Distinctly Montana Magazine

TAYLAR ROBBINS M issoula is ringed by 5,000-foot mountains and threaded by the Rattlesnake, Blackfoot, and Clark Fork Rivers, and was called "Menissou- latakoo" by the Salish, which roughly translates to "river of surprise." And Frank Worden and C. P. Higgins—yes, just like the market and the main street—established a trading post here in 1860. But stroll past the bobbing joggers on the Clark Fork Riverfront trails, edge past basket-bearing shop- pers at the Saturday morning farmers' markets or try to find seat in the hopping James Bar or its country cousin Al & Vics and you'll soon realize a truth about the place: Missoula is extremely social. It's no accident the place is a trading post/ college town. It's no accident there's a festival nearly every weekend. It's no accident the place is populated by some of the more social species: crows, dogs, and college students. The rivers of sociability run deep in the salons, book clubs, readings, fundraisers, and dinner parties where connections are made and remade. This is nothing new. My great-grandfa- ther, John Edward Patterson, moved here in May 1900, leav- ing my great-grandmother in Chicago at first. But he needed her in order to get settled. The women in my family joined PTAs, symphony associations, weavers' guilds, university women associations, and the mysterious P.E.O. My generation joined protests, newspapers, and literary salons. Twenty-seven years ago, after I made the finals table at a riotous poker tour- nament, my husband-to-be turned to me and said, "I like the way you played your cards. What do you say we get hitched?" Missoulians are not passive about their entertainments. If it's not here, they create it. The Carousel, the Children's Theatre, the Farmer's Market, Caras Park, the Mount Jumbo Open Space, the North Hills Open Space, Mamalode—all were created, in the beginning, by people who had an idea and set out to make it happen. They were ideas born out of the wild, weird heart of Missoula. But Missoula's changing. The image of Missoula I used to love was the beat-up pickup parked at the symphony con- cert. Now, for me, it is the cowboy walking down 4th street with a yoga mat in his backpack. Or the note I saw on bridge stairwell that said, "Art? Or Art Painted Over?" The truth is, Missoula is too varied to sum up in one image. What we do know is this: we love our place by moving, meditating, and mingling in it, so I have chosen three Missoula ecosystems— the downtown, the university area, and the Rattlesnake— in which to do just that. DOWNTOWN MISSOULA: CHANNEL PETULA CLARK In one of the two "Hallways of History" at Southgate Mall, there is a 1950s Stan Healy black and white photograph of women shopping that captures downtown Missoula for me: on a crowded sidewalk groups of women walk, arm in arm, dressed in hats, suits, gloves, heels, their purses draped over their arms, their faces alive, expectant, their feet stepping forward with great purpose. They're downtown. The Art Moderne lobby of the restored Florence Hotel, built in 1941, is a great place to feel the present nudge from the past with sangiovese and duck and pear pate from the Red Bird Cafe. 60 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • SPRING 2012

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