Essay I

The Mountain People

A Letter from the High Country

The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak by Albert Bierstadt, 1863
The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak — Albert Bierstadt, 1863

There is something different about life in the mountains, and everyone who lives here knows it—whether they’ve said it aloud or not.

Maybe it’s the way the air feels thinner, sharper, cleaner.
Maybe it’s the way winter doesn’t ask permission—it just arrives.
Maybe it’s the way distance forces you to take responsibility for yourself and your neighbors.
Or maybe it’s something older, something deeper, something people can feel long before they can name it.

Whatever the reason, the truth remains:

This region forms people in ways that no other region in America does.

And for the first time in a long time, it’s time we said that out loud.

I. A Region Without a Name — Until Now

Maps will tell you this place is just the Mountain West: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, northern Arizona, western Montana, eastern Oregon, northern New Mexico.

But maps tell you nothing about who we are.

We are not the coastal world of permanent summer moods and digital abstraction.
We are not the Midwest’s flat horizons and gentle seasons.
We are not the South’s feverish heat or the Northeast’s ancient cities.

We live in a world of altitude and winter. A world of ranchers, ski towns, engineers, builders, and quiet families who rise early and take care of their own.

It is one of the most coherent regions in North America—and yet it has never had a story, a name, or a myth.

Until now.

This is the High Country.
And we are becoming, again, the Mountain People.

II. The Mountains Change You, Whether You Notice or Not

Mountains do something to the human spirit.

Winter demands preparation, patience, and resilience.
Elevation demands humility.
Distance demands fortitude.
Beauty demands gratitude.

And at night—when the work is done and the wind settles—the sky reminds you of something most of the country has forgotten. Up here, the stars still belong to the people. Not as abstractions. Not as images on a screen. But as cold, sharp points of light that stretch the soul outward. They teach children scale. They teach adults proportion. They whisper that life is not meant to collapse inward—but to rise, to build, to aim higher than comfort ever allows.

There is no faking it here. When the wind cuts at your jacket seams in February, you cannot pretend you don’t need strength. When you’re driving home in a whiteout and see a neighbor’s car in a ditch, you don’t negotiate worldview differences before you pull over. You put on the hazards, grab the tow rope, and help.

Because up here, the mountains remind you:

If you live in the High Country, you look out for your own.

The land forms the people. It trims away unseriousness. It sharpens instincts. It punishes entitlement. And it rewards those who choose responsibility over convenience.

This is not because the people here are better. It is because the land has not stopped demanding better of them.

The mountains don’t care who you were before you came. They care who you become while you are here.

III. Why So Many Feel Rootless Here

Something strange has happened in the last twenty years.

This region grew fast—too fast. People came from everywhere: California, Texas, the South, the Northeast, the Midwest.

Some came to escape politics.
Some came for cheaper living.
Some came because they had nowhere else left to go.

But almost none of them arrived with a regional identity. Most had already lost theirs.

So they came to the High Country with no internal compass—just jobs, leases, and vague hopes for something better.

Meanwhile, many natives weren’t given the story either. Parents passed down hard work—but not the meaning that once accompanied it. So now you see two groups living side by side:

The natives who forgot the story, and the newcomers who never had one.

Both feel the same emptiness.
Both sense something missing.
Both want roots but don’t know where to plant them.

And the mountains are waiting for someone to speak the truth they have whispered for generations.

IV. A People Cannot Live Without a Story

Every enduring region of the world has a mythic core.

New England has its Puritans and revolutionaries.
Dixie has its agrarian honor culture.
The Midwest has its homesteaders.
Texas has Texas.

The Mountain West has… what?

Cowboys? Skiers? Engineers? Rangers? Hunters? Scientists? Ranch families? Backcountry guides?

Yes—but we have never woven these threads together.

We have the elements of a people, but not yet the story of a people.

And as America’s national myth dissolves—flattened by screens, softened by comfort, and emptied of purpose—strong regional identities are not just allowed.

They are necessary.

They are how human beings remember who they are when the empire forgets itself.

V. What Does It Mean to Be a Mountain Person?

This is not a manifesto. It is simply naming what already exists.

A Mountain Person is someone who:

This is not ideology. It is a way of life. And millions across the High Country already live it instinctively.

They simply don’t have the language for it yet.

VI. To the Lowlanders: The Mountains Are Calling

You may have read all this and thought:

“I didn’t grow up in the mountains. My winters were mild. My life wasn’t rugged. I don’t feel like one of these people.”

If that is you, hear this clearly:

This is not an apology. It is an invitation.

The Mountain People are not a tribe you must be born into. They are a people you grow into.

Your grandparents may have known hardship.
Your parents may have drifted toward comfort.
Your childhood may have been soft, safe, suburban.

That is not a disqualification. It is a beginning.

Because identity is not something handed down. It is something accepted.

And if something in you stirs when you hear the call of the mountains—if you feel a pull toward strength, meaning, and belonging—then you are already on the ascent.

You do not have to start in the High Country to be claimed by it.

You only have to say yes.

VII. Why This Region Has a Future When the Nation Has Lost Its Story

America feels unmoored. Uncertain. Fractured. Drifting.

People everywhere sense it. They feel the monoculture collapsing under its own weight. They feel the loss of meaning, the thinning of community, the disappearance of identity.

But regional cultures—real ones—are rising again.

The South is reasserting itself.
New England is rediscovering its heritage.
Texas is doubling down on being Texas.
And the High Country is awakening.

Because when a nation forgets itself, its true regions remember.

This is not secession. This is succession—the passing of identity from an exhausted national story to the living cultures that can actually carry a future.

And the High Country is one of the few regions in America that still produces:

In a world drifting toward softness and entropy, this region still knows how to live.

VIII. The Invitation

You don’t become a Mountain Person by moving here. You become one by accepting what the land asks of you.

If you rise early, take responsibility, endure hardship with dignity, raise your children with strength, honor the land and the God who made it, and commit to becoming someone worthy of this place—

then the mountains will claim you.

Whether you were born here or not.
Whether you knew the story or not.
Whether you arrived last year or five generations ago.

Because identity isn’t found. Identity is accepted.

IX. A Blessing for the High Country

For those who came here escaping something—may you find purpose.

For those who were born here but never given the story—may you reclaim it.

For those who feel rootless and unmoored—may the land give you grounding.

For those who fear the future—may the mountains teach you courage.

For those who feel the call—step forward.

We are the Mountain People.
We always have been.
It’s time to speak it aloud.

Every people eventually writes its own songs.
This one has been waiting for us.

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