1. Think of the middle of nowhere.

8. Once Jerry Seinfeld came to Helena, Montana, population 30,000. “How do you stand the excitement?” he said. Everybody laughed.

9. Hill Park is an answer to this question. In a sense.

10. Here, the Morning Light coffee shop, there the park, and everywhere the local teenagers, being attractively bored in a place with nothing to do.

11. In a town with nothing to do.

12. In a state with nothing to do.

13. Always, always the same thing.

14. But I can remember one night, burning in the darkness of my memory, adrift somewhere in those early summer months.

15. At Hill Park, like always, a Frisbee sailing through the air distracting us from the empty space that lay around us.

16. Nothing any different from any other night in any other week.

17. But something in that light. That shimmering, blue twilight of the summer, the unexpected lateness of the day, the sun’s lingering descent that seeped into the air and our thoughts lending energy to an otherwise dull game.

18. 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.

19. We played through the darkness

20. through the mosquitoes

21. through the night

22. The grass was soft on our feet.