Coming Back West

Glendive, MT is my hometown. Born here November 5^th, 1986 at the Glendive Medical Center to Byron and Alice Mullet, I remember cold winters as a kid, the feeling of a fresh wind blowing on my face, looking out over grassy plains and hills in the summertime, seeing pheasant and antelope and coyotes roaming about freely, and my brother and I fishing with grasshoppers as bait in the creek that ran through our farmland out near Bloomfield.

Eastern Montana has a sort of rugged beauty about it. When dry, the land reminds me of an elderly person who’s lived a full life, with laugh lines, wrinkles around the eyes from squinting in the sun, wrinkles in the forehead from cares and concerns, gnarled hands and arms that worked their whole life long.

Now I’ve been home for just over two weeks, returning from the little town of Hillsboro in Ohio, the place where at least my body has resided some fifteen years now. But though I’ve spent more than half my life in Ohio, moving there with my parents and my younger brother when I was about 10, I’ve never really felt that Ohio became my home. My heart and some portion of my mind has continued to reside in Montana, my homeland, and I’ve continually thought about and wistfully longed for this rugged beauty again, those grassy plains and hills, this fresh wind in my face.

When you tell someone out east that you’re from Montana, their eyes go wide. That’s been my experience, anyhow. The typical first question after they learn you’re from Big Sky country is, “So what’re you doing here?!” From looking at pictures or watching nature documentaries (typically their only experience of Montana), they just can’t understand why anyone would trade this pristine landscape for the drabness of life in Ohio, or most other similar places.

When I came rolling into town again from North Dakota on March 17^th of this year, passing through Medora and Makoshika just as the sun was setting on the horizon, sky painted crimson, orange and yellow over layered, striated, rocky hills and buttes and boulders – I’d have had a hard time answering for why anyone would leave this rugged beautiful wilderness.

Now I’m also one of those who’s come from elsewhere to find a job, though my being a native helps perhaps alleviate some of the stigma of being an out-of-towner. I have a wife and four little boys back in Ohio that I need to work for now. It’s difficult to find a good job these days, at least in our neck of the woods. But I haven’t just come back to find work. I’ve also come home, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment in having made it back here, to this land of open spaces I have fondly remembered for most my life.

I somehow feel as though I am everyone here. My father and grandfather and great grandfather were farmers in this area. I was born here. But I, like so many others, am also migrating into this part of the country looking for opportunity, for work. I’m here looking for a job that will not just pay my bills (though that’s a good start), but perhaps help me to also pay off debts I’ve incurred, and build up savings, and maybe carve out a little piece of the Earth for myself and mine, maybe even a piece of Earth here in the wide open spaces of Montana.

God help me, it’s good to be home. So far, so good. There’s just something about having come back here. What is it I’ve heard in my spirit? “Go west, young man.” So did I and my ancestors, and so did you or yours. And because we have come west, we share in the privilege of breathing in this Big Sky.