Where we come from, it doesn’t snow in June. Our morning commute is not a five-minute bike ride. There is no Belgrade or buffalo tenderloin. Where we come from, it’s cities and sprawl. For two twenty-somethings working in Bozeman for the summer, Montana came like a sigh of relief.

Soon we were huffing and puffing. One of us is a runner; both of us were out of shape. The urban sidewalks we knew gave way to bike lanes that spanned the city, and our Nikes racked up mileage on trails that smelled like gravelly mountain mud. It was a summer of free altitude training, and we overdosed on the Gallatin air. We ran, and we climbed the geography in front of us. We walked to work.

We talked to locals, themselves near perfect specimens of happiness and health. They told us “life just gets better and better,” and we agreed. Our flags waved and our grill sizzled on Independence Day, the big sky above us a shimmering palette of patriotic light.

We later saw the fireworks reflected in the retinas of young soldiers—their missing arms ravaged by war now prosthetics that pulled line for their fly rods. They were participants in Bozeman’s Warriors and Quiet Waters program; a non-profit that funds fly-fishing adventures for servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. We shook the hands the soldiers still had. We contemplated the ones they didn’t.

The program challenged us to a higher standard; its volunteers were led by a higher calling. They taught us the meaning of civic reciprocity, the cost and value of sacrifice. They taught us that men can move mountains and that mountains can move men. We are but two people in a nation of interdependent individuals, we thought.

We thought at a think tank, The Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment, to be exact. While the soldiers caught trout, we furiously read and wrote while we watched and listened. We pushed paper and sent emails. We answered phones, “Good morning, how may I direct your call?” The callers were from across the country: secretaries to judges and professors. Sometimes our boss, other times his lovely wife.

When our boss said, “This is not the best time of your life,” we looked back on our past and re-envisioned our future. We learned more in two months than during an entire year in college classrooms. Things started coming together, as we met Hayek, Bastiat, Schelling, and even Thomas Sowell: “With knowledge conceived of as both fragmented and widely dispersed, systemic coordination among the many supersedes the systemic wisdom of the few.”

We cinched our tie and buttoned our dress for our think tank’s conferences. We saw great minds at work. Social entrepreneurs, federal justices, and professors discussed and debated. We sat silently in the corner of the room. So much of what we know is counterintuitive. The abundance of intellect found its counterpoint in Montana’s natural bounty outside the window. We sat quite stunned, paused for a moment, and said, “It’s time for a huckleberry beer.”

But what does our experience mean, and does it all matter?

It matters to us because now we’re leaving for Mid-America and the East Coast. It matters because the Bridgers’ thin, dry air has entered our bloodstream, and there it will stay. We leave with a realistic optimism about ourselves and about the future of our country. We leave knowing the mountains aged us a bit, toughened us up, opened our eyes, and provided surprise.

Thanks, Bozeman.