Joseph Shelton is a freelance writer who graduated from Montana State University with a degree in English Literature.  He lives in Bozeman, where he enjoys hiking, reading, and being a misunderstood artist-type. 

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Let us first dispense with the unpleasant confessions:  I'm a bad Montanan, one who much prefers the short, lovely summer, to the long and sometimes brutal winter.  I understand from watching others that the winter offers just as many, if not more reasons to love the state, but it seriously cuts into my walking, staying warm, and not having a bruised ass.

Of course, its not the idea of winter I'm against, since the idea is nice.  It comes to include chestnuts roasting on fires, hot cups of coffee or cocoa, wonderful, gaily lit holidays and, for many of you, nice powdery slopes.  These are all nice things whose usefulness ranges from 'very' to 'not', with the holidays" somewhere in between.  

Summer in Montana, however, seems to contain the best of everything.  There are cool mountain lakes and streams to dip your feet in, and long and winding trails to set them on.  There are barbecue smokers out of which float savory, irresistible smells, with sweaty glasses of beer on picnic tables nearby.  There are long days, and short skirts.  There is a feeling that time has come to a rest here and now, and that we can go on being summer folk forever.  There is everywhere the unplaceable conviction that romance and adventure await, and that they are a matter of course.  Franz Kafka said it better than me in a letter to Max Brod:  "one expects something out of Arabian Nights".

This is not to say that Autumn doesn't have its own appeal, which, like falling in love with an aging beauty, mixes the sepulchral with the nostalgic.  But it has little of the sheer joy of life that marks, at least for this non-skiier, what makes a Montana summer so singular.  Because in Spring, and in early Summer, you get to see a sparse wasteland come to life, watch blankets of dirty ice and snow become fields of happy verdancy.  It is as near to magic as I have seen.

And yet: if I would only just come over to their side and ski, I'd probably come to a better appreciation of winters here, since what looks like uniform sheets of snow are really teeming with a different kind of life.  There are snow foxes, ptarmigans, and a veritable legion of snow sports enthusiasts who likely wait all year, and with a similar relish to mine, for the oppressive heat to end, and for the time when Montana REALLY comes alive to start.

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