love does

Sunday at church, I met Bob Goff.

He gave me a huge hug and told me to give him a call so we could talk more. 

Bob... I'm holding you to that.

brokenness + hope

Psalm 51.

A few weeks ago I sat in church wondering if God was going to do his thing again and tell me what I needed to hear. 

(I guess someday I'll stop wondering and realize that's kinda how he rolls)

Long story short… He nailed it.

Except I don't think this was just for me… But I have no idea how, or even if, it will ever get to the person I wish so badly could hear it. We barely got a chance to know each other but you're still on my mind.

So on the off chance that you ever see this, I hope you listen. 

Because I know you hold yourself accountable for things you've done, and I know you've had a hard time reconciling that with yourself - that the old you was creeping and and threatening who you want to be.

And I hope you know there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. There is always hope. There is always redemption. 

There is always, always, always forgiveness.

And there is so much beauty in the brokenness. 

And then… Oh man, then a couple weeks later…

Hope.

This is the one that knocked me down and wrecked me… The promise of hope is a promise made to all of us. Regardless of our past, that hope is real and that hope is coming.

Whether or not any of us deserve happiness, or any of the good things that find their way to us, isn't really the point…

Because that's grace. That's how grace works. He made it that way.

I hope you always know that grace is yours, no matter what.

He sees past anything you've ever done and loves you just the same.

Maybe this is silly, but so be it… I hope it gets to who needs it.

winter is coming

First, I'd like to submit my disclaimer here...

All photos here are completely iPhone and completely unedited because as much as I could manipulate some of these to make them brighter and clearer, I want to show you exactly what things looked like. 

There.

Now, before I dive into the tale of what could have easily become one of the dumber things I've ever done (but turned out to be one of the more wonderful) let’s start with that photo up there of what it looks like when a wee baby ice storm sweeps through the upper left corner of Oregon.

Fun, right? Super fun.

it looked like someone broke a plate glass window by the time I got all that ice chipped off my car

And fun getting down my staircase that was perfectly preserved in a similar layer of the frozen stuff. I didn't even have time to sing  “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?” because it took me five minutes to get down 17 stairs (no joke) and I was running late for work by that point. 

Also, my face was numb.

I lost my sense of humor somewhere between 29 and 33 degrees.

Now some may say this is why you don’t choose to live in the arctic north (Blake), but as for me and my home? 

We shall serve the snow. And ice. And freezing temperatures.

And not just because I was able to chill a bottle of wine down to my preferred temp in less than 20 minutes by setting it out on the front porch. That was an added bonus.

What’s really going on is that what’s happening on the outside is kind of mirroring what’s going on on the inside. Because for a minute there, I really thought the harsh season I've been kind of caught in was ending and a bright new season was sweeping in with all the hope and joy that seasons like that bring. 

And when that turned out to not be the case, it hurt. 

And I felt like the rug had been yanked out from under me and it kind of felt like no matter where I hid, the shrapnel still hit me. And for a while there I felt like winter would be here forever and with my trust being broken in such a hurtful way, I could feel myself putting walls up, shutting down to the possibility of hope, and bracing for the plunge back into the freezing, solitary storm.

But then, as happens when you force yourself into a different perspective, I realized that this was not something God was doing.

This was something God was allowing.

 Now I’m not so sure I agree with him on all that, but you know what? He’s never failed me before and even when it took time to really understand it, I can look back on all the things that didn't work out the way I wanted them to, the people who I so hopefully wanted in my life that He said “NO” to, and I am grateful for what He protected me from. And I know I will thank Him again. I know there is a bigger picture here that I can’t see yet.

But, right now it still hurts and there are a million questions left unanswered and there is concern for someone who I do still care about very much and all I can do is pray.

Pray for answers, pray for guidance, pray for him and pray that I can trust God when He says “I've got this.”

So what am I getting at? I’m getting at the idea that there’s a solid chance that God is saying to me, “Hey kid, stop trying to get through winter and just take a second to see there’s a whole lot of beauty you’re missing out on.”

Because there's still beauty in it. Even in the most desolate of times, there is light - if you choose to see it. 

There is beauty in brokenness.

There is beauty in heartbreak.

There is beauty is the promise that this season will end and a new one will begin.

And there is definitely something to be said about how beautiful winter can really be.

So with that in mind, and with a day off a week or so ago, I decided to do what I usually do when I need to clear my head:

I went on an adventure.

