Axiom #1-Kristen Gladfelter

For the summer, I worked in Montana studying plants as an internship opportunity. My entire life I’ve been traveling to Montana as my family lives there. From the jagged cliffs to the pristine blue waters from glacier runoff, I loved this place. With that in mind, I was extremely excited to stay there for the entire summer and explore the terrain. I figured I could simply make Montana my own sacred place... Unfortunately I was wrong. Without even knowing Lane’s four axioms I realized, it is impossible to simply declare a sacred place sacred. With temperatures that barely broke freezing in the middle of July, steep terrain that sometimes proved impossible to climb, snow in august, and a coworker that thought bathing was too modern, I realized sacred place will only approach you when it chooses. Regardless of how breathtaking the scenery was, the effect of the sublime, or when my coworker was down wind, I never found axis mundi out there as I had hoped too. Instead, strangely, I found it in my own backyard when I returned home... Funny the way life works.