In God's Country

A few weeks ago I headed out with four fun loving gents on a Friday afternoon with our sights set on the coolest town in America---Cooke City. We had three days of snowmobiling planned and we couldn’t reach the powder fast enough. I hung my head out the back window of the truck the whole drive down...loving every rush of the February air on my face. With my new Nikon camera slung around my neck, I couldn’t snap pictures fast enough.....of the bison nudging their snout against the snow to dig up a few meager blades of grass.....of the snow capped peaks I hoped to be hill-climbing the next day...of the sun setting amongst clouds tinted rose and amethyst.

The next two days were pure bliss. I loved waking up in the morning to the braaaap, braaaap sound of sleds warming up outside and heading down main street in search of endless powder. I loved that there was absolutely no cell service and I could just work on getting back in touch with nature and the things I love most about life. I loved that the cafe we had breakfast at in the morning was also a bakery....and a sled rental shop....and a snowmobile gear store. I loved that everyone you walked by looked content and you just knew that they were living in that moment and not throwing a single thought to the day they would have to pack up and head home.

The first day and a half that we rode was overcast, snowy, and overall quite gloomy. But then Sunday afternoon, as I was flying across an open meadow we were playing in, the clouds parted and the sun broke through like a long lost prayer answered. All of the snow turned to crystals that reflected the sun’s warmth and shine onto my smiling face. The mountain ranges surrounding us appeared through the lifting haze. I think all five of us stopped riding for a moment to take in all the beauty around us that had been veiled just moments before. Then we tore off riding, drifting through every unmarked patch of snow we could find....not wanting to waste a single second of the light we knew could disappear any moment.

As I rode, my grandfather’s voice whispered through my mind. Whenever I go riding with him up Huckleberry Pass in Lincoln, he always stops at some point and just sits on his sled. He flips his helmet visor up and looks around him. After a few minutes he always smiles and says, “This is God’s country.” As I cruised through the powder and shot up the steep hillsides, his words rang out just as true here as in the trees of Lincoln. I was truly in God’s country.

It is days like those I spent in Cooke City where I am reminded that for me, God will never be an entity I seek out in a four walled church. For me, God is all around me at every moment of every day. But he is especially present to me in the uncharted mountains and forests that I seek to explore, be it by dirt bike, four-wheeler, or sled. There are no rules in nature and no societal expectations or obligations to bind you. High up in the mountains, you see the world the way I believe God intended us to. And a person is free to be whoever they really are, without fear or hesitation.

Days like those in Cooke make me wish I never had to go home. Of course I’d miss all my loved ones, but anyone who really knows me knows that I belong in the mountains and amongst the trees, and in the flowing rivers and streams. My heart has always been married to the landscapes that define Montana. In the dark moments of my life, I will always remember those three glorious days riding in Cooke where the land is still untamed and uncharted....where bison still roam without any conception of the civilized world just beyond the mountains. I was free that day. I was whole that day. I rode next to God that day.