 23 years old, fresh out of substance abuse treatment for alcohol, a pack-a-day smoker, depressed, desperate for a new life, and worried I wasn’t good enough for the graduate program at the School of Journalism at the University of Montana. Missoula, sitting at the foot of Mount Sentinel, whose grassy west face sweeps down to the UM campus behind the football stadium, was like no place I’d ever been before. Deer would walk down from the mountain at night and munch on grass on the quad in front of the university president’s office. Just across I-90 from Mount Sentinel is Mount Jumbo, another enormous grassy mountain, and the Clark Fork River cuts in between the two along the interstate, down Hellgate Canyon.

Anywhere in town, the view of those two mountains was a shock to a kid from Iowa whose horizons had been dominated by nothing bigger than grain elevators since he was born. Everyone walked with dogs off leashes, everywhere; and when dogs weren’t allowed into a shop or a bar, they waited contently outside, sitting on the sidewalk. On Higgins Avenue, there were three coffee shops, none of which was a Starbucks. Drive-thru espresso booths seemed to be on every other block. How could coffee be this important? Why didn’t I have a beard?

There were two mountaineering shops, Pipestone Mountaineering and The Trail Head, within four blocks of each other. And people rode their bikes on the street, with the cars, unlike in Iowa, where the only reason you rode a bike anywhere was if you had been slapped with a DUI and lost your driver’s license.

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