Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 4 8 A UTUMN IN MONTANA IS ALWAYS A WILD RIDE with the weather and 2024 has been no exception. Glacier National Park and surrounding areas had the first snowstorm of the season in late August. Many parts of Montana also experienced the first overnight freezing temperatures of the season around the same time, bringing an early end to the lives of countless blooms in flowerpots around the state. Winter is roaring toward us once again but we are undaunted because we Montanans have an affinity for winter. Bring on the snow! Fall, for some reason I don't understand, is always my most productive season. This Fall, right around the time all the flowers froze to death, I put my iPhone into a basement closet and replaced it with a Nokia flip phone. Switching a smart device for another, far dumber one, has completely changed my life. Like many contemporary humans, I had become a slave to the notifications, endless scrolling, and perpetual refreshing. My beautiful flip phone has a barely functional operating system and is very challenging even to send or re- ceive text messages on. It is a profoundly liberating feeling to be free of such a pernicious, ubiquitous, and socially acceptable addiction. If you struggle with putting down your smartphone and have tried just about everything to curtail your use, I can't recommend highly enough the radical exercise of buying a $70 flip phone, then forwarding your Smartphone number to it, and locking away that ever-en- ticing, ever-beckoning touchscreen. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes! Maybe ask me if I'm still on the wagon while you're at it! In other news, our BEST OF MONTANA 2024 CONTEST has come to a spec- tacular conclusion, with an exponential increase in popularity. We're honored to present you with the best of everything in Montana in this issue. We're grateful to all of them, especially our business part- ners who sponsored any part of the contest. Without them, this issue would never have made it into your hands. We would be honored and grateful if you would visit them in person or online. You'll be glad that you did! If you mention that you heard about them in Distinctly Montana, it would mean more to us than you can imagine. We had more than 85,000 nominations and votes this year, so these truly are the best of the best. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists! We hope you enjoy this issue of Distinctly Montana, and if you did, we invite your feedback. Thank you for reading, and we wish you a fantastic autumn ahead! A N O T E F R O M T H E P U B L I S H E R P U B L I S H E R CHRISTOPHER MUHLENFELD, PUBLISHER chris@distinctlymontana.com ©2002-2024. Distinctly Montana is owned and published by Thunderstruck Media LLC, a Montana company. All Rights Reserved. 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