The Ultimate Missoula 2026 Travel Guide

The City That Refuses to Be Ordinary

Pull up a map of western Montana and draw a circle where five distinct mountain ranges touch. That circle, by an accident of geography so perfect it feels designed, is Missoula. The Bitterroot Mountains rise to the south, the Rattlesnake Mountains to the north, the Sapphire Range to the southeast, the Garnet Range to the east, and the Reservation Divide to the northwest. The city sits in the bowl they create, threaded by the Clark Fork River where it swallows the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers in quick succession. Locals call it the Hub of Five Valleys. Visitors tend to call it the best surprise of their entire trip.

Missoula earned that reputation honestly. It is simultaneously a gritty former timber town, a lively university city anchored by the University of Montana, a craft-beer capital that punches well above its weight, a literary destination with a lineage traced to Norman Maclean, and a trailhead for some of the most accessible wilderness in the American West. The population hovers near 75,000, which is just large enough to sustain a genuine food scene and just small enough that you will not spend twenty minutes looking for parking.

What separates Missoula from every other outdoor-focused Western city is the texture of the place between the mountains. The downtown core along Higgins Avenue has independent bookstores that would make Brooklyn jealous, a farmers market that occupies three separate locations simultaneously on Saturdays, gallery walks that turn the first Friday of every month into a street party, and a bar scene ranging from a genuine underground speakeasy to a brewery that was just named Montana's Medium Brewery of the Year. You can surf a river wave in the morning, eat lunch at a deli that imports Italian specialties, and watch live Shakespeare on the university oval in the evening. Missoula does not perform its character for visitors. This is simply how it lives.

12,000 Years Before the First Brewery Opened

Most travel guides give Missoula a paragraph of history before pivoting to restaurant recommendations. That is a mistake. Understanding how this place came to be explains why it feels so different from every other mid-sized Western city.

The Salish People and Nemissoolatakoo

The Salish people inhabited the Missoula valley for approximately 12,000 years before European contact. Their name for the area was Nemissoolatakoo, which translates roughly to river of ambush, a practical reference to the inter-tribal conflicts that frequently occurred at the river confluence where competing groups met, traded, and occasionally fought. The word Missoula derives directly from that Salish name, making it one of relatively few American cities whose very name is an Indigenous word, pronounced essentially unchanged for millennia. The Salish fished the Clark Fork, hunted elk and deer on the surrounding slopes, and held the valley as the geographic center of their territory in western Montana.

The Railroad Transforms Everything (1883)

The Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1883, and within a generation transformed a trading post of a few hundred people into a functioning town. The railroad needed lumber for its expanding network, which prompted a cascade of sawmills opening across the valley. For nearly a century, timber was the economic backbone of Missoula. You can still see the legacy of this era in the industrial neighborhoods along the Clark Fork west of downtown, where old mill sites have been converted into parks, breweries, and apartment complexes.

The University Arrives (1893)

In 1893, Missoula was selected as the site for Montana's first state university. The University of Montana opened its doors in September 1895 and has been the cultural engine of the city ever since. It sits on a 200-acre campus at the base of Mount Sentinel, bordered by the Clark Fork River, and today enrolls roughly 13,000 students. The university brought with it professors, artists, writers, and a certain intellectual restlessness that still defines the city's character. It is why Missoula reads more books per capita than almost any comparably sized American city, and why its independent bookstores survive and thrive when those in larger cities close.

The Forest Service and the Birth of Smokejumping (1908-1954)

In 1908, the United States Forest Service established its regional headquarters in Missoula, cementing the city's role as the administrative capital of the Northern Rockies wilderness. This partnership deepened dramatically in 1940, when the concept of smokejumping, parachuting elite firefighters into remote wilderness fires unreachable by road, was pioneered here. The Missoula Aerial Fire Depot was built in 1954 and remains the largest active smokejumper base in the United States. Fewer than 500 smokejumpers operate across the country at any given time. Missoula trains many of them.

Fort Missoula and a WWII Chapter Nobody Talks About

Fort Missoula was established as a military post in 1877. During World War II, the fort took on a role most Missoula visitors never discover. It served as a Department of Justice Alien Detention Center, incarcerating nearly 1,100 Italian citizens, including merchant sailors from a luxury liner seized in the Panama Canal and workers from the 1939 New York World's Fair who had been stranded in the United States. More than 1,000 Japanese men and 23 German resident aliens were also held here before being transferred to other facilities.

