Life Place Essay

Annaleigh Newall

Writ. 101

Mackenzie Cole

Life Place Essay

To Find Mount Vernon I Went to Missoula

As I sit writing this essay, I am able to reflect on the past eighteen years of my life. I look out the window and see the snow dusted mountains everywhere I look, the cars flying by on the highway and over the Clark Fork Bridge. As I stare in amazement at the beauty surrounding me, I am brought back to why I chose to continue my schooling in Missoula, Montana. A place where it is rumored that horses are more abundant than cars and Indians are on the loose everywhere, and of course, does anyone actually live there?

Six years ago, I stepped foot on the University of Montana campus for the first time. I stared, stunned, at the sun beating down on Mount Sentinel as the shadow of the main tower, huge against the oval, cast over everything I could see. It was hot, really hot, as July in Montana usually is. I watched as people casually walked through campus enjoying everything they saw. I immediately fell in love. From that point on, University of Montana became my dream school. The people, the environment, the scenery and openness of everything was so different from where I grew up and that was exactly what I wanted when I began applying to colleges.

                Before moving to Missoula, I lived in a small town north of Seattle called Mount Vernon. I was in an area with a river flowing right through downtown, which made for great father-daughter bonding moments sitting in the boat fishing the river when I was younger. In the spring on a clear day, from the top of the hill near where my house is, Mount Baker was a gorgeous white monument set against the clear blue sky. The acres and acres of tulips are a major tourist attraction, and even for people who live there, as long as traffic isn’t too bad, it’s an amazing site to see. In the winter, snow geese by the thousands line every possible farming field imaginable. It hit me when I left to go to school. I never really appreciated the beauty of where I lived for eighteen years. Once I left the area where I grew up to be the person I am now, I realize how fortunate I am to have lived there.

                As I am growing up, I am learning to appreciate more and more what Mother Nature has put in front of me and has shown me what she can do. I realized I really do appreciate what I see when I look out my window. I am becoming more aware with my surroundings, and finding the little things that remind me of home, make the transition a lot easier to handle.

                The other day, I took a walk through campus. When I looked up I saw the mountains surrounding me. It brought me back, almost as if I had time traveled, to home a couple years ago. I was taking a walk with my family after a huge Thanksgiving dinner and I remember looking into the mountains surrounding us and the perfectly clear, blue sky. We walked through neighborhoods and talked and laughed and made some amazing memories. As I was walking through campus, seeing the mountains dusted with snow and the crisp, clear blue sky, I was reminded of this walk with my family, who I now don’t see often. This walk was so memorable because it made me realize that no matter where you travel to, there will always be something to remind you of home. Finding connections is something that I think is important to be able to keep you linked at home. For me, it’s almost a curiosity. I want to find ways that other places connect to Mount Vernon. For me, I personally believe that it’s important to find those little things and keep them close to your heart because its home, and home is where you grew up, it’s where your roots are, and if I were to lose that, it would almost be like I was losing a part of myself.

                Living in Missoula I am coming to realize how important it is for me to want to be aware of what’s going on in my environment. I want to know about the problems that I am facing and will have to deal with as I get older, what is happening to the economy and how that will affect me and what is going on not only where I live, but other places around the world, too. I can already note major differences between Montana and Washington, and it’s scary to think that some of those differences are just simply because of people caring more or less about where they live. For example, I think that here in Missoula, many people that are native to the area are wanting to clean streams and rivers and keep everything preserved as much as possible. But, in Washington, it doesn’t seem quite that way. People know the problems that are happening to the streams and rivers and ocean, but nobody seems to care, nobody wants to do anything about it and they are too busy to do anything about how the environment is becoming a mess, or even they’re too busy to care. I don’t think that it is a matter of what Montana has done specifically to keep the water clean compared to Washington, as it is more of a matter that Montana is generally more aware. People in Montana tend to be more outdoor oriented people, which naturally causes them to be more aware of what’s happening around them. Whereas in the Seattle area, people would rather drive two blocks, then walk. They would rather get their cup of Starbucks coffee then support a local coffee company. Many people don’t venture outside on a regular basis. So the way that Montana is more aware of their environment isn’t necessarily what has happened to keep nature preserved, it is a life style choice.

                Since living in Montana, I have found that as much as I didn’t expect it to, I am molding into a completely different person then I was 5 months ago, being the scared seventeen year old anxiously awaiting my first college class with more emotions then I could ever count, nonetheless know what all the emotions were. Now that I am here though, I know what’s going on around me.  I am aware of the people, plants, animals and environment around me. I care about what’s happening in Missoula, and am worried about what the environment will be like in 20 years, but this is just the start. I can’t be anywhere close enough to claim to know everything going on, or even understand everything. The economy in Montana, as a whole, is pretty rough. I know a lot of people in Washington that are from Montana originally, but it was too hard to make a living in Montana, so they moved to Washington. I hope to be able to one day live in Montana, and this scares me. If so many people are leaving, what will everything be like when I am ready to start a career and family and have a house and be successful? How will the area change for my kids? Or even for my grandkids? I want my kids to be able to experience the same Montana that I have fallen in love with and be able to understand why I fell in love.

                Where I am and where I call home are all factors to be considered when I am talking about who I am. I could say that I am from Mount Vernon, Washington and that there is where I learned everything I needed to know. I could say that I go to school in Missoula, Montana and am a proud Grizzly and that in Missoula is where everything about life made sense. Both of these statements aren’t true though. For me at least, who I am is an accumulation of what I have learned as I’ve grown up. I learned a lot living in Washington, but in Montana is where it all started to make sense, and I have been able to grow on my thoughts about life through new experiences in a new state, with new people and new beginnings in a place that allowed me a fresh start. It is my belief that as you grow older, you start to learn to respect and cherish your environment more. You have more experiences to grow off of and you are able to see what is going on around you and how that compares to places you know by heart. So, with that being said, I think it is crucially important to get out of your natural routine and explore a new place. Go on a hike, take a walk, go for a drive, intentionally get lost; this all develops the understanding of an area, and that’s key for understanding that where you are now and where you are from originally, really can influence you as a person.