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.

I may not particularly like Helena itself, but the people I met there and the experiences I had in that town will always be with me subconsciously. That environments in Helena shaped me into the woman I am today. It is always a little bittersweet to see Helena again. A lot of sad/bad memories happened there as well, and when I recall that place or specific memory its as if it just happened to me. All the old ridiculous dramatic feelings of my teen years especially become fresh in my mind.

When I visit Helena and reminisce on my past I always laugh about some of the crazy things I did when I was a teen. I was a huge rebel with my parents and school and caused those people a lot of grief I’m sure. I liked to live on the wild side and be really spontaneous with everyday life. Summer time was always my favorite time of year in Helena. There was always something great that came out of every summer in Helena despite the lameness of the town.

I can recall when I was about 16 I was dating a 19 year old guy named Joel and we used to go camping/partying up in priest pass about a half hour out of Helena all the time that summer. We would drive up there two or three cars at a time, my car would always overheat and die right at the top of the road right before the turn off to our campsite. So we would just walk the rest of the way because the campsite was only about 15 minutes from the road.

It was early in the evening and Joel and I were looking for a place to pitch our tent when I stepped on a piece of glass and cut my right toe open. I had cut a vein it seemed, because I was bleeding profusely, luckily Joel had had some medical training from the Army and made me a sterile bandage out of a strip of his shirt. It was my friend Kyle’s birthday so we were all starting to drink and have a good time.

Joel put me in a lawn chair with my foot elevated and told me to stay in the chair while he went down the road to get my car and drive it up closer to the campsite. He said I could not put any pressure on my foot or else it would bust open and start bleeding again. So I sat in a lawn chair all night and got wasted, everyone was really nice and came and talked to me, I thought the whole situation was pretty funny, I wasn’t in a lot of pain so I just laughed about it all.

About an hour after Joel had gone to get my car I had to go pee really bad. I persuaded my girlfriend Corinne to help me go hobble behind a tree and take a pee. I was drunk and kind of stumbled a little bit onto my right foot and just as Joel predicted, it started bleeding all over again. It was all kind of a drunken blur, but I remember everyone standing around me in the lawn chair wondering what to do. I kept telling them to wait for Joel to get back because he would take care of me.

Well I guess I was bleeding through my bandage pretty bad and Corinne told me she had to take it off. Then my friend Kyle seeing the wound poured some southern comfort liquor onto my wound to disinfect it. I was really drunk, but the liquor burned into my wound and made me cry a little from the stinging pain. Joel finally returned right after this had happened, he was disappointed with me for putting pressure on my foot, but was very light-hearted and laughing about the situation at hand, it was pretty funny. He fixed me up with a new bandage and we went to bed shortly afterwards.

I remember getting up the next day and discovering all of the toes on my right foot were not only stained red from blood but they were actually stuck together with dried blood as I tried to wiggle them free one by one. We left early and went back to Helena to Joel’s house where I cleaned and re-bandaged my foot which turned out to not be that deep of a wound at all, it had just cut a vein on the side of my right big toe and made me loose a lot of blood that night. Kind of a ridiculous story to retell, but it always makes me laugh. Me and my crazy teenage antics……….

I used to have a lot of funny good memories around Canyon Ferry Lake in the summertime too. It felt like my own slice of Montanan paradise out there on the soft, sandy beach having fun, swimming in the glistening water every day of the summer. There is nothing more fun than going out to Canyon Ferry Lake on a hot summer day to jump off the cliffs to cool off and soak up the sun. My friends and I would often go camping out at the lake, build a huge bonfire near the lake and party all day and all night at Canyon Ferry every summer.

The summer memories are probably the best to recall. There was always something great that came out of every summer in Helena despite the lameness of the town. Its like that time of year really makes people happy and memorable to me. It brings people together under the sun in a very dynamic way that just fills me with ecstasy.

This summer will be my first summer not living in Helena. It’s going to be strange, but I’m sure I will still have a blast in Missoula. I will most definitely be visiting Helena to hit the lake though.