The Italians, many of them professional men who spoke little English, built an remarkably self-sustaining community within the fort. They organized orchestras, ran a camp newspaper, cultivated a garden, and constructed a bocce court. One Issei internee, Kumaji Furuya, who passed through seven different detention facilities during the war, described Missoula as the best of all the internment camps and an oasis during our dreary internment experience. The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula dedicates significant space to this chapter, which remains underrepresented in national narratives about wartime civil liberties.

Norman Maclean and the Literary Legacy

In 1976, University of Chicago professor Norman Maclean, a Missoula native, published a novella called A River Runs Through It. The book transformed fly-fishing along the Blackfoot River into something approaching a spiritual practice and introduced Missoula to a global readership. Robert Redford's 1992 film adaptation, shot largely in the surrounding valleys, brought a second wave of visitors who came looking for something they could only partially name: the feeling of standing in cold clear water with mountains rising on every side while the world simplified itself to the width of a river.

Maclean lived, as he once wrote, under the shadow of the mountains. His Missoula is still recognizable if you know where to look, along the upper Blackfoot, in the cottonwood galleries at Fort Missoula, and on the university campus where he spent formative years. The Fact and Fiction bookstore downtown maintains a dedicated Montana literature section where his work sits alongside contemporary writers who have continued the tradition of finding meaning in this landscape.

Missoula's Hidden Gems and Local Secrets

Every travel guide covers Carousel for Missoula, Caras Park, and the M Trail on Mount Sentinel. They are worth visiting. But Missoula's most interesting experiences are the ones that require a little more curiosity and a willingness to follow a local's tip. Here is what most visitors never find.

Brennan Wave: River Surfing in the Heart of Downtown

Ask most people where to go surfing in Montana and they will look at you like you have said something profoundly strange. But on any summer evening, you can stand on the footbridge near Caras Park and watch wetsuited surfers riding a standing wave in the middle of the Clark Fork River, while tubers float by and osprey circle overhead. This is Brennan Wave, and it is one of the most genuinely unexpected things you will see anywhere in the Mountain West.

The wave was completed in 2006 by repurposing an old irrigation diversion structure that previously collected debris in an ugly tangle of rebar and concrete. It was named in honor of Brennan Guth, a world-class kayaker who grew up in Missoula and died while paddling the Rio Palguin in Chile in 2001. Guth had been involved in early planning discussions for the wave before his death. His memory now lives in the standing wave he helped imagine, a place where on a warm Friday evening you will find kayakers, stand-up paddleboarders, and longboard surfers taking turns dropping into the curl while the mountains frame the scene in every direction. Spring snowmelt from April through June creates the most powerful conditions.

The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas: Montana's Most Surreal Sight

Thirty miles north of Missoula on the Flathead Indian Reservation near the small town of Arlee, down a road that offers no particular indication of what is coming, you will find one of the most unexpected places in the American West. The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas is exactly what its name promises: a ten-acre sanctuary spreading across the high-plains grassland, planted with statues of the Buddha arranged in the wheel of dharma pattern, surrounding a large, brilliantly colored central figure of Yum Chenmo, the Great Mother.

The garden was founded in 2000 by Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche, a recognized Tibetan Buddhist master, as a center for international peace and an intended pilgrimage destination for the Western hemisphere. Volunteers have spent more than two decades completing and placing the statues. The site sits on the Flathead Indian Reservation, creating a layered encounter between Indigenous Montana and Tibetan Buddhist tradition that feels genuinely unlike anything else in the country. Entry is free. The annual Peace Festival in August draws attendees from across the world. You can meditate here for as long as you like, watched over by the Jocko Valley and the Mission Mountains rising to the east.

Pattee Canyon: The Locals' Escape Hatch

While visitors queue for the M Trail on Mount Sentinel and the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area fills on summer weekends, most of Missoula's actual residents who want to disappear into the trees for a few hours drive southeast to Pattee Canyon Recreation Area. The canyon sits within the Lolo National Forest just minutes from downtown, offering a network of trails that range from wide, easy paths through ponderosa pine forests to more technical routes climbing to ridge viewpoints. Cross-country skiing takes over in winter. Unlike the Rattlesnake, Pattee Canyon sees a fraction of the visitor traffic, meaning you will frequently have the forest entirely to yourself.

