This is Montana...

Where you and your daughter will drive 80 miles to attend a 40 horse parade in the rain with friends  who drove 40 miles themselves to join you.

A friend who will bring two books about women ranchers in the West who write. A friend who still has your kids' clothing from a 120 mile sleepover with her four and your two kids five months ago. You'll visit as hard as you can with her while the kids "drink cocoa" in a local sandwich shop.  The decision will be made to feed them at McDonalds and the visit will continue, with french fries and stories of brandings.

 You'll then load up and drive another 78 miles, narrowly avoiding a speeding ticket, to go to a baby shower in a bar for a friend you've only actually seen in person one other time.

The other time was a seven day blind friend-date in another state with a concert and fauhncy dinners scheduled...the binding interests being (among other things) wine, Pat Green, and an Eastern Montana upbringing. A friend who understands the idea of deep roots and a restless heart.  A friend who subscribes to Bon Appetit magazine so you can both try kohlrabi salad, two states apart.   

The baby shower in the Blue Room (which is actually red) will be filled with complete strangers to you....but only for about 15 minutes because after that, connections will be made in a manner such as this: "Do you know the Greens? My Aunt Bev is a Green.  Here...Aunt Bev, this is Mary Pluhar from Cohagen.  She knows Mike and Thelma." "Now, what Pluhar are you married to?" and so forth.  You're not a stranger in Montana very long, no matter where you're from.

Now that you've driven nearly 160 miles and have made at least 5-10 new friends in the area, you decide to stay for the After Shower Festivities (which is where everything REALLY happens, as most Eastern Montanans know.).  But that gathering is to be held at the ranch where the guest of honor was raised... 

Which ALSO happens to be the ranch of your father-in-law's friend from college in the 1960's, a friendship that has lasted for nearly 50 years.  Completely random circumstance, as it happens.  

Let's say you and your daughter load up the flowers and leftover cheesecake to follow your friend to her folks' place after she and her mom pick up a pizza "just around the corner" (it's actually the OTHER direction than that they were indicating with their nods and hand gestures...tricky).   The ranch will be 30 miles from the Blue Room (yes, still red) in the bar around the OTHER corner from the pizza joint, through gorgeous Montana breaks country.  

There will have been a little drama involving cars that were borrowed and a wedding that no one really wanted to go to but had to, in the car that was borrowed and currently 70 miles to the north.  Pizza will be consumed, hair curled, drivers and replacement cars designated and dispatched.  

Which would leave a smallish party of the new mama, baby, new grandpa and the guests from Cohagen, who ended up discussing mutual acquaintances and areas....some with surprising connections. Although it's not REALLY that surprising because Montana, after all, is one big small town. 

At some point, you'll have to leave because even though this IS Montana, sleep-over baby showers are not in vogue unless it rains 3 inches and there's a gumbo road.  It will be hard, because the day has been so happy and besides, you might not see these friends for another couple years...when the baby is running and climbing trees.  

You and your daughter will take a shorter alternate route which may lead you to the highway or Ashland, depending on the accuracy of your turns. But you'll make all the right turns, pausing for cows on the road and buck deer in the velvet crossing the gravel road in front of you. 

You'll find the highway and drive north for 65 miles in a stunning summer evening, where the sun is setting like it's made for a movie, listening to your daughter name horses she'll never own.  And you'll wave at every car, thinking that one of them is the car returning to your friend's dad's ranch.  

There'll be a street dance on Main Street, so you'll turn on Ian Tyson cowboy songs in support of the festivities for the last 80 miles home, thinking over how amazing that life is to joined these people by way of a humble blog started by a lonely ranch wife in the depths of winter.  

It will smell of rain and you'll pray for a torrential downpour as you pull into your driveway and shut the rig down, gather up your books, camera, daughter and new memories...walk past the moths beating on the porch light...

Better get to bed.  Tomorrow you'll move cows.  You'll hope it's in the mud.