Life Place Essay Final Draft

                                                               Take a Breath, Man

          I’ve never considered where I am, and by that I mean; really where I am. My area, my life place; in another life my Area of Responsibility. Things are different now. Now I’m in college and besides an assignment with ‘life place ‘ as the theme I’m being asked something new: how I feel about something. Not just that; but how it engages me, how it involves me. Wow, take a breath. Simple for some, very different for me.

        So how to start?  With the question, obviously; what is my life place? Actually a place? Or a state of mind? A lifestyle maybe, or could it be all of those? Let’s start with the first, a place.

        My life place is most definitely Missoula, Montana. I’m not from here; it’s where I chose to end a very long journey.  Not without reason, I needed someplace to heal someplace with space and, well peace.  I found Missoula in a web search, almost by accident. I had just been told that after 20 years of faithful service and five conflicts that I was no longer needed, that military men have a shelf life and mine was up. Retire they told me, you earned it. So I stumbled away to my computer to find someplace to build a life as the old one was measured for a pine box. I searched for someplace with trails, space and a sense of; peace. That’s what I have found here, in spades. I wake up every day and run in to my new life place by traversing a MOUNTAIN. Yesterday I raced deer leaping across a higher trail, made for a good tempo run and some deep reflection. I feel connected now to the land and the environment  and more importantly I care about its welfare. Where else can you watch the sun bathe the Bitterroot Mountains  in a glorious lavender cloak and then just catch fire as the sun touches them? I see that and realize I’ve been to many places and never called one Home.  The beauty and living pulse of Mount Sentinel and the National Forest lands I run through has formed a visceral rooted connection to this life place. I may not be from here, but I have most definitely come home.

     Life Place as a state of mind, hmm tough one,( If you the reader answered ‘42’ then you are now part of my select group of nerds who dig obscure humor). If not then you might have reached the conclusion I have: as a state of mind the life place is unique. It travels with you, and like a chameleon forms to the place you settle. You feel this when you find a place and become settled. I admit I didn’t anticipate this happening in Missoula, I knew I wanted to attend school there; but the whole permanent emotional attachment thing was a surprise. After all, in a military career you’re always leaving, always moving. Over the years that became so second nature to me my life place became nowhere. Sort of a disaffected consciousness adrift in melancholy. Maybe it’s the retirement, maybe the shock of simply absolutely NOT belonging to something bigger than me after twenty years but a definite shift in my brain patterns.   I now belong here, attached in ways I have read about but never felt. I love the land, I love the mountains ,the open way people respond when you need directions or help, the smell of snow and pine…..I love Missoula. I feel connected, with a sense of value and commitment to the environment around me. A state of mind, but in life place. On we go.

    You could say my lifestyle has been frozen in time for two decades or so, leaving my life place mired in the eighties. That made wardrobe choices a bit dicey but worse; military service ending left me adrift in a world I simply could no longer communicate with.  Sure a leather sunburst tie can be a conversation starter but you can’t base a life on it, (Billy Idol fans back off). The point is I had to find someplace where I could learn the simple language of life all over again and not be excluded from the life place as I went.  Missoula has been like a salve, an accepting oasis in an image driven America. I marvel at how such a small place with so much beauty around it still has room for diversity rivaling a bazaar in Bahrain. Maybe that’s   what it is. Missoula lifestyle seems earned; you have to want it here. I value that, it’s begun to cement my new life place to my core, my being. In turn, wonder of wonders; I now have a lifestyle. An honest get up every day and its different, lifestyle. Complete too, with friends , favorite haunts and a woman I love more than my own life. Missoula has swallowed me up and birthed me out as a real person who feels the ebb and flow of life in Montana. Remade, from the broken wreck cast off by a government who just wants guys like me to quietly go away. Lifestyle, in a life place called Missoula it’s like a wonderful gift.

       So here I am, at the end that is a beginning; pursuing an assignment that started as a part of a class that has now helped me look closer at a part of who I am. I never really thought of a life place, hell; I never heard the term before I walked into WRIT 101. Thayers’ essay gives me an example of how to look into myself and I’ve done that and found something I can’t stop thinking about. My life place, I know now; is many things at once: a place, a state of mind, a lifestyle. Maybe more, and that I plan to pursue with a mind I’m just now learning how to really put to creative rather than destructive use. Missoula has value to me now, far outweighing the simple destination I had thought it would be. The diversity and beauty of the environment here has shown me what a life place really is.

     I think that means I’m home. It’s been a long time, but I’m glad this journey is over.