Unseen Missoula Walking Tours

Operating from a suite on East Main Street, Unseen Missoula offers guided walking tours that excavate the city's layered history in ways that conventional sightseeing misses entirely. The tours move through downtown revealing stories of Missoula's Indigenous history, the timber era, Prohibition-era saloons, the stories embedded in particular buildings and street corners that look unremarkable until someone explains what happened there. If you are visiting for at least two or three days, this is among the highest-value experiences in the city. The format makes Missoula feel intimate in a way that solo exploration rarely achieves.

Float Missoula: Sensory Deprivation in a River Town

After a day on the trails or the river, Missoula has an unexpected recovery option. Float Missoula offers flotation therapy sessions in dense saltwater tanks, a practice used by elite athletes and insomnia sufferers alike. In a city defined by physical activity and outdoor exertion, the contrast of floating in perfect silence and near-zero gravity for an hour is surprisingly profound. Sessions can be booked in advance and are particularly popular in shoulder seasons when the outdoor options narrow. It is among the more unusual experiences available in a Montana city of this size.

Garnet Ghost Town: A Drive Worth Taking

An hour's drive east of Missoula on a combination of paved and gravel roads, the Garnet Ghost Town sits at 6,000 feet in the Garnet Range with more than 30 historic structures still standing. In 1898, approximately 1,000 people called Garnet home during its gold rush peak. A fire in 1912 destroyed part of the town, but what remains is among the best-preserved ghost towns in the American West, maintained in its early twentieth century state. You can walk the streets, peer into the Wells Hotel, visit the general store, and experience the specific silence of a place that once hummed with human ambition and now holds only wind and mountain light. The Bureau of Land Management manages the site. Summer access is open; winter permits snowmobiles and cross-country skiers who want the place entirely to themselves.

The Museum of Mountain Flying

Located at the east end of Missoula Montana Airport, the Museum of Mountain Flying is a small collection with an outsized story. It documents the history of aviation in the Northern Rockies, where pilots navigate not only weather but terrain that would be unforgiving to any miscalculation. The museum includes vintage aircraft, photographs, artifacts, and exhibits on smokejumping history, making it a natural companion to the Smokejumper Visitor Center a few miles away. Free to enter. Rarely crowded. The kind of place where you spend twenty minutes and leave having learned something you will repeat for years.

First Friday Art Walks

On the first Friday of every month, Missoula's downtown galleries stay open late and the neighborhood between Higgins Avenue and the surrounding blocks transforms into a walkable gallery. Studios, shops, and dedicated exhibition spaces host openings with the artists present. The crowd is a genuine cross-section of Missoula: university students, working artists, longtime residents, and the occasional visitor who stumbled into something wonderful. It costs nothing, requires no reservations, and gives you the particular pleasure of encountering art in the place where it was made.

The International Wildlife Film Festival

Each spring, Missoula hosts one of the oldest wildlife film festivals in the world. The International Wildlife Film Festival has been running since 1977 and draws filmmakers and conservationists from dozens of countries. Screenings happen across venues in the city, accompanied by workshops, panel discussions, and conservation events. For a city of 75,000 people, hosting a festival of this international caliber says something genuine about where Missoula's values actually lie. Check the festival's schedule as dates shift between April and May.

Butterfly Herbs: A Missoula Institution

Butterfly Herbs, one of the oldest natural food and herb shops in Montana, has been a downtown fixture for decades. The shop sells teas, spices, and bulk herbs sourced from around the world, in a space that smells like cardamom and dried lavender and something you cannot quite name. It is the kind of store that exists in almost no American city anymore: genuinely specialized, staffed by people who know their products, and utterly resistant to the pressures of chain retail. Stop here before any mountain excursion and pick up something for the trail that you will not find at a convenience store.

Where the Wilderness Begins

Missoula's outdoor credentials are extraordinary for a city its size. Within thirty minutes of downtown, you can be in designated federal wilderness. Within walking distance of your hotel, you can begin a hike that climbs 1,000 vertical feet above the valley. The rivers that run through town are fishable, floatable, and in one specific spot, surfable. This is not a city adjacent to nature. It is a city embedded in it.

