I’d never flown into Montana before my late March arrival. I’d visited the state before, some 25 years ago, on a cross-country road trip with a friend. We spent a weekend in Missoula and drove up Going-to-the-Sun Road, only to find ourselves in a late June snowstorm. It was a grand time, but the memories are foggy.
This time around, coming into Bozeman we flew over vast stretches of snow-capped Rockies. Given the moment, it brought back a specific memory: flying over an endless expanse of Himalayan peaks as I arrived in Kashmir nearly 20 years ago to begin my first full-time reporting job. Once again I found myself relocating to a remote, mountainous, unfamiliar place to work at a small independent newspaper. And again I felt the nervous excitement of a new beginning.
Weeks before, while interviewing for this job with Keith Hammonds, our publisher, I’d mentioned my time at the Kashmir Observer – which had hired me, sight unseen, after a few emails and a phone call – and how this Monitor opportunity seemed to echo that one.
