Falling in love with Montana
"You have a big mountain to climb!" is not the sort of text you eagerly await from your girlfriend’s father. But Billy, a true Southern gent, meant no ambiguity. As dawn cracked the alarms sounded in our Airbnb and six of us bundled into the back of the Dodge. A cool mist hung in the valley as “Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland)” started up on the radio and got the blood running. At 6:15 a.m. we entered the shadow of Emigrant Peak, which at 10,921 feet, commands Montana’s Paradise Valley. Emigrant owes its name to Thomas Curry, a pioneer who struck gold in a creek on the east side of the mountain in 1863.
