‘What were you thinking?’ ... A vehicular encounter in Bozeman
In the land of bootstraps, many people’s straps are broken ...
There’s a mythic splendor to Montana, and I have found myself in the middle of her glory. The sunsets in Willow Creek are as golden as heaven descending, and the quiet that exists in a five-block town is unlike anything I have known. Everyone knows when you sneeze, but in-between the daily life of children playing and neighbors mowing their lawns, there is nothing to hear but God herself.
Golden hour outside Willow Creek, Mont., Sept. 2023
During my first week as the artist-in-residence at the Dofe House, part of Aunt Dofe’s Gallery in Willow Creek, I walked the half-block to the post office to obtain a P.O. box. When asked by the postman if the address of the Dofe House was 106 or 102 Main Street, I could not answer, so the woman behind me answered for me. She told me she was the realtor who sold the place to its new owners.
As we waited for the clerk to process my paperwork, I turned to her and said, “It’s so peaceful here.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she replied.
Secrecy, in a small Montana town, seems essential, but it’s no secret that Montana is a beautiful place to live. It’s also an increasingly difficult place to live. Driving into Three Forks for a stop at the hardware store and the grocer, I noticed a stretch of condos for sale and the underpinnings for another three buildings. The 2 bed, 2 bath properties, overlooking the parking lot and beyond to the Tobacco Root mountains, start at $425K. It will cost you half a million dollars to live in Three Forks, Montana with a population of just under 2,000 people and climbing.
Condo development in Three Forks, Mont.
Down the road in Bozeman, the situation is more dire. I was aware of the housing crisis pushing people out of their homes, but I was not aware of how shocked I would feel after seeing the blocks of unhoused people living off North 19th Avenue, near the I-90 exit. After getting gas, I drove the circle of parked vehicles, trailers, and RVs, observing what I have only read and thought about from afar.
With my mouth still gawking open, and my car pointed to the nearest City Brew, I miss the turn. At the next light, when the arrow turns green, I make a U-turn and am nearly rear-ended by a silver crew-cab pickup turning right.
The man in the truck follows me, turns into the same parking lot, circles like a vulture as I park, and then pulls up behind my car, blocking my exit. If it were possible, smoke would be billowing from the top of his head.
“What were you thinking??!” he exclaimed, putting his truck into park. It’s a public place, so I feel like I’m relatively safe. I walk up to his open window, place my arm on the door, and say, “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize you had a green light. Thank you for looking out for me.”
Relief arises on his face, and the metaphorical smoke begins to clear. “I guess I’m a bit distracted,” I confess. “I have just come from Willow Creek, and it’s been awhile since I’ve been in Bozeman. I was just so shocked at the unhoused. This is Bozeman. What happened?!”
“We’re all working for the rich, now,” he replied.
Something else he said stuck with me: that people are making the choice to live on the streets. “The way they choose to live, I would never live that way,” he said.
I wonder, if all he had left in the world was his truck, where would he choose to sleep?
I dread writing about this topic, though it’s negligent of me to avoid it. I too would like to blame the rich, but it’s far more complex than that. This displacement is much older than “Yellowstone,” Paramount’s hit TV show filmed in Montana, which brought in in more than 2 million visitors and an estimated $730 million in spending to Montana in 2021. It’s older than the westward sprawl and the remote workers and the stagnant wages and the rapidly rising cost of living.
To “make Bozeman Montana again” — a phrase coined by Billings-based clothing company Aspinwall and prominently displayed on a billboard outside of Bozeman — would require abandoning its namesake, John Bozeman, who rushed west in search of gold. It would require sharing the story of Sacajawea at tourist sites as the first documented Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons case. It would require us to name the seasons from an Indigenous calendar that recognizes the cold moon, the waters rising, the wild cherries opening, the leaves falling, and the deer breeding. It would require returning the Gallatin Valley to the flowers as its nickname suggests, to make room for the buffaloberry, cottonwood, nodding onion, prickly pear and willow, and to name the valley as the Blackfeet do, the “Ahkoto Waktai Sakum,” translated to “many come together.”
But coming together isn’t so easy once fences are drawn and ownership is decided. This is the place Montanans find themselves, in-between being able to afford to live here or leaving this majestic place. Such a place is so precarious, any one of us could find ourselves having to make a previously unthinkable “choice.”
In the land of bootstraps, many people’s straps are broken. Do we help mend them, or do we recognize that bootstraps no longer suffice to pull oneself up?
Trail marking signpost, with added “you are beautiful” sticker, atop Buffalo Jump State Park near Three Forks.