Last Chance in the Last Best Place
Why I Ran Away (Back) to Montana
Today Radical Acts of Creation shifts focus to a new writing project, tentatively titled “Running Away to Montana: Famous, Infamous, and Yearning Emigrants to the Last Best Place.” The surge of newcomers during and after COVID-19 has inspired me to inquire into why people have migrated to Montana over all these years. My book will combine stories of Indigenous nations, well-known figures such as George Bird Grinnell and Thomas McGuane, religious groups such as the Hutterites and Church Universal and Triumphant, and friends and acquaintances. This Substack will provide the occasion to workshop stories and ideas for the new book.
And that’s where you come in. Today I post an account of why I ran away (back) to Montana in 2008 and I’ll invite you, reader, to share your story. If you visited or moved to Montana, why did you come to this state? What vision, fantasy, or assumptions did you carry when you arrived? Were you inspired by earlier arrivals, marketing, literature, etc.? Did your vision hold up to reality? Why have you stayed (or not)? Would you choose to come again? These are just some of the questions you might engage. I’ll publish your responses in this newsletter as time and opportunity allow and may quote some or all of them in my book. Feel free to send your replies to eganken@hotmail.com.
The e-mail message arrived out of the blue the summer of 2008, early in my sabbatical as an English professor in Springfield, Missouri: “Here’s a chance to come home.”
Ah, home—Montana. My friend had attached a job description for the executive director of Humanities Montana, dedicated to providing programs and grants on history, literature, Native American Studies, and more all across the vast state. I had served on the board of the organization for four years back in the early ‘90s and fell in love with its mission.
Besides, I had published a book about my home state’s culture, Hope and Dread in Montana Literature, that argued stories by writers such as James Welch, Mary Clearman Blew, and Ivan Doig could provide an antidote to extremist ideologies represented by Ted Kaszynski, the Freemen, and the Militia of Montana. I wanted to put my faith to the test—could a public humanities organization deliver on that promise?
Should I stay or should I go?
I was born in Polson, Montana, on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the mid-50s, but my family moved six times before I graduated high school in Great Falls. I had lived in the orbit of Chicago from the ages of 2 to 12. My father brought us back to Montana in 1968, that apocalyptic year, when he took a job as alumni director at his alma mater, Carroll College, and my talented older siblings could attend college tuition-free.
Dad was taking advantage of connections and personal history to advance his children’s lives. He had grown up in lovely Lewistown at the exact center of the state, the son of merged homesteading families, and after service as a medic in the Philippines during World War Two, he graduated from Carroll with a degree in English. My mother, the daughter of a French-Canadian family from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, came to Montana after her sister and brother had transplanted and sung its praises.
My parents were married Memorial Day weekend, 1949, and promptly set off on a honeymoon managing an African-American women’s softball team that played White men’s teams throughout the Western United States and Canada. After the adventure of a lifetime, they settled in Lewistown, where Dad taught English and coached basketball and drama at St. Leo’s High School and Mom gave birth to their first four children. Following moves to Polson and Bozeman and the addition of two more children, Dad took a leap of faith on selling real estate in the suburbs of Chicago. When that proved fool’s gold, he taught high school English in Beloit, Wisconsin, for three years. He seems to have accepted the Carroll offer without hesitation. Though a much-praised instructor, he desired to lead organizations. Mom had long wanted to return to her adopted state, in part because she had never liked a humid climate, in larger part because Montana signified independence for a younger child from a large, loud family. A gift of their return was our youngest brother, a later-in-life offspring who seemed to validate the Montana move.
Yet when we came back to the state I was homesick for the Midwest of my childhood. Helena struck me as the back of the beyond, frighteningly exposed (a desiccated landscape and few trees) and monocultural (Chicago had immersed me in music and sports featuring Black and Hispanic players). A turning point came the summer between my eighth- and ninth-grade years when I took a field trip to the University of Montana to see a production of Man of La Mancha. I was immediately taken with the campus’s red-brick architecture and tree-lined Oval and the river valley sheltered by mountains. Attending UM for my undergraduate degree in English became inevitable.
When the job notice for Humanities Montana arrived it seemed the last call at the bar of my working life. I had just turned 52 and needed to work at least another decade to prepare for retirement. The previous winter I had interviewed for a dean’s job at a small liberal arts college in my favorite Midwestern city and realized that’s no life for someone who craved a place to put down final roots. A reception with senior faculty let me know I’d have five years at most—deans were unfortunate necessities easily discarded. Staying in Springfield or returning to Montana for the public humanities job seemed the only options.