Didn't have enough time to drive to Montana or anything, but knowing that the Gorge was still iced over made it all the more tantalizing so off I went.

(I would later be yelled at for not letting anyone know I was going hiking by myself - fair point, that was my bad)

Have you ever seen a frozen waterfall?

I mean, I'm an enthusiastic person to begin with - but this might take the cake.

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up - fine holiday fun.

Even at Multnomah, my first stop, a waterfall I have visited more in the past six years than I can even count, my heart skipped beat after beat. Never had I seen it in such splendor. Never could I have imagined how she'd look in glacial blue.

And Horsetail - the falls I usually take nothing more than a glance at on my way up to Ponytail and that magnificent little cavern... Horsetail nailed me to a wall. 

I probably would have gone on up the trail to Ponytail if I hadn't had something else in mind (and if it wasn't already pushing two o'clock on a day when the sun would be hunkering down what seemed like hours earlier than usual).

Another time, my old friend...

What I was more after was a trail that I'd only been to once before. 

It was one I'd hiked on a gorgeously perfect spring day with someone I was (at the time) all kinds of giddy about and even though the season ended and the giddiness was replaced by something a little less than positive, I kept that trail and that waterfall close to me because it meant something to me that went beyond that day and that boy. 

As I pulled off 84-E and into the lot at the Wahclella Falls trail head, a sense of giddiness returned to me and I realized that this was the feeling of claiming a place for your own and not letting the memory of someone claim it for you. 

I decided right then, as I doubled-checked my pack and made sure I had all the important things (water, extra jacket, knife, whiskey, the usual), that this was in fact my place, not our place. And now I was going to see it in a state that probably didn't even occur to me until that morning when I decided that the only thing to do on my day off was to go hiking in the snow and ice.

It was completely quiet as I filled out the little stub for my parking pass with my license plate number and the time & date of my departure. I wasn't too concerned about getting lost or caught on the trail - it's only a couple of miles in and out, and there were two other cars in the lot so even worst case scenario, I felt pretty confident the outcome wouldn't be too catastrophic. 

Can you even imagine the smell of winter in a place like this?

Absolutely ice cold, but still the scent of forest and water and wet earth. I had to navigate myself carefully over some of the icier bits of trail, a few times even giving in to the slips and just planting my butt directly on the ice and sliding down luge-style (highly recommend that course of action, actually - way more fun than trying to be all cool and defy gravity). 

The only sounds I really heard was the crunching of snow and the occasional icicle breaking off and crashing down.

And while the image of running into a wolf and being eaten alive did flash through my paranoid brain every few feet or so (can you blame me after this wild kingdom moment?), I mostly found myself completely at peace, focusing on the task at hand (read: not dying in the gorge), and praying over and over that I could find as much beauty in this spiritual winter as I could in this very real winter I was currently so mesmerized by.

And as the icy trail took me closer and closer, I anxiously awaited that first sound of rushing water to tell me I was almost there...

And then, sooner than I'd remembered and yet even still, not soon enough...

Let me reiterate this: it was freezing. And the wind created by the falls whipped through me like knives. 

But I couldn't have been happier. It was like seeing an old friend. I couldn't stop smiling. 

And as dictated by tradition, I of course needed a nip of whiskey upon reaching my destination.

Oregon was even so kind as to offer me the chance to chill it down a bit.

After taking a few more senseless selfies (downside to solo-hiking: no one to take the pictures that prove you were there) and a few more (mostly identical) shots of the falls, it was time to pack back up and head back down. 

Other than passing a couple of girls about halfway back (and answering their question as to how one gets past the ice - at which point I sat down and introduced them to the little-known sport of kings we now know as trail-luge), I once again had the trail to myself.

And so I sang - loud, and in between dealing with an unruly runny nose/succumbing to the very ladylike blowing of snot rockets) (nice, Lairen, real nice) - I sang songs of worship that had  been on my heart these past few months and prayed out loud to the only One I know I can trust with everything.

Everything that's going wrong, everything that's going right.

I am frustrated and exhausted and ready for a new season to finally, finally, please come. 

But until it does, I'm going to pay attention to what this winter is trying to teach us. 

And make some stupid faces. Because hi, have you met me?

goddaughters are the coolest

So my plan to get back at it and blog like a maniac – not so much then, yeah? The sounds of crickets would be deafening if there were any ears here to hear it.

Spectacular, I’ll just continue on eating bits of roasted coconut and thinking about dinner...

For anyone still here though it’s worth mentioning that a lot has been going on here lately and that would mostly explain my absence in this space.