Hiking: The Five Best Trails Near Missoula

River Life: Floating, Fishing, and Paddling

The Clark Fork River is not a backdrop to Missoula. It is a participant in daily city life. On summer afternoons, the river fills with inner tubes, inflatable kayaks, and paddleboards as residents escape the heat in the most efficient manner available to them. Commercial operators drop you upstream and the river carries you back toward downtown over a gentle multi-hour float. High-quality tubes are available for rent, and the operators provide clear instructions about where to exit. Bring or rent a waterproof case for your camera because the scenery is excellent and the rapids will occasionally surprise you.

Fly-fishing the Clark Fork, the Bitterroot, and especially the Blackfoot River is an experience with both practical and cultural weight. The Blackfoot in particular, which enters the Clark Fork northeast of town, carries the gravitational pull of Norman Maclean's writing. You can wade the same runs he described, in the same cold water, under the same mountains. Local fly shops including Grizzly Hackle near downtown offer guided wade trips that put you on specific water with instruction, and the guides tend to be the kind of people who have thought carefully about why rivers matter.

For more serious whitewater, the Alberton Gorge on the Clark Fork about forty miles west of Missoula offers class III and IV rapids that are less visited than comparable runs in other Western states. Local outfitters lead half-day and full-day kayaking and rafting trips through the gorge on request.

Skiing: Montana Snowbowl

Montana Snowbowl opened in 1950 as a community effort by local ski enthusiasts led by the Missoula Ski Club, who carved the first runs on the north face of Mount Dean Stone in the Lolo National Forest. The mountain runs thirty minutes above downtown Missoula on a road that is paved until the lower parking area and then becomes one lane of gravel as you climb to 5,600 feet. There is an intentional roughness to the approach that signals you are somewhere people come to ski, not to be seen.

The mountain drops 2,600 vertical feet across 950 acres served by five lifts, including vintage Riblet double chairs from the 1960s that locals consider part of the authentic experience. The upper mountain holds serious steeps, gullies, cliffs, and long runouts that reward skiers willing to climb a bit for access to uncrowded terrain. The base lodge operates with an unpretentious, local-first culture that feels nothing like a destination resort and everything like a place where generations of Missoula families have learned to ski and come back every winter.

Cycling: The Kim Williams Trail

The Kim Williams Nature Area Trail follows the Clark Fork River east from downtown along the river's south bank, connecting to additional trail networks and eventually to the Rattlesnake trail system. The trail is paved and accessible, making it suitable for all ability levels and a genuine way to see the river corridor, the osprey nests, and the mountain backdrop without driving anywhere. Mountain Line, Missoula's public bus system, operates free of charge on 12 routes including summer shuttles, making it feasible to leave the car at the hotel for an entire Missoula visit.

Eating Well in Missoula: The Honest Guide

Missoula's food scene has evolved dramatically over the past decade from its timber-town roots into something genuinely worth planning a meal around. The local commitment to sourcing ingredients from Montana's farms shows up consistently: Dixon melons from the Flathead Valley, Flathead cherries when they are in season, trout from local rivers, bison from ranches visible from the highway. The farmers market culture reinforces this directly, with three separate downtown markets operating within blocks of each other on Saturdays from May through October.

Where to Eat: Category by Category

Farm-to-Table and Upscale

Scotty's Table focuses on upscale Mediterranean dishes made with locally sourced Montana ingredients and is consistently cited as one of the top dining experiences in the state. Plonk offers fine wine, serious food, and cocktails in an environment that feels metropolitan without trying too hard. Boxcar Bistro brings French-inspired technique to a casual setting that stays approachable. Second Set Bistro in the historic Florence Building provides contemporary American lunch and dinner in one of downtown's most architecturally interesting rooms.

Pizza and Casual

Biga Pizza has achieved something close to institutional status in Missoula. Brick-oven fired, made entirely from scratch, served with a thoughtful beer and wine list. On Friday nights the line extends outside and no one seems to mind. The sourdough crust uses a starter maintained for years, and the ingredient sourcing is as local as pizza reasonably allows.

