To reach a desired location, one must sometimes travel in the opposite direction.

For the past six years Street Librarian has focused on media that matter, small-circulation periodicals, and independent presses deserving wider attention. In an age of info glut and wisdom dearth, the column has highlighted publications whose creators are motivated by passion for ideas instead of profit. At its best, that's what this magazine does: presents diverse voices and views, not necessarily popular ones, and lets readers think for themselves.

This last column will be different. It's both good-bye-I'm no longer the Utne Reader librarian-and hello from a new place, with assertions, questions, and observations from a higher altitude.

The news, in brief: I've moved from Minnesota to northwest Montana with my partner, Martha. After a lifetime within walking distance of the Mississippi River, I now watch the sun appear and disappear over mountains. Here I've touched a glacier, seen black bear and coyote, picked and eaten wild huckleberries. Here too I've learned where to buy tempeh and miso, started an online publication called Thoreau Today, and hung up a shingle advertising my services as writer, editor, indexer, proofreader, and fortune-teller. Who knows what the future will bring? For now, I aspire to pay attention.

We live on the edge of heaven and hell. Here, that's just within the borders of boomtown Kalispell, on the perimeter of a new subdivision where streets are named for venture capitalists. On the edge of town, where the sprawl meets the wheat, one can hear the grass sing. Killdeer, kestrels, and kingbirds patrol the fields. Overhead, spectacular and ever-changing clouds appear. Where the valley meets the sky, Lombardy poplars rise.

The Flathead Valley is a land of extremes. Daytime air temperatures in August may exceed 100 degrees and drop the same night into the 40s. Humans coexist with grizzlies. Mobile homes abut million-dollar mansions. In this third least densely populated state, Flathead County's human population has grown more than 10 percent since 2000. Through Kalispell's center runs a sane Main Street surrounded by tree-shaded neighborhoods, but beyond that lie more big-box retail stores than I can imagine a town of 18,000 supporting.

We've moved here. We're part of the problem. How many more farms can be turned into parking lots before this place becomes unlivable? Can humans make a place better? Why can't we leave wonderful places alone?

The very name 'Kalispell' suggests an invocation from the Hindu goddess of darkness Kali, a friend in New York alerts us. For now we leave our windows open and unlocked, aspire to make sense of local 'property rights' debates that rage like forest fires, and have joined Citizens for a Better Flathead, an organization devoted to checking unexamined, uncontrolled growth. In Kalispell no one stares at a man on Main Street with a rifle on his shoulder, except us newcomers, perhaps. The editor of the Daily Inter Lake shills for George W. Bush. We haul our own trash.