We had a wonderful two-hour trek and watched a thunderstorm move across the mountains. We got caught on the tail end of our hike in the rain, but it felt great. It was about 6:30pm, and we went back to Joel’s apartment. Natalie invited us to her house for dinner. I was hungry, and not really looking forward to any sort of fast food I might encounter on the way to Heart Butte, so I was more than happy to put off the four-hour drive for another hour. I had called the folks in Heart Butte to tell them I was likely going to arrive around 10 or 11pm, and that worked fine for them. But over the next hour, I developed a pretty good headache, and I was starting to feel a little dizzy. Both symptoms I chalked up to the altitude (about 5000 ft), in addition to being tired.
The view from the ‘M’
I love to drive. And I usually have no problem driving late into the night. But I realized that by the time I left Bozeman, it would be 10pm EST, and that if I drove to Heart Butte, I would have been awake for 22 hours straight, the last four of which I would be driving in the dark over unfamiliar roads. I did something I don’t normally do. I made the wise decision to stay overnight in Bozeman. Natalie (a girl I had known barely three hours at this point) immediately offered me her couch for the night. It was an amazing blessing. I let everyone in Heart Butte know I wasn’t going to be there until today, and I settled into Bozeman. Natalie lives with 4 other girls, and each one I met welcomed me into the house, making sure to tell me that if I needed anything to just help myself.
This young woman doesn’t need to tell anyone she is a Christian. She fed me, housed me, and provided a shower for me. Her actions alone spoke volumes.
Sunrise over Bozeman