Breakfast Worth Waking Up For

Paul's Pancake Parlor is one of those places that has endured because it does its specific thing better than anyone else within a hundred miles. The pancakes are enormous. The coffee is not remarkable. The line on weekend mornings tells you everything. Black Coffee Roasting Company, meanwhile, treats coffee as a craft rather than a commodity and provides a better option for the kind of traveler who needs a single-origin pour-over before they can engage with the day.

International Flavors

Zoo Thai provides modern Thai cooking in a hip downtown setting that consistently outperforms expectations for a city this size. Masala serves authentic Indian dishes scratch-made with locally sourced ingredients, which manages to be both an unusual combination and an entirely logical one. The Camino operates as a traditional Mexican kitchen and agave bar, with a tequila and mezcal list that rewards exploration.

Markets and Specialty

Tagliare Delicatessen is a contemporary Italian deli serving specialty foods, wine, and sandwiches that would not feel out of place in a serious food city. The Good Food Store, Missoula's independent natural grocery, is a destination in itself for anyone who needs to provision for a backcountry trip or simply wants to see what serious local food sourcing looks like assembled in one building. The Market on Front provides gourmet sandwiches and salads in an urban market setting that is ideal for packing a trail lunch.

The Farmers Market Situation

Missoula runs three downtown markets within blocks of each other on Saturdays during the growing season. This is not a farmers market. This is a farmers market district. The combined effect is a Saturday morning that feels like a community ritual as much as a shopping exercise: live music drifting between vendor stalls, children eating fresh-cut watermelon, someone buying a jar of huckleberry jam, an older man selecting dried morel mushrooms with the focus of a jeweler. The seasonal calendar guides what you find: spring brings the first greens and early strawberries, summer delivers the full abundance of Montana's short growing season, fall concentrates the preserves and root vegetables and game meats that define the transition to winter.

Missoula's Brewery Scene: Why It Punches So Far Above Its Weight

Per capita, Missoula has one of the highest concentrations of craft breweries of any city its size in the United States. This is not a coincidence. Missoula's culture of outdoor activity and community gathering created exactly the conditions for brewery culture to thrive, and the University of Montana brought generations of young people willing to experiment with new flavors. The result is a brewery scene with genuine range, from traditional German-influenced lagers to experimental sours and barrel-aged ales that could compete in any American city.

Draught Works Brewery

Draught Works has been voted Best Brewery in Missoula by local residents continuously since 2018, which is a streak that speaks to something deeper than merely good beer. The brewery occupies a large space with an extensive outdoor patio equipped with misters during summer heat. Food trucks rotate through regularly. The event and music calendar runs year-round and is worth checking before your visit. The beer lineup changes seasonally, with a rotating selection that rewards repeat visits. This is the brewery that Missoula's outdoor guides, river outfitters, and local insiders tend to recommend first when someone asks where to go.

Cranky Sam Brewing

Named Montana's Medium Brewery of the Year in 2025 and honored as Missoula Downtown Business of the Year in the same year, Cranky Sam operates as a pub with serious food alongside its craft beer program. The combination of quality brews and community presence has made it a genuine neighborhood anchor rather than simply a place to drink beer. The pub is located downtown and walkable from most of Missoula's central hotels and accommodations.

Bayern Brewing

Bayern is one of the oldest craft breweries in Montana, founded on authentic German brewing traditions and still producing lagers and ales according to strict German brewing laws. In a landscape dominated by American-style IPAs, Bayern's commitment to traditional styles makes it distinctive. The taproom atmosphere reflects the same philosophy: food that matches the beer, a space designed for lingering conversation rather than social media photography.

Gild

For something genuinely different, Gild combines craft brews with tacos in a downtown location, and the basement level houses an arcade of pinball machines and classic games that makes it a natural destination for an evening that starts with dinner and drifts sideways into a tournament you did not plan. It is the kind of place that works equally well for a solo traveler and a group of eight.

The Underground Cocktail Scene

Beyond the breweries, Missoula has developed a craft cocktail scene with distinct personality. One of its most talked-about spots operates in the manner of a genuine speakeasy, with velvet chairs, candlelit corners, and cocktails built with ingredients like lemongrass, house-made bitters, and locally foraged elements. The Unseen Missoula walking tour covers some of this underground history, tracing the city's saloon era through Prohibition and into the present day's more sophisticated version. Ask a local bartender which bar they go to on their night off. The answer is rarely the most visible one.