Most notably, and continuing the train of thought from my last post, there is this tiny new human on planet earth called Ramona.

She’s like the best pound of sugar ever and when she’s all wrapped up in a blanket she’s like a noisy little burrito that smells like a warm summer day.

Of course she was far less impressed with me the first time we met but I won’t hold it against her. It must be something about the girls in this family of ours… Olivia was a little “take it or leave it” with me upon first impressions too (bears mentioning however that Jack and Tristen seemed to have no issue with me so this just leads me to believe I’m destined to be a boy mom someday which I am so totally happy with).

She soon warmed up to me though and by our second meeting she slept all snuggly like on my chest for the entire day. I'm not sure which one of us was happier about that. Actually, Maria might have been happiest about that because for the first time in a month neither she nor Chris had a baby attached to them and they could focus on being all cute and snuggly with each other. Win win win. 

As for me though, I was just happy to be there and rest in the complete awe of the tiny little person in my arms.

This little soul who was so prayed for so long before she was even an earthly spark. 

And it is amazing to me when I stop and think about it too intensely and really let it all sink in...

A couple of years ago, and I'll remember this forever, I sat across the table from Maria over a not-quite-meal of tortilla chips and salsa while we waited for whatever sizzling plate it was we had ordered. The two of us along with Ashley (and in between wicked bouts of missing Laura who was now far away in Montana) were playing catch up from the past few months and wondering how we could live in the same city and not manage to make time to be together.

That was when Maria told us, so many months after the fact, about how close she had come to not being there to sit with us and talk with us and eat chips with us long after the bowl of salsa had run out...

And I remember the look on her face when she registered the look on mine - the immediate turn of the tables with her sweet and humble heart instantly concerned for the sister who was now the one hurting...

And then I cried. 

Because the thought of losing my Maria was too much. And the thought of her feeling like no one needed her was so lost on me because there I was, right there, needing my friend at that very moment, and every moment, even when she wasn't but two feet away from me. 

Then to fast forward to this new moment.

With her watching me now as I held her tiny daughter for the first time.

This was what God had been working on.

...Oh boy, that got heavy and a little lost in thought there... But that's about the gist of it. From one extreme to the other, I watched my sister go from questioning her own existence to bringing a whole new life into existence.

And that is just one side of the story of how Ramona Charlie got here.

And now she is three months old and I continue to be completely unable to get over it.

I suspect this will be the case for the rest of her life.

I'm ok with that.

dean + robin

(below is the toast I was asked to give at Dean and Robin's wedding on November 1, 2014... I'm still almost crying)

I can't promise how far into this I'm gonna get before I lose it, but I'm pretty sure that's half the reason you asked me to do this in the first place so I hope one of you had money riding on it because otherwise this is a total waste. 

Anyway... When I first found myself falling in with this group of goofballs from Indiana, these hell-bent angels with luck on their side, I was given brief descriptions of everyone I'd soon meet. And among those things was the first thing I heard about Dean.

 I was told that he was the ugliest sonofabitch I'd ever meet.

And let's be honest... That wasn't too far off. 

But that sparkling introduction aside, what I didn't know was that I was actually hearing the first description of a guy who'd end up being one of my best friends in this world. 

Dean and I kept in touch and along with some gross abuse of the us postal service, we would text pretty often about important things like what we wanted on our tombstones (for the record, even in death, Dean will meet you at didiers).

But one night he started texting me about this girl he'd met. There were expletives and exclamation points and lots of capitalization. And then I remember when the text came through...

"We've got the same Lawrence Arms tattoo."

And I just remember thinking, "Oh dude, that's your girl."

And then another text came... "SHE'S A WHISKEY GIRL!" 

And I thought, "Oh damn, that's my girl."

And once again, what I didn't realize was that I was hearing the first description of another one of my best friends. 

You don't get a lot of chances in life to see a love story from the very beginning, but with Dean and Robin I've had the honor of seeing it unfold from the start, even from 2000 miles away. 

You guys, this day and the people here are a testament to you both, and what you friendships mean to all of us. I can only speak for myself, but I know it echoes from everyone here:

If we know one thing about you, it's that you're there for us. For so many of us here you have stood alongside in the greatest joys and been the ones to climb down into the pits with us for the most crushing lows. And you haven't dared leave us until we all climbed out together. 

And getting to be here with you on your wedding day now? 

This is the honor of a lifetime. 

So here's to Dean and Robin. 

