My Page: Nate Schweber
Nate Schweber Writes Home
Chatty Travelers and Diamond’s “Collapse”On a flight back to New York from London yesterday I got into a too-familiar conversation with the young woman sitting next to me about our new home.
ME: “So, do you like New York?�
HER: “Love it! But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.�
ME: “Me neither. Where do you want to end up?�
HER: “Montana.�
My eyes narrowed like a farmer’s watching an angry, muddy river creep up a levee. The crux of the exchange was identical to the one I had with a professional poker player from Houston on a flight from Missoula to Salt Lake last month. It’s not that I dislike these people personally. In fact, we’ve got a lot in common: we all want to move to Montana. Therein lies the proverbial rub.
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NATE SCHWEBER WRITES HOME
The Blackfoot and the Hudson: From Polluted to Pristine?Growing up in Montana I spent my summer days as one of countless farmer-tanned, water-sandal wearing, inner-tube brandishing dingbats in the Clark Fork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot rivers and even Rattlesnake Creek. Naiveté dies like a bug splattered on a windshield, and I was gobsmacked upon moving to New York City to learn that the Hudson River nearby is too polluted to swim. Coming from Soul City, Montana, I just assumed that you could just swim in the river that runs through your town.
THE River That Runs Through It, the Blackfoot, was in the news for two reasons last week and though the percentage chance of Jimmy Hoffa being at the bottom of some jade-colored trout hole is quite low (though technically not zero), it does have some things in common with the mighty Hudson.
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