A letter from a local
A river runs through it. So does everything else.
Missoula is the rare mountain town that's an actual town — bookstores, a symphony, dive bars with good bands, a university keeping everyone curious — with a surf wave in the middle of it. Brennan's Wave is downtown. People kayak on their lunch break, then go back to work slightly damp.
Five valleys meet here, which means five directions of trail. I run the M before work, the Rattlesnake is endless, and the Bitterroot and Blackfoot are forty minutes from a cast in any direction. Snowbowl hangs over town for the winter months, scrappy and steep and ours.
The jobs picture is sneaky-good — health systems, digital shops, the university, publishing. It's the kind of place where careers are real but nobody's ever asked me what I bill an hour.
Come in early October when the larch turn the hillsides gold and the river fog burns off by ten. You'll get it immediately.
— Joel