The first time I drove through Montana, the country’s fourth-largest state, on a Denver-to- Canada road trip, I immediately felt at home. The broad-shouldered peaks and wide-open skies around the town of Missoula, in particular, were familiar enough, but there was something else in the summer air, something I couldn’t quite identify. Maybe it was the rushing rivers slicing through lush valleys; the cowboy boots walking around at highway rest areas; or the possibility of seeing grizzly bears, moose, and wolves around every bend in the road. Or maybe it was something a friend who went to college here told me: “Montana is like Colorado, but without all the people.”
That heady combination of expansive landscapes, spectacular mountains, and the sense that it was mine alone drew me back to…