For everyone else who's doing it wrong, you guys are doing it exactly right.

You are worth it.

God loves you so completely, so wholly, that it is impossible for him not to have done the things that he's done. He is there in the storms. He is there in the calm time. He is always there. 

Ramona Charlie

A couple-a-three-or-so (I've clearly lost track of time and/or the ability to count backwards)

months ago, a very pregnant Maria came back to Portland so that we could all celebrate the impending arrival of the tiniest member of our rag-tag little family, Ramona Charlie, with possibly the best baby shower of all time (Mean Girls themed and the resident three year old accidentally did a shot of vodka - for the record, EV is an angry drunk). 

Anyway, the last time I'd seen Maria, we didn't know Ramona was Ramona yet so talking about Tiny and buying gender-neutral onesies were our only option. This time though, I could barely get in the door of her brother's apartment without squealing at the sight of that seven month bump and practically launched at Maria because LA is too far away and I don't get to hug her nearly as often as I want to.

Before I could even put my purse down though, she stopped me and with a smile on her face and said she needed to ask me something... And then she asked me to be godmother to her daughter. 

And then I cried. 

And then her sister asked her what the hell she did to me.

And then I cried some more. Because never in my life have I been so honored. Also, I may have continued to cry every time I thought about what it means to be a godmother to such an amazing baby girl for like, the rest of the week. 

So I suppose it goes without saying that when Maria went into labor and let three aunties know their newest niece was fully on her way, there was appropriate hysteria. In fact, I'd be so bold as to say our four-way text message thread from that 24 hours or so is one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. 

All night we waited. 

Laura, Ashley and I texted and called back and forth between us, hoping one might have gotten word in the meantime. I was texting Lizz (Maria's sister) with the fervor I would usually reserve for the second coming, or finding out how much longer the wait will be for a table at Tasty N Sons (fifteen more minutes, always about fifteen more minutes) (or, in Maria's case, two more centimeters, always about two more centimeters). The real fun was once Ria got an epidural and joined in on the conversation herself. We were all getting a little goofy at that point...

Finally, FINALLY... There she was. 

July 24, 2014 at 1:45am - 7 lbs, 8oz and 19.5 inches of incredible wrapped in the fiery little Martin package. 

And so she's here. Ramona is here! My goddaughter is here and I can't believe how much I love this tiny person! The world is forever changed and my heart will never be the same because SHE'S HERE! Welcome to the world, Tiny girl. 

You are loved so incredibly, you have no idea.

Pictures from our first meeting coming up next...

six years

Six years ago today, after a two day drive, I arrived in Portland and my love affair with Oregon began. This place has been home to some of the happiest times in my life, and my refuge in some of the most devastating. I've made my dearest friends, fallen in love, lost friends and learned how to fall out of love with both people and places when you know it's just not right anymore. I've played in the snow, danced in the rain, crawled through waterfalls and climbed mountains. It was here that I became an aunt and a godmother, and discovered what an incredible love and honor that is. This is where I learned how to trust and love God in a way I never imagined, because of things I could have never imagined. In the last six years, Oregon has raised me up, dragged me down, guided me, pummeled me, bent me and forged me in a wild, unruly fire. It has taught me how to be the woman I want to be. Because of this place I have learned that I had no idea how utterly whole and complete a heart can really be. Oregon, you have become so much a part of who I am and every good thing in my life is because of that last minute decision to pack up my car and drive north... Best decision I ever made.

i had a monty python joke set to go for a title but it took too long to explain and I think I'm the only one who thought it was funny

the most accurate portrait of how life's been lately

It seems like quite the trend lately to let Instagram completely eat up the once beloved platform of proper blogging and if that is indeed the case, then consider me right on the mark here. 

It’s been a weird sort of writer’s block (if that’s even the issue) when it comes to updating things here lately and while I’ve gone through spurts of being both super dedicated and falling off the blogging wagon (this wagon, I’m guessing, would no doubt be a DIY project covered in pictures of our feet and objects held in one hand against a neutral background made into some sort of homemade wallpaper and then photographed against a rustic nature scene)… 

Oh lord, I’ve already lost my point. There was too much of an aside there...

Point here being that while I still take pictures of every single thing that happens on a day to day basis (sorry IG, you knew what you were getting into when you followed me), I’m not entirely sure I miss keeping this page up to date. I still love reading everyone’s posts (and seriously, just because I don’t comment, it doesn’t mean I don’t read your posts! I just read them all on my phone and haven’t found a solid way to comment without making me want to chuck my phone into the nearest gorge...). On that note though, I kind of love following life on everyone’s favorite photo platform – it seems so much more active and personal somehow, even without as many accompanying words. It must be that instantaneous nature of it.

