Ryan Alexander Payne: A Son of South Carolina at Home in Montana

Home.

I’ve spent the past nine days in South Carolina, and there really isn’t anything like going home. The wave of heat and humidity I felt stepping off of the plane seemed more like a welcome home hug and kiss from my number one (and only, for that matter) girl. I was home for my good friend Justin’s (aka Dr. Marsh) wedding. He was married in the same church where we attended elementary school. Sipping Jack Daniels on your elementary school swing set is a good thing and I recommend it. It’s as if every sensory input at home has a story or feeling which accompanies it. My friends there are tested, loyal and true and we have years of history. I was constantly reminded that South Carolina is, and always will be, my home.

…but, if her denizens will let me be presumptuous, so is Montana. I’ve never felt such an ethereal connection with a mere locale as I do to Montana. I feel like John Denver:

He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin' home to a place he'd never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door

The timeline is off but the gist is the same. What my friends in Montana and I lack in history and longevity, we make up for in the inherent promise of the future and mutual passions.

People, not geography, make a home, and I simply can’t help but feel an inordinate amount of gratitude to be able to call two places home and have the friends to go along with them.

Highlights from the past week include a charity bocce ball tournament in Greenville with the Titan Group of Adam, Bill and Kacie (here’s hoping we’ll be better at business than bocce), a dinner party thrown by my bestest cycling buddy in Columbia and his stellar wife, the best Bordeaux I’ve had in awhile thanks to Patrick and Karen, excellent grilled steaks with siblings, a slumber party with Owen (Kenny and Shari were there, too!), a Columbia Master Swingers margarita dinner, an Old Skool Outspokin’ party which also quenched my craving for live jazz, fried Chicken-n-Grits at Yesterday’s with an old friend and new friend, drinks on high at The Roof Top with Newberry’s soon-to-be “it couple,” a lower leg massage by South Carolina’s best sports massage therapist, a great wedding and rehearsal dinner, lots of swim, bike, run with the best training partner in the world, and a quasi Ben Lippen School reunion at Carolina Wild Wings, one of the worst bars in Columbia with the best service in the world, courtesy of “Hey-Hey-Hey”Aaron.

So as I return back to Missoula it is with a mass of conflicting emotions, all of them, however, overridden by gratitude. …special thanks to Adam for doing what Delta couldn’t, to Jackson and Julie for first class accommodations at Guilford Street, and my WALG’s (Western Adoptive Legal Guardians), Betsy and Jeff for Montana airport transfers and open arms.

Up next will be a welcome return to my training routine in Missoula (unwelcome, however, is news of the paving of the Kim Williams trail), a break for the liver (thanks everyone for the drinks!) and some dedicated training to undo what the South does to people, make them happy and fat.

Ryan Alexander Payne
Carolina Made, Montana Made Better