During my last couple years at high school I was trying to picture myself studying music at a college somewhere. By my senior year I decided I really wanted that college to be The University of Montana. I also applied for a $500 scholarship called the Peewee Weber Scholarship from the Kiwanis Club in hopes of getting some extra cash for college. I had to write an essay on why I felt I deserved the scholarship, and submit an audition recording of me singing; what I do best. Ironically enough the chairman of the Kiwanis Club that was awarding the scholarship was my neighbor across the street. So I put my envelope in his mailbox crossing my fingers that I would get it. They were going to be awarding two $500 scholarship to one student from each high school. The scholarship was in memory of the early chairman of the Kiwanis Club, Peewee Weber. He was a fabulous musician himself, and founded a scholarship for aspiring musicians that desired to study music in college.

A couple months latter I got my acceptance package from The University of Montana in the mail! Getting accepted into college was also one of my greatest achievements. The secure feeling of knowing I was going somewhere and I was going to learn about what I love most, music. It was the happiest feeling of my whole high school career. Another couple months latter I got the call. I was working one night when a gentleman called me identifying himself as a member of the Kiwanis Club. He told me that I was chosen for one of the scholarships!!! I experienced a brief feeling of self-righteousness, that I was the best and the most talented. Out of all the recipients that applied they chose me! I felt so satisfied; someone had recognized my musical drive. All my hard work up to that point in music felt like it had defiantly paid off. I was also invited to the award ceremony at the Kiwanis Club to hand out the scholarships to me and the other recipient from the other high school. We had a short dinner and then they called us up to the podium and awarded us the money. They wanted us to perform for the club, but unfortunately I had laryngitis and had completely lost my voice and was unable to sing at all.

Getting awarded that scholarship from the Kiwanis Club was one of my greatest achievements in my life. The other recipient and I got our picture taken with the chairman, and there was an article about us in the Kiwanis Club’s monthly newsletter. I will never forget that great feeling of accomplishment that I got from receiving an award like that, that I deserved. Somehow superceding all my piers, and coming out on top in the end. My greatest achievement.

thanx! hannah b

My sister Melany is in the Montana Army National Guard and the Honor Guard. She has served six years so far since she graduated high school in 2003. She has served honorably to our nation and I am very proud of her. She is a very brave, strong, successful woman partially because of the army. I only hope I can be as great as her someday.

My older sister Melany was 19 when she joined the Montana Army National guard. I was only 16 when she left for basic training in Fort Jackson, North Carolina. She kept in touch with me while she was down there through letters. She always said she missed people from Helena like her good friends, her family, and boyfriend. I relate and understand her missing everyone. I left for college in the fall of 07’. For the 1st time in my life I was leaving Helena to live and go to school somewhere else…… I left my boyfriend, best friends, and my family in Helena to go start a new successful life in college in Missoula. I’m sure Melany felt the same homesichness while crawling on the ground in the obstacle course at basic training. Melany also said she wanted to take advantage of the physical challenge that the army had to offer to her. Through the Montana Army National guard, she got a pre-guaranteed part-time job at Fort Harrison in Helena as a dental hygienist for drill. She also got some basic medical training from basic training. I like to help people if I can. I would like to get a job that helps people someday like Melany did.

My sister does sometimes complain about being at the army base and other army stuff, but she is still involved in it because she believes in it and herself. She has the driving spirit to pursue great things, and I think she got some of that mindset from being in the army. I am in my second year of my bachelor’s degree in music education. I was feeling a little bit discouraged about my major after I finished my 1st year of the program. I though about switching majors if I still didn’t like it by semester the end of my 1st semester my second year. Throughout the fall the more and more I thought about switching, the more I realized that I could NEVER quit music. Music is too much apart of my life, and I truly live it too much to just give up on it now. I believe in myself that I can stick it out, work hard, and keep doing Music Ed. I can relate to Melany’s feelings of self-confidence and dedication when I am in my music classes every week. I am really going to try my best in everything this year. I am just trying to think very positive in school, and believe that I am going to get through it all.

I love my sister and I am proud of her like she is proud of me for all I have done myself. In turn, I feel more confident and try harder at everything I do. Melanie ranks E4 in the Montana Army National Guard, and is a team leader for Bozeman in the Honor Guard. She honors her country, and her position in the Army like I honor my music career. I would be nothing without either my music career or me sister.