Remote is not that thing on the coffee table

I saw this t-shirt at the farmers’ market in downtown Helena – don’t you love it?  So let me tell you what remote is:

Remote is three flights and then a 4-wheel-drive truck ride to the end of the unpaved road.

Remote is no locked doors.

Remote is 380,800 square kilometers (147,040 square miles) for just over a million friendly folks. That’s almost 10 times as big as Switzerland with 1/8 as many residents. Montana is 48^th in population density (of 50 states).  

Remote is seeing a galaxy full of stars in the night sky.

Remote is hiking trails with no signposts, no distance or direction indicators; trails that peter out in a tangle of undergrowth and resume faintly beyond a couple of fallen trees and patches of goldenrod.   

Remote is strolling through a stand of aspens on the way to the bathhouse and coming upon a doe and her two fawns munching peacefully on the leaves. 

Remote is hearing the trout splash as they snap at the bugs in the pond. 

Remote is the absence of city cacophony: no sounds of planes, trains, sirens, horns or jackhammers. 

Remote is having to climb to the peak of a surrounding mountain to get any cell phone reception. But who wants that?