The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Shannon Kerley is from New York City. That is where she went to PA school.

Kerley wanted to see the west and figured there were places to live out here that are out of the bustle of the east coast. And she had met her boy friend in New York who was from Montana's own Big Fork.

So, when Kerley saw there was an opening at the Medical Center in Big Sandy for a PA, she flew out for an interview last March and loved what she saw. The Medical Center must have loved what they saw as well because she went to work as a full time PA on June 15th.

This was a whole different ball of wax living out here in the wild and wooly west. In New York Kerley's PA work was in an emergency room where one can only imagine the kind of people she worked with to make them better. They were for the most part, younger people.

In Big Sandy the patients are a little more elderly and what she treats is far different than back east in a large emergency room.

A big deal out here was when a boy broke his wrist at the skate park fundraiser. No big deal in New York but patching that youngster up here in Big Sandy, that is almost news!

"I love Big Sandy because everyone is friendly and seem happy," said Kerley. "If there is a downside to living here I have not found it yet other than having to drive a long way sometimes to get things I need."

Kerley said she had been to Glacier National Park several times because of her boy friend living in Big Fork. She loves that part of Montana as well.

One thing she said she noticed that she would never have heard of in New York is all the people who are praying for rain.

It is easy when living in Big Sandy to see how planting of wheat makes flour and that makes bread and that is what makes the world go round.

Living close to the good earth, that is maybe what it is all about for Shannon Kerley.

And living so close to the good earth, this is a place that makes for an essential life style found in few other places.

Not even with Glacier National Parks great wonders can it compare, in a sense anyway, with the Big Dry in feast and famine. That is sort of what Shannon Kerley was saying.

What she will find out if she stays long enough, is that the famines really makes the feasts look wonderful in the Golden Triangle of Montana!