Think of the middle of nowhere.

Once Jerry Seinfeld came to Helena, Montana,population 30,000.

“How do you stand the excitement?” he said.

Everybody laughed.

Hill Park is an answer to this question.

In a sense.

Here, the Morning Light coffee shop,

there the park,

and everywhere the local teenagers, being attractivelybored in a place with nothing to do.

In a town with nothing to do.

In a state with nothing to do.

Always, always the same thing.

But I can remember one night, burning in the darkness

of my memory,

adrift

somewhere in those early summer months.

At Hill Park, like always, a Frisbee

sailing through the air

distracting us from the empty space

that lay around us.

Nothing any different

from any other night

in any other week.

But something in that light.

That shimmering, blue twilight of the summer, the unexpected lateness of the day, the sun’s lingering descentthat seeped

into the airand our thoughts

lending energy to an otherwise dull game.

The claustrophobia of our hometown vanished

into the air,

into the half-light that had settled over all of us,

and we knew that what we did that night wasn’t important,

and we loved knowing it.

We played through the darkness

through the mosquitoes

through the night

The grass was soft on our feet.