The place I like best is my home­town of Marysville, MT. I was born and grew up there till I was 17 years old with my brother Ben, my step-brother Sembe, my half-sister Susan, and my sis­ter Melany, and my dad and my step-mother Valerie. This place is very spe­cial to me not just because my roots are there in that lit­tle town, but because of the quiet, open-space, small-town Marysville has to offer. Marysville is located about 30 miles North­west of Helena, MT right below the con­ti­nen­tal divide. Dur­ing the 1880’s and 90’s, Marysville was one of Montana’s lead­ing gold pro­duc­ers and the pop­u­la­tion grew to over 4,000 peo­ple in the imme­di­ate area dur­ing the Drum­lum­mon Mine days. There was a pop­u­la­tion of about 30 when I lived there. The town is sur­rounded by rolling hills to the North­east, and dense forested moun­tains in almost every other direction.

The win­ters were always full or of snowy sled­ding trips and foggy, frosted –20° F weather. Me and my sib­lings and my one friend my age in Marysville, Nikki and her older brother Jake who was my brother Ben’s age; always loved to play in the fluffy white snow that seemed to con­stantly be falling from the over­cast sky. Build­ing snow forts, sled­ding, mak­ing snow­men, hav­ing snow­ball fights you name it we did it in the win­ter. The air always smells so sweet and nat­ural up there. As young­sters, we loved to adven­ture out­doors in gen­eral at any old time of the year in Marysville. I loved to walk through the sky scrap­ing, canopied forests look­ing for old and new trea­sures from the

days of the lit­tle gold mine town of Marysville. Scat­tered through­out the forests clos­est to the town you can find many old tin cans and con­tain­ers, and multi-colored pieces of glass all along the for­est floor. We were always out in the for­est, hik­ing around, build­ing tree houses, run­ning up and down the Bub­bling Pipe trail, and along the var­i­ous creeks and wild huck­le­berry, goose­berry, straw­berry and rasp­berry patches deep within the for­est. I still know the for­est like the back of my hand from being every­where in the for­est in the sur­round­ing area. It felt like the whole for­est was my secret beau­ti­ful place I could go to when­ever I wanted to just have fun and be happy.

There are a lot of old faded half destroyed build­ings and houses at the bot­tom, or North­west end of the town. The town suf­fered a dev­as­tat­ing fire in 1909 that destroyed sev­eral of its build­ings in that area, and many of them have sat and aged through time. As kids my sib­lings and I would play in and around these not entirely unsafe build­ings. In one of the rather tall brick build­ings we found an old upright bro­ken pop­corn machine amongst all the ruble scat­tered every­where inside. We pic­tured that half of the build­ing as a “ghost the­ater”. In the other half was an old dusty half-mangled upright piano with all the faded wooden keys jut­ting out in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Later in my child­hood my dad who knows some his­tory of Marysville told me that build­ing was Marysville’s cot­ton Club Dance Hall and Saloon which explained the pop­corn machine and the piano that are still sit­ting there more than 200 years later! I remem­ber ven­tur­ing through the small piles of bro­ken mat­ter and wood, the air always smelled really clammy and old in these old build­ings like the smell you might smell in a cav­ern or mine shaft.

The sum­mer is always the best time of year in Marysville for me. It was always a clear blue warm sky almost every­day there. I liked to walk through the old dusty streets of

Marysville and take naps in the tall, smooth grass on a warm hill­side and lis­ten to the gen­tle wind rus­tle through the tall ever­green trees nearby. It is so peace­ful there in sum­mer, like you don’t have a care in the world to get you down. We had one of the biggest yards in the town and would set up sprin­klers every­where and have huge water fights with our super soak­ers and water bal­loons on the hot days. My sib­lings and I would often take bike rides out of the back road of the town and ride about 7 or 8 miles down to the Canyon Creek Coun­try Store and buy candy and ice cream in the summer.

I really love Marysville because I think it make me appre­ci­ate the sim­ple joys in life. Until I was about 7 and a half it was just me, my mom and dad, my half-sister Susan, Melany, and Ben liv­ing in that old brown and vanilla-colored 4 bed­room house. We didn’t have TV or video games, instead we would spend most of our time with each other and play board games and occa­sion­ally mess around on the com­puter. Until my par­ents got divorced and my step-mom and step­brother moved to Marysville we really did enjoy just the sim­ple things and the great out­doors. That town is in some ways the root of my belief in peace, love, seren­ity, and hap­pi­ness. I haven’t been back to Marysville much since my dad and step-mom finally sold it and moved in to the Helena val­ley in 2005. I can’t be there to really take it all in again, but it is always my “happy place” to think about when I’m miss­ing my fam­ily and the old days of my life.