That being said, I do want to try and get some things up on here a little more often. I miss the need to write (like I said, some sort of writer’s block… The words just ain’t coming lately… Letting the pictures do the talking…) and there has actually been so much going on that I desperately want to put into words and talk about and share, I think now it’s just a matter of not knowing where to start.

So I guess there’s a bit of a warning tangled up in this too?

More parentheticals and ellipses too, no doubt. 

There might be a few good, long, supremely overdo rambles… Pretty sure my dad will be the only one happy to see those (HI DAD!).

OH, and most importantly (and probably first post after this)… 

I HAVE A GODDAUGHTER!!!

More on our beautiful Ramona Charlie coming soon…

because montana

Since May 4th, I have logged roughly 2,854 miles of solo-road-tripping to and from Montana. 

I can't say this was always the reasonable choice to make when it came to deciding what to do with myself when I had a handful of days off, but I can promise you these trips were the best decisions I've made in a long time.

The trip to Red Lodge was obvious. And long overdue at that. 

But going to Libby, Montana was, in so many ways, a journey that I think was planned for me long before I had ever even heard of that sleepy little mountain town. It was an adventure toward a friendship that has been three years (or, honestly, a lifetime) in the making.

Three years ago when I met Dani, neither one of us were in a very good place to be honest. We were two girls kind of messed up in our own spectacular ways, each dealing with heartbreak, loneliness and insecurities for a whole circus of reasons. Strangely, I don't think either of us would go back and undo any of it, knowing as we do now that those trials got us to the people we've become, but still... We were pretty raw back then.

And to an extent, I don't know that I'd have imagined we'd keep each other after all was said and done.

But we did. And only partially because few other people care to deal with our bizarre personalities.

Even as relationships changed and the summer of The Camaraderie came to an end, we stayed in touch, checking in every so often and catching up over too much food at Tasty N Sons.

When I told my mom I was going back to Montana her response was,

"Wait, now how do you know Dani?"

The short answer? She dated Shamoo and then we kept her.

The long answer, I'd come to discover after spending four days crawling through the mountains and eating all of the foods and drinking all of the beers, was that Someone up there had this one planned a long, long time ago... It just took a while for us to catch up with ourselves...

My first night in town, after mowing down on the insane homemade pizzas her fella Grant (new brewmaster at the soon-to-open Cabinet Mountain Brewing), Dani and I grabbed a bottle of wine and  down by the Kootenai River to talk about life and solve all the world's problems. And what was amazing was that it was like meeting for the first time. We traded life stories and got ourselves up to speed on so much of what the other's life had been up to that point, and between the sounds of the river and that bottle of cabernet we realized that the next few days were going to be more than just a mini-vacation... They were going to be game-changers. 

Like I said - this was a journey that found me. Not the other way around.

Saturday morning, after waking up with the sun pouring in through the window of a room I'm still dreaming about, we munched on the homemade granola with homemade almond milk (Dani, teach me your ways!) and drank coffee in their sun soaked living room while we planned our route into the mountains for the day. 

Our original plan was to camp out but we decided that coming home to Grant's "pork-fat burgers" sounded like a much better idea.

But first - adventure!

Yeah, so Dani and I were in old mining country, but also bear country.

Bear poop everywhere.

And we were the geniuses that went out with little-to-no protection that included my knife and our girlish screams if it had come down to it.

Call me crazy, but if I'm gonna face down a grizzly bear I will require more than just bear spray.

Next time I'm bringing a gun. 

Moving on!

So this hike… Let me tell you about these here backwoods…

The hike up to Granite Lake it littered with steep inclines, barely-there-trails, avalanche paths, spectacular viewpoints, crossing back and forth over rivers (maybe the same river? probably the same river), log bridges, fording steams, bear poop, snow… Six or seven miles up into the mountains and you're going to be blown away by just about everything.

I want to live there.

By the way, there was new life coming up through the impossible-to-imagine-anything-surviving avalanche trail… I'll be honest, I almost started crying it was so beautiful in its own sweet little way.

See that up there? Avalanches.

That'll remind you how wonderfully magnificent the world around you is.

 

And then we got here. 

By our estimates, we couldn't have been more than 10 minutes from the lake. The tree lines, the way the mountains were cratering… We could practically smell it.

