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Why are you where you are? How did you get there? Do you plan on staying? Have you ever visited a place and thought... man, if I could just go back.... Where was that place? IS there a perfect utopia, or are we naively spinning our wheels? Is it worth packing everything up and starting over again?

These were the questions my friend Cassie posed to her friends and family the other day. After a year discovering the trials and tribulations of the all-too-hip city of Portland, Oregon, Cassie is considering moving on... but to where?

I suppose my desire to live here in Bozeman can be said to border on the maniacal. After all, I had a lot of things going for me in Sonoma when I left -- good job, a great deal of respect in the community, a swell new girlfriend -- so a lot of people were amazed that I'd pack all that in and head to... where? Montana? Are you out of your mind?

Yes, I'm out of my mind. The job situation for here has ranged from sporadic to pathetic. The winters are long and brutal. It's a pain in the ass to get to here or get out of here. Housing prices are running amok. And romantically... well, that could be a book in itself. A tragedy, naturally.

So, why? Hell, I don't know. It's home, is all.

Maybe I should tell the story from the beginning.

Summer, 1989. My first summer out west, spent in Jackson, Wyoming. A co-worker, Aleece Erskin, mentions that the town of Bozeman, Montana has excellent thrift stores, good bands, and cheap housing.

May, 1991. I move to Montana. Big Sky, that is, the ski resort 50 miles south of Bozeman. Aleece has since moved to Bozeman with her new fiance, Chick Kurowski, and I spent my weekends couch surfing at their seedy dive apartment on North Black Avenue. As long as I brought a 12-pack of Schmitty's they were happy, and I spent many good weekends mountain biking, hot springing, and sitting on the porch drinking beer. Later they moved to a house (since condemned and demolished) at the foot of Peet's Hill, and we'd watch bikers attempt to launch off the ski jump, usually landing on their heads.

This was my introduction to Bozeman, and what I encountered with Aleece and Chick remain some of its most powerful selling points to me. Chick was a serious abstract painter, working as a line cook at the Cowboy Cafe. Aleece was a backpack sewer at Dana Designs. Both were dedicated to outdoor recreation, art, music, drinking beer, and living on the cheap. They were underemployed but it didn't matter because so was everyone. They were ornery, but usually in a good way. They kept a pistol in the silverware drawer. Although neither was from Montana, they seemed to embody the spirit that I found in Bozeman: as long as you weren't going to wreck it, you were pretty much okay in their book.

But I really wanted to move to Colorado. See, I just moved to Big Sky as a way of getting out west, but when the summer season was over I headed to Steamboat Springs, CO, which my calculations had designated with utopia potential: skiing, artsy, not too big, not too small. I got there in early November, and landed a job as a lift operator before the season opened. I stuck around a while longer, waiting to see if I could get in on the employee housing. I had to stay there several days for the answer, which finally came in: None of us with jobs would get employee housing. They were saving it for the late-arrival employees.

What about us on-time arrival employees? We were out on the street. I was so pissed off I immediately left Colorado, vowing never to return (which I actually managed to do for about five years or so).

I would go where they cared about me. I would return to Montana.

End of Part I