I am not much of a morning person. I am also, unfortunately, not much of a night owl. My energy level peaks around noon and heads rapidly for the doldrums afterwards, and if I happen to sleep past noon––as happens occasionally of a Saturday––I can quite happily snooze on through sunset. It’s a gift that comes in handy whenever I catch the flu or am in the mood to eat breakfast for dinner without irony, but it’s a curse whenever I plan on rising before the sun to go hiking. That I overcame on Sunday morning what I so easily succumbed to on Saturday afternoon fills me with a sense of pride as I exit I-90 at Van Buren and wind my way around the University of Montana football stadium. My destination? The parking lot below the “M” trailhead. 

My pride is short-lived; somehow I’ve forgotten that as a visitor I am only given one hour to climb if I want to reclaim my car without being ticketed or towed, and in my panic I rush straight up a steep side trail that promises to halve the distance if only I have the lung capacity and determination to keep going. I don’t, of course. I stop at almost every single switchback, ostensibly to take pictures but instead panting with exhaustion and mindlessly watching mystery figures looping around the football field far below. At least a half dozen men and women in sneakers and North Face windbreakers speed by me, raising their eyebrows in greeting.

This all feels incredibly familiar, as well it should: I first hiked Mount Sentinel in April 2010 while visiting Missoula for a student conference, with exactly one month of my undergraduate degree remaining. Then, as now, I found the ascent a challenge. Then, as now, I turned to look out at the mountain’s pointed shadow roving under a rising sun. Then, as now, I made it to the “M” out of sheer spite at a body that seems perpetually stuck in a rhythm of “can’t breathe, mustn’t stop.” Then, unlike now, I was part of a pack of friends all daring the mountain together.

When I think of all the other mountains I’ve climbed or at least scrambled among since 2010––the Santa Catalinas, the Rincons, the Tucsons, the Missions, the Bitterroots, the Rattlesnakes, the Swans, the Lewis and Livingston peaks of Glacier National Park––I can’t help but wonder: Would I have wandered so relentlessly afterward if I had not first struggled up this trail as a soon-to-be graduate, at loose ends and looking for the next new universe to catch my attention? Sure, I only found my way back to Montana by way of Arizona and Colorado, but my trajectory north was writ in stone the moment I first took the Van Buren exit off of I-90 in 2010.

There will always be crossroads, branch trails, and the other incomprehensible mysteries of decisions we might have made, places we might have landed, and people we might have become––but didn’t. We live in the shadows of these other lives, or at least I sometimes do, wistful and thankful in turns that I am here, now, with my feet planted in the loose rock of the Mount Sentinel trail. The sun rises over my right shoulder and the grid of streets below is crisp with early morning overtones of copper and indigo. 

To the joggers who pass me every few minutes, this trail is perhaps no revelation. It may very well serve the same function as an indoor track, minus the claustrophobia and with a surprisingly good view of the Griz at practice. But perhaps these sneaker and sweatpant aficionados are here for the exact same reason that I am: to witness a city coming awake, river alight and glittering, trees shedding the last of their winter deadfall and raking the breeze clean of its early warmth. I can’t help but feel intense gratitude that I get to run my mundane afternoon errands down in those streets, always in sight of the first mountain I loved. I get to watch the mountain grow small in my rear view mirror, silhouetted against the rising sun, as I head northward for home.