The Cows Came Home and So Did I

Volunteering in Remote Montana as a Return to Self

The first pasture is done. The last wire clipped to the T-post and the gate tested. A handful of Highland cattle, including one wide-bellied bull, were turned loose into the fenced range we just finished building.

Highland Bull - Yeti

I stood at the edge and watched them lope in like shaggy bison, coats backlit by evening light, eyes curious and cautious. They looked at us, the humans who hammered posts into shale and drug rolls of barbed wire over sage and rock, and they didn't care. They got what they came for: grass, space, freedom.

That's enough thanks for me.

For the last several weeks, we've been volunteering here in Montana. Setting fence across terrain that doesn't bend easily. Just beneath the surface, the earth is rock—shale so thick and stubborn it laughs at hand tools. Even with a modern jackhammer and impact post driver, you feel the jolt in your bones. It's a challenge. A damn good one.

We are in our 60s. My aunt and uncle—who invited us to work alongside them—are in their early 70s. None of us are here to prove anything. We just feel more alive doing hard work in beautiful places than we ever did sitting around or in offices, scrolling through endless screens. And something happens when you spend your days outside, in service of something besides your own comfort.

You stop needing so much.

You start noticing more.

You remember what it is to be human.

Montana Sunset on the Range

Out here, the sun is our light therapy. The chill of the morning wind is our cold plunge. The smell of sage and crushed wildflowers is better than any candle or oil diffuser. The silence of the prairie—deep and wild and unmarred by engines or alerts—settles you like nothing else. People pay for sensory deprivation tanks and flotation chambers. I get the same effect just hauling steel T-posts under a big open sky.

The workdays are short—usually four to five hours of labor. But they're intense. We dig, haul, hike, and hammer. We sweat through layers and let the wind dry us. And when we're done, the sleep that comes is deep, honest, and earned. The kind of rest pills try to replicate but never quite deliver.

I've come to think that so much of what's being sold to us—peace, purpose, meaning, even "biohacks"—are just modern attempts to mimic what our bodies and minds crave and get naturally when we're living closer to the edge of effort and experience. I often think about and consider the lives of our ancestors; we weren't designed to sit, scroll, and ingest ultra-processed convenience, calling it life. It's no wonder people are aching—physically, emotionally, spiritually.

We've traded hunting, gathering, and growing for clicking, driving, and convenience. And it's costing us something significant.

Lynette Clipping Wire to T-Post

But the antidote isn't complicated. It's not even expensive. You can volunteer your time. Offer your strength. Step outside comfort for a while and do something that builds rather than breaks. There are trails to maintain, wildlife habitats to support, fences to mend, fields to tend, and people keeping the old work alive who could use a hand.

You'll get scratched up. You'll be tired.

But you might just feel good.

Not dopamine-hit good. Not post-like good.

Good in your bones. Good in your breath. Good in your gut.

There's something sacred in sweating with other people. In knowing your body can still rise to the challenge, in seeing your work hold up under the weight of a storm or the curiosity of a bull. This is our third year volunteering in remote places, and each time, I leave stronger, more grounded, and more at peace. This isn't vacation. This is re-entry into something more elemental.

You won't find yourself out here by accident. You have to step away. You have to get quiet. You must arrive with ready hands and an open heart and mind.

But if you do, you might just come home to yourself.