SuzAnne Miller is the owner of Dunrovin Ranch. A fourth-generation Montanan, SuzAnne grew up roaming the mountains and fishing the streams of western Montana. Her love of nature, animals, science, and education prompted her to create the world’s first cyber ranch where live web cameras bring Dunrovin’s wildlife and ranch life to internet users across the globe.
Montana has often been referred to as a small town with long streets. It’s true that we Montanans think of each other as neighbors even though several hundred mountainous miles may separate our domiciles.
If all Montanans form a small community with widely spaced neighborhoods, then all Buttians (people hailing from Butte) form a large family with vastly different ethnic roots. Being from Butte simply gives a person an entirely unique life perspective. We Buttians know how to love, how to fight, how to have fun, how to stand together to face “the company”, how to endure cold winters, how to make do, how to put on airs (while dancing in one of Butte’s many first class ballrooms with crystal chandeliers) , how to celebrate each other’s old world heritages, and how to form a tightly knit family when the chips are down – as they have often tended to be in a mining town that’s “a mile high and a mile deep” and where the rich were world class rich and the poor were world class poor.
Anyone who travels with me on Montana’s back roads and hidden valleys, knows that if I see a #1 license plate (Butte’s # 1, naturally!) or a Montana Tech sweatshirt, I am very likely to strike up a conversation that could occupy me for more than a few minutes. My husband swears that he’s going to stop accompanying me on forays anywhere within 100 miles of my home town; he is consistently left out of the conversations that totally engage me with nearly every bar tender, store clerk, fisherman, or outdoor enthusiastic that comes within talking and reminiscing distance.
Two incidents illustrate the point. I once took three women friends on a horseback adventure in the Big Hole Valley. I had planned on purchasing a tank full of diesel at the Grasshopper Inn near Elk Horn Hot Springs. I paid my money, drove up to the pump, and found their tank totally empty. We had planned a long trail ride for that day, so I said , “let’s just go ahead and worry about fuel at the end of the day; after all, the situation won’t change. We might was well have fun!” After our ride, I cruised down to Wise River in search of diesel – it was a long shot but at least they have phone service. Yup, no diesel in town, but I did flag down a guy driving a diesel truck. I thought he might allow me to siphon a few gallons just to get me to Wisdom.
It took us only two minutes to figure out that we had gone to the same grade school in Butte. We laughed at old neighborhood stories and the next thing you know, he tells us to wait there while he drives twenty miles to his house to fill a gas can and bring it back. My east coast friends simply could not believe it. I flag down a completely random guy, he’s from my home town, and he spends more than an hour helpings us.
This last weekend, my husband and I escaped Dunrovin Ranch during a wedding weekend to spend a couple of nights at a cabin north of Dillon. Along a back country road, we run into two guys on four wheelers sporting #1 license plates, which is my invitation jaw bone. Sure enough, we know people in common and we start swapping Butte tales – both true and false (in Butte reality and fantasy tend to converge). These two terrific guys go out on the weekends with long “pick-up” sticks for grabbing garbage in the form of beer cans and bottles that have been strewn along the roads. They pile them in a box on their four wheelers to take home for proper disposal. They are both in their 70’s and Butte Central graduates (the Catholic high school rival of Butte Public High School where I attended). They seemed to think it was their duty to clean up. “We’ve done some hard living in Butte – so we have a lot of picking up to do.”
Butte, my home town. I wouldn’t be from anywhere else.
Visit Suzanne Miller at Days at Dunrovin