The Middle of Montana

As a young man I set out from Austin to Montana. I was in search of open spaces and big skies, remote wonder, Western transcendence. I was also running away from a breakup, and figured that since my best days were behind me and I’d be single forever, I might as well go get a job on a ranch and live in a bunkhouse. A pattern of 3s haunted the enterprise: 23 years old in my 1993 Ford pickup in the year 2013, but I didn’t really know or care what that meant. I wasn’t channeling Pythagoras so much as Lonesome Dove and Merle Haggard. I had just finished Larry McMurtry’s cowboy epic, and was always listening to the country tune “Big City,” in which a weary Haggard pleads to be set loose in the middle of Montana.