One of the things I’ve done to treasure about Montana is easy it is to hang out with people if that’s what you want. Maybe it’s the community we’ve cultivated, or maybe it’s just the people who gravitate to the Rocky Mountains, but it’s just really conducive to normal unscheduled human time together. People just hang out.
Now sure we live in a pretty special weirdo valley with Gallatin. I’m a child of a weirdo mountain town valley. Boulder and Bozeman remain very fundamentally similar attitudes on life even if in Montana you’ve got way more space. People are friendly and people are weird. The tolerance and acceptance is what you’d expect from a high trust culture.
I’ve got trips to big cities ahead of me. I’ll be in New York City in the coming weeks. It only took a half dozen texts to block my calendar for a full 72 hours in Manhattan. There is surprisingly little room for chill hangs. Honestly I was impressed so many people wanted to spend time with me. But also booking out that time is how New York works. The days are scheduled.
I’d prefer a world where it’s simple to say just come on over. We can do that in Montana. Friends come over. We always have house guests. But in a city I can’t afford to just rent out a whole bar or event space so it’s not like I can have a big gathering unless the weather is good enough for the park. So perhaps that’s just the nature of higher competition venues.
But I will say it’s awfully nice to just have amazing people just hang out and be normal with you. Maybe you go for a meal. Maybe you have folks over for a beer. Sometimes people bring their dogs. And it’s just a real nice way to live. Lots of space to be private and plenty of joy to be found in occasionally being a social animal.