The photo above was just as we were crossing over the river one more time… The greenery on the right hand side of the photo was what we were crawling through when two things happened:

1) I smacked my knee on a tree stump that I couldn't see due to the thick shrubbery (there's a good Monty Python joke in there somewhere) and smacked it so hard that I'm not sure what what louder, the "thunk" sound it made or the string of eloquently screamed obscenities I emitted. Either way, there was a second there where I legitimately thought I'd dislocated my knee and as a result I spent the rest of the trip with what appeared to be a kneecap on my kneecap. And...

2) WE SAW A MOOSE. And you know what? 6+ miles up a mountain, hot and sweaty and tired and hungry, the back end of a bull moose - all rounded and brown and fluffy like - looks an awful lot like the back end of a grizzly, all rounded and brown and fluffy like. Until you see it's antlers. And it moves. And starts trotting off toward the lake.

Dani and I both froze. I mean, we froze. I think it took almost a full minute for us to process what had just happened. We basically stood there holding onto each other trying to snap back out of it. It was surreal. 

Have you ever seen a moose?

THEY ARE HUGE.

And prone to tweak out and mow you down for no reason.

So long story short, we decided not to be heroes and started back down the mountain. 

"Death by moose" was not quite what either of us had in mind. I mean, maybe that's cool for some - pretty cool epitaph I guess - but eh, you know, not for me. I'm good for now.

So yeah… Back over the river and through the wood.

We propped up back down by the river a couple miles back down and scarfed down the meat and cheese we'd brought with us (and my traditional nip of whiskey) and, now deeply paranoid by the fact that WE SAW A MOOSE, sat looking over our shoulders every five seconds like escaped convicts. 

Worth it.

Dani summed it up better than I can though:

"Hiked up to Granite Lake with Lauren Morton-Farmer today. Gorgeous! We saw a moose. A MOOSE. I don't remember anything else. I saw a moose. My life is complete."

Oh, and then there was that time we stopped in the middle of an avalanche to take a self-timed photo and both inexplicably struck a jazz-hands pose.

That's really the only reason we're friends, folks.

The rest of the trip can pretty much be summed up with food, beer and walking like an idiot because we thought it was a good idea to climb mountains.

It's our own damn fault.

But seriously you guys, these burgers.

Grant does this thing where he grinds up bacon in the food processor and mashes it into the ground beef.

And then my head explodes because WHY DID I NEVER THINK TO DO THAT?

And Dani cooked up kale and asparagus and you guys, I can't even tell you how well and happily we ate in those few days I was there.

Food, beer, mountains and friends. 

God, I can't explain how happy.

Also, see above… That's what 11pm looks like there on the longest day of the year.

OH OH! And did I mention that we were really close to Canada? Apparently AT&T thought we crossed the border and I then I panicked momentarily because my passport needs to be renewed and Grant gently reminded me that I'd have probably noticed a border crossing.

Clearly, this was the first time he'd met me and would be surprised to see how occasionally oblivious I can be when I'm too busy looking out the window hoping to see a rogue ram or other cliff-dwelling animals in the wild.

But we did see that moose so… Where was I?

We splashed around in Grave Creek for a while to kill time while we waited for Homestead Ales to open up.

OK, let's talk about this place now… Grant and Dani had discovered it about a week earlier.

It's in the middle of nowhere just outside the little main street through Eureka, MT. It opens at 3pm and while we were the first ones there, the locals started showing up not long after.

Big trucks and quads, gators and assorted dirt-covered vehicles. Because that's just how they roll.

I love Montana. 

Anyway, yes, beer… They take your name down as soon as you order because you're not getting more than three pints which I think is actually pretty awesome. They want you to stay safe - I love Montana. Montana looks out for you.

So we sat for a few hours, sucked down some IPAs and continued to fall all over ourselves with how incredibly blessed we were to be right there, living a life so beautiful it was almost too much to take it.

I still can't wrap my head around it.

By the time I had to leave Monday morning, I had rooted myself firmly in denial that the weekend was already over. But, for all that, I also determined that I'd be back.

And soon.

And by soon I mean like, August. Because Dani invited me and I'm crazy enough to do it.

Because Montana.

Oh, I also got a moose antler. It seemed appropriate. 

And the cute little mountain man I bought it from made my day. 

So yeah… I'll be back, Libby. I'll definitely be back.

Final thought: I found out I know the guy whose cousin owns this shop. Small world, eh?