Page 12 - Flathead Beacon // 4.30.14

12 AMAZING! FLATHEADBEACON.COM

Illustration by Dwayne Harris
A•MAZ•ING

adjective 1.causing great surprise or wonder.

T
he human condition is rife with heroism and the Space Age, it’s a place of endless wonder that, in
discovery, characterized more by traveling turn, has fostered amazing discoveries, daring feats and

to bold new places and pushing seemingly geographic marvels.
insurmountable boundaries than by the humdrum of daily We are home to Flathead Lake and Glacier National

survival, the insight of discovery illuminating a new realm Park, grizzly bears and wolverines that climb our

of possibility.
highest peaks, centenarians who have endured in an
It’s Roger Bannister shattering the four-minute mile ever-changing mountainous west, mythic men and women

and Helen Keller’s hand-under-the-water breakthrough. who ventured into unknown and unclaimed territory,
It’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Da Vinci’s “Mona
bootleggers and buckaroos, war heroes who settled here

Lisa,” the Wright Brothers taking light, the Corps of to ski, and doctors whose resumes include life-saving

Discovery navigating the Big Muddy and the Apollo miracles.
mission to the moon.
Some tales are tall but true, others incredible and

It’s penicillin, atomic ission and the Internet.
indelible.
Invention and innovation have deined the human The writer Joseph Campbell said, “the cave you fear

race as an amazing species with boundless potential. to enter holds the treasure you seek,” and in Montana,

And while the scantly populated state of Montana and as in the rest of the world, we’ve been exploring those
the remote Flathead Valley we inhabit may not embody
caves from the outset. - Tristan Scott