Something In The Air

Today, I am not at school. I was so exhausted mentally and physically after a non-stop week that I decided to rest. My departure for Morocco seems like it is years away, but really, four months is not a long time. I have two jobs, three if you count a weekly lawn-mowing for the neighbor, and the pickle jar on my dresser is slowly accumulating wealth. I can't believe how everything regarding this trip has fallen into place. Two weeks ago I was practically crippled with anxiety over how in the world I would earn a couple thousand dollars before August. Finally, the stress was so overwhelming that I did what I should have done initially: I gave up. This is not my plan, I thought, I cannot continue to pretend I am in charge. I let God take over, and the very next day, I was hired at Bozeman Lodge. As my favorite season in Bozeman approaches, I realize how much I will miss this place. Bozeman really is an incredible place, and I was never leaving because I didn't like it. In fact, I love it here. Something about the way the summer days last and last, or the way that anything seems possible on a bright, sunny day. There's something about the air, too, that I may miss most of all once I've left. The air in Montana is special. It's cleaner and brighter than the air anywhere else I've been. A visiting aunt from New York once joked to me that the air was so clean she couldn't breath. If you are observant, you will notice that the air is different wherever you go. In upstate New York, the air is wet, full, and almost always smells like rain and plants. The air in Minnesota is heavy, lazy, a bit dirty, and smells like cars, lakes, and suburbs. The air in my dear Ethiopia is smoky, mysterious, and the smells of foreign food, city smog, and thousands of people mingle together in a most enchanting way. But Bozeman is different. The air is purely translucent, crisp, combed through by mountains and trees and pooled into valleys. Maybe none of you feel this way, and maybe you think I'm silly for being so sentimental, and to you, air is just air. And that's alright, I am silly and sentimental, but when I go outside and take a deep breath, it's okay to be sentimental about air, because I think that if you can be sentimental about something as simple as air, there is no doubt that you will have life full of happy memories.     -mads