Winter Tranquility - Grant Creek, Missoula, Montana

"There's a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. In that vast space you can sail unaccompanied for hours, afloat on pine and brush and rock. It's a tranquillity born of sheer immensity; it calms with its very magnitude, which renders the merely human of no consequence. Gene [my father] was formed by this alpine hypnosis, this hushing of human drama."

-Tara Westover, "Educated: A Memoir", p. 27