I was living in a dusty, small bachelor pad in northern KC near the airport. I had just finished 3 years of law school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, but lacked many job opportunities after failing the bar exam on my first try. Escaping West had been on my mind since I was a teenager, so when I saw a job listing on Indeed for a reporter position open in Livingston, Montana, at the Livingston Enterprise, I jumped on it.
I sought out the company’s information online and persistently called their office several days in a row, leaving my name and confirming my interest. I talked to Mr. Sullivan, the owner of the Yellowstone Newspaper chain at the time, who told me their greatest need was for an editor down in Hardin, Montana, just off the Crow Reservation.
He and I talked for hours over the phone as I paced up and down the sidewalk outside of my apartment building. When he finally offered me the job, I packed everything I owned into my little Chevy Malibu and drove overnight from Kansas City to Livingston, where the company was headquartered.
It wasn’t easy to leave Kansas City behind. I had a whole life there with plenty of friends from school and the local music scene. I needed more.
When I got to Montana, trips down I-70 to get downtown turned into long drives on dirt roads through the middle of Bighorn County. I relished the opportunity to escape the city life. I spent my first month in a cabin on the banks of the Bighorn River, using it as a home base for my travels to nearby Red Lodge, the Pryor Mountains, and Yellowstone National Park. I spent tons of time alone, wandering through the wilderness, deep in thought. I filled up pages of my journal with my writings. There were no stoplights out here. The rush of the interstate was long gone. I became one of the locals, walking to the gym and stopping into the local Dollar Tree to buy bags of frozen fish. I worked on the main street of a town of about 3,000 people. I got to know the business owners in the buildings next to my newspaper office and befriended the local police chief. I took trips out to the vast Crow Nation, a 2.2-million-acre reservation covering the size of Connecticut, an area rich in coal, oil, and gas. I went to city council meetings and took notes.
My entire life changed for the better as a result of this adventure. I spent time in the Big Horn County Library reading about Scott Fitzgerald and other great writers. I drove around and smoked on the backroads, never worrying for a second about being pulled over because I was far out in the free country. My neighbors brought me some baked goods.
“We’re on Hardin time,” the locals would say. The world did not move so fast here. People took off work around 2 or 3 most days. I frequented the local bar called the 4 Aces and ate Indian Tacos at the bakery. I felt like a character in my own video game, dropped into a foreign land with nothing but my own instincts to survive on.
This way of life was a sharp contrast to the Kansas City I’d grown to know and love. I spent most of my time there on the university campus studying or downtown shooting music videos. I would stay out all night in Westport or at the studio making music with friends.
Living isolated in nature is highly inspirational. I recorded music in my spare bedroom after walking around the town of Hardin. I brought my journal with me and wrote from the tops of mountaintops. This way of life suited me.
However, rural life is not without its drawbacks. Drugs are a problem. Poverty and lack of opportunity are real. Between my time in Hardin (and later Big Timber, MT + Chama, New Mexico), I got a real glimpse at what life in rural America is like. Most young people are forced to leave to find better opportunities. It can be extremely difficult for businesses to survive. The newspaper office I worked in has now closed. I left Montana to come back to Kansas City and pursue a relationship with the woman who is now the mother of my child, so that was a good move. The reality is that there are fewer potential mates in smaller towns, another reason why many young people cannot exist there.
I have temporarily retreated back to city life here at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri. While my children are still young, I’m taking this opportunity to continue building my businesses from a solid home base until I have enough money to buy some land in rural New Mexico and build a home there. Living in isolation is best when you have a remote source of income. Without it, one is chained to the economic conditions of a small, rural town, and then can be quite depressing. No one wants to work for $13/hour. So, my plan is to keep writing and building up my podcast platform until I can comfortably afford to largely remove myself from society once again and enjoy the peace and quiet that the rural life provides.