Day Trips from Missoula That Most Visitors Miss

Missoula sits within extraordinary reach of some of Montana's most remarkable places. Most visitors concentrate their time in the city and its immediate hiking areas. Spending one or two days extending outward repays the effort significantly.

When to Visit Missoula: An Honest Seasonal Guide

Every season in Missoula has a distinct character. The question is not which season is best in the abstract but which version of Missoula matches what you are looking for.

Getting to Missoula and Getting Around

Flying In

Missoula Montana Airport (MSO) sits just ten minutes from downtown, serves direct flights from Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Chicago. The airport has a notably relaxed character for an international facility, with large windows that frame the surrounding mountains, an outdoor patio (apparently the only outdoor patio of any American airport terminal), and a loading process that remains genuinely unhurried by metropolitan standards.

Driving

Missoula sits directly on Interstate 90, Montana's main east-west corridor. Spokane is approximately 2.5 hours to the west. Billings is about 3.5 hours to the east. Kalispell, the gateway to Glacier National Park, is 2 hours north on US-93. Driving through Montana offers the particular pleasure of distances that look large on a map but pass quickly on uncongested highways with scenery that removes any boredom from the equation.

Getting Around Missoula

Downtown Missoula is walkable in a genuine sense. Most restaurants, breweries, shops, galleries, and the university campus are accessible on foot from a central hotel. Mountain Line, the city's public bus system, operates fare-free on 12 routes including dedicated summer shuttles to weekend markets. For the river float, operators provide shuttle service upstream. A bicycle makes the entire city accessible and the river trail system extends the range significantly. Car rental is available at the airport if day trips are part of the plan.

Where to Stay in Missoula

Downtown: The Obvious Right Answer

Staying downtown means you are within walking distance of the farmers market, the breweries, the river, the Carousel, Caras Park, and the trail systems on Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo. The Wren is the most-discussed boutique hotel in this category, a vibrant property packed with local character that shares a building with a coffee shop and sits steps from the Clark Fork riverfront. Booking downtown in summer requires advance planning; the city fills on festival weekends.

Boutique and B and B Options

One of the more interesting Missoula accommodations is a former University of Montana fraternity house that has been converted into an antiques-filled bed and breakfast with river views, offering an experience quite different from standard hotel stays. For visitors who prefer more space and a quieter setting, short-term rentals in the residential neighborhoods surrounding campus put you in genuine Missoula domestic life with easy access to everything.

Glamping Outside the City

The area surrounding Missoula has developed a small network of glamping operations that appeal to visitors who want the outdoor experience without the equipment overhead. Properties like The Hohnstead, positioned as a forest hideaway outside the city, offer cabin accommodations with a connection to the natural surroundings that downtown hotels cannot replicate. The tradeoff is a drive into town for dinner and a drive back at night, which in summer is actually enjoyable along the valley roads.

Things Missoula Regulars Know That First-Timers Don't

Frequently Asked Questions About Visiting Missoula

What Missoula Teaches You About the West

Every city in the Mountain West claims some version of the same story: rugged landscape, outdoor lifestyle, local food scene, craft beer, friendly people. Most deliver on part of it and fall short somewhere. Missoula delivers more completely than any comparably sized city in the region, and it does so without the performative quality that has overtaken places like Jackson Hole or Park City, where the authentic experience has been replaced by a curated version of itself designed for affluent visitors.

Missoula is still figuring out what it is. The timber economy is gone. The university enrolls fewer students than it once did. The outdoor economy has grown but brings its own pressures. The housing market has tightened in ways that are changing the demographic character of the neighborhoods. These are not tourist problems. They are city problems, and Missoula is working through them the way actual communities do: with argument, creativity, occasional frustration, and a persistent attachment to the landscape that started it all.

That landscape is still there. The Clark Fork still runs cold and clear through the center of town. The mountains still rise on every side. The wave still breaks. The elk still come down from Mount Jumbo in winter. And somewhere upstream on the Blackfoot, the river still moves through the canyon where Norman Maclean stood with his father and understood, eventually, that it was not answers the water was offering but the patient company of something older and more permanent than any human trouble.

Go to Missoula. Go slow. Stay longer than you planned.