While the thought of heading back to Montana was tempting, the move to Missouri had been a vexed one since we’d lived in Billings for seventeen years. My younger son was devastated we were abandoning his home. I felt compelled to redeem the change of place. Drury University was (is) an outstanding liberal arts school with gifted colleagues and engaged students, and teaching has always been my vocation. The university community had taken a chance on me by hiring a senior faculty member from far away to lead an excellent English Department. Our displaced son joined us in Springfield and he graduated from Drury as we took advantage of a tuition waiver similar to my father’s for his oldest children. My wife, Terry, adapted to our new home with determination and grace and enjoyed her work. We met fascinating, supportive friends who shared our political and cultural priorities. Best of all, we were living within a three-hour drive of my younger brother (the child of that return to Montana in ‘68) and his lovely family.
We were also smitten with the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, blessed with limestone bluffs, lush vegetation, floatable rivers, a lively musical scene, colorful and often outrageously funny storytelling, and quirky towns like the artists’ enclave of Eureka Springs.
The primary downside of life in southwestern Missouri? An intensely conservative evangelical culture that seemed unforgiving and intolerant. Megachurches dominated the landscape and the cultural climate, so unfamiliar to a descendant of Irish Catholic immigrants. That atmosphere was encapsulated by my encounter with an Assembly of God minister at a small dinner party, for when I mentioned I taught at the “liberal” arts college in the area, he turned his back on me and refused to engage the rest of the evening. I was literally beyond redemption.
For all that, I did not expect to get the job offer, and when it came, I was shocked by a flood of homesickness. Montana meant family, memory, landscape, and inspiration. Family especially, since though our parents had passed, two of my sisters were long-time residents of Helena while Terry’s sister and brothers claimed Missoula, Great Falls, and Bozeman as home. Add to those appeals a chance to live in a colorful college town just seventy miles from my birthplace.
We inhabit a house on the side of a mountain with an overview of the Missoula Valley, the Rattlesnake Mountains defining the edge of our vision. Since housing will likely be a major issue in future posts on coming to Montana, I should acknowledge that Terry and I struggled to find an affordable home when we returned (Springfield was a “low equity” market, that is, housing prices were at least half of those in Missoula). Our house has at least doubled in value over the past fifteen years, meaning we’re one of those Boomer couples that benefited from our birth dates and now pose a threat to young emigrants to the Last Best Place.
The Humanities Montana job itself was challenging, as all nonprofit leadership positions must be, but I never lost my joy in the mission. As the United States turned increasingly fractious and embittered, the humanities offered a chance to “Learn and Reflect Together,” as our motto claimed. I described our organization as “the extension service for the humanities,” a means to bring some of the best, most creative thinking on Montana’s college campuses to communities all across the fourth largest state. But knowledge flowed in all directions, for every day I met original thinkers and writers throughout the state, keen to share their discoveries with fellow citizens. When I published accessible Montana history books to raise funds for my nonprofit, I relished traveling to present in libraries, museums, community halls, schools, and churches in towns with populations ranging from 400 to 120,000. My argument in Hope and Dread seemed to prove out on the ground.
That confirmation seemed all the more important since a deep irony has shadowed our return to Montana: I fled the intolerant evangelical culture of the Bible Belt only to see the rise of reactionary politics in my home state. While Montana had long been purple politically, blending the liberal politics of labor unions and plains populism with the conservativism of ranching culture, the state has turned hard right in its governor, legislature, and Congressional delegation. Many of the successful candidates are wealthy out-of-staters who see an opportunity to buy power in a state of just one million people with relatively cheap marketing costs.
But as I’ve said too often to friends and family, I’m not going to let these rich bullies drive me from my birthplace. Terry and I have purchased our grave plot in a beautiful cemetery in Polson overlooking Flathead Lake. My twin siblings, parents-in-law, and brother-in-law Danny are buried there. The Mission Mountains frame the eastern sky. Those who visit our gravesite will know the Montana I love.
As my “Running Away to Montana” project unfolds, I’ll return often to the question of why I came back to Montana and claimed it as my ultimate home. Reading and responding to others’ stories may trigger rethinking and revision. The state’s physical beauty almost goes without saying. My family’s roots in early twentieth-century homesteading suggest a legacy, a historical bond. Years spent on higher education campuses in Helena, Great Falls, Billings, and Missoula have connected me to these academic spaces. Repeated journeys to wonderlands such as Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks reveal extraordinary landscapes close by. Even my comically inept efforts at backpacking in places such as the Bob Marshall Wilderness anchor me in this natural world. And Montana’s writers continue to reveal the state’s untold stories, especially those focused on Indigenous lives such as Debra Magpie Earling and Chris La Tray.
But there’s something willed and willful about my affirming Montana as home, for most of my siblings no longer live here and they seem perfectly happy in their chosen settings. Yes, as I listen and learn from others, I’ll continue to reflect on why this state named for its mountains remains my dwelling place. What story will you tell?