How can we understand an individual’s worldview?
How do we build community?
Can we belong a community of people who are different than us?
These were the questions running through my mind during my time in Montana. A few weeks ago, my friend and I packed up my car with the essentials and made a beeline for a cabin in the Whitefish mountains. Friends and family met this decision with curiosity and excitement, albeit mixed with a healthy degree of skepticism: what were we going to be doing there? It’s a fair question: We crossed mountain ranges, vast farmlands, and rivers to plant ourselves among a tight-knit community that was in stark contrast to our own in the Bay Area.
My friend had less qualms than I did about standing out in Whitefish, dragging us to do everything the mountain town has to offer. At the touted local bar, Remington, we danced the Jitterbug to a live country music band. At the rodeo in Columbia Falls, we cheered on cowboys doing barrel races and bull rides. We took a shotgun class with a retired sheriff in his backyard. We went to the farmer’s market and more than drank our fair share of IPAs at every bar and brewery. We were picked up by a friendly group in a boat for an afternoon ride on Flathead Lake.
Fun activities and bonding aside, I continued to wonder: Do the people here have any interest to understand us and our worldview? Would they appreciate the diverse set of experiences that new members might bring to their community? Would pleasantries lead to real connection when we started deeper conversations about identities, politics, or values? I didn’t directly test the theories, but my inkling based on the quality of encounters we had, was yes.
For the trip, I brought along a few classic cabin reads: Walden, Leaves of Grass, The Grapes of Wrath, a climbing magazine, and a few others. Yet the book I actually gravitated towards is a collection of essays by Terry Tempest Williams: Erosion - Essays of Undoing. One story struck me in particular: A man, while on a recreational whitewater rafting trip, attempted to jump into the rushing river to his death. He was quickly pulled back by the alarmed tourists aboard, who did not know him but did not hesitate to save his life. As one of the people in the raft, Williams reflected on the encounter, “I think back to that moment on the river often, reflecting on how important community is to our survival and the amount of work it takes to support each other — and what we lose if we don’t. I think about the people who would have grabbed my arms or held on to my ankles if I had wanted simply to surrender to the rapids...To belong to a place and a group of people saves our lives. Without that, we lose sight of this precious gift called life.”
To belong. The sentiment resonated with me, overlooking the treelines of the nearby mountain ranges, as my close friends and family lived over 600 miles away. While my existing community wasn’t around, the passage was a good reminder that there were new people I could meet who could become my friends and family. Maybe this belief is what manifested for us the spontaneous invitations from the locals we met in the dive bars, to go kayaking with them, to go boating with them, and to share meals with them.
We are not islands — we have people we are connected to, people we care for, and people we haven’t even met yet, who will become important to us. Our actions and wellbeing inevitably affect others, even when we might wish for some temporary escape, even when we wish to be solitary (Sorry Thoreau, but modern 21st Century life might require more civic duty and compassion from us, rather than dogged self determination).
A boyfriend first told me about Bozeman. He was moving there for the winter ski season and I could tell his hunger for this community was deep. At the time, I couldn’t identify the city on a map and couldn’t fathom spending time in such a foreign place with him. As someone who has traveled a fair amount abroad, mainly to large cities in Asia and Europe, I had to confront that the limit of my comfort zone in 2020 ended solidly at the eastern borders of Washington and California, where urban meets rural. The breakup made me think hard about my fears of being around people who challenged my worldview. In the months that followed, I tried to dip my toes in the waters of alternative ways of life, and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found just around the river bend. Bend, Boulder, Breckenridge, Moab, Salt Lake City…and other cities became real places with real personalities to me, not just imagined locales.
Almost a year later, I made it to Bozeman. Ironically, the city felt like it could be transported to California without missing a beat. Yes, the city had glimmers of distinct local roots and Montana pride, but real estate has boomed and with that came the trendy coffee shops, boutiques, and bars catering to the steady flow of folks on their way to Yellowstone National Park. I’m not sure the locals appreciate that their hometown had been coined ‘Boz Angeles’ by the WSJ. I’m not sure there’s anything that could revert these changes.
Community building is complex. Today, we have physical communities formed based on geography, religion, heritage and lifestyle. We also have digital communities connected on the basis of interests and ideologies. These are often intersectional in nature, with individuals tapping into many communities based on their multi-layered identities. We may find our communities by living in a place that resonates with our cultural roots, that affords us access to lifestyle preferences, and all the while connecting digitally with our tribes around the world.
While we can create community anywhere, feeling a sense of belonging in the place we live is incredibly important. Having people around who look like me, with life experiences and values like mine, feels increasingly important for human flourishing. We all have personal histories and connections to cultures that we carry with us, wherever we choose to settle down. Having lived in Shanghai, the Pacific Northwest, and the Bay Area, I can’t imagine being a part of a lasting community that does not value diversity, cultural appreciation, and open-mindedness. While pandemic travel restrictions and polarizing political views have made cultural exchange increasingly difficult to attain, there is a lot of value in continuing to grow our understanding of people and communities with alternative perspectives. It took a long, long journey out to Montana to reaffirm these sentiments. I am glad we made the drive.