While joyful in anticipation, coming home for Christmas is often a mixed blessing. Folks arrive with their baggage of memories packed over some years and selectively sorted by time and experience elsewhere. Pleasing recollections color our expectations. Unless gone for a very long while, we expect our home territory to be much as when we left. Deviations seem deceitful and sully our visit.

However, many changes are clear improvements. More and better restaurants, bread, and flyshops, for example. And yet, not all good things go together, especially as once quiet towns are transformed by America’s new economy.

I am sure that many of those returning to Bozeman will be shocked by change. “Is this really the place I left a few short years ago?” No, indeed it is not. While the town bulges in all directions, the mountains remain intact. But there houses creep up to elevations untenable if not uninhabitable two decades ago. Improved building technology, communication, snow removal, and remarkable SUVs make life at six thousand feet easy and comfortable.

Windshield empiricism suggests global warming. And the recent record really does show winter arriving later and spring earlier. If this is merely a blip on the temperature graph, a statistical oddity, harsh winters will return and there will be lots of these nice new houses cheaply available.

People have more flexibility than plants and animals and adjust to and with new opportunities. When you next drive through the countryside, note the old ranch steads. Most are nestled behind hills or in draws. Their sites were selected for shelter, not hilltop views. Compare the old with the new when driving west on Norris Road. I find the change quite dramatic. Many of those returning home will find this agitating; the viewsheds of their youth have been despoiled by the obvious if not ostentatious wealth of new arrivals. This offers a peek at our new economy.

I had previews of this disenchantment over Thanksgiving while visiting with friends from an earlier life. Some ranchers’ families had been here for six generations; loggers’ fathers arrived after WWII; others had worked for Montana Power. All lamented community changes.

I wish I had asked my friends, “What would you do with a magic wand in your Christmas stocking?” Judging from their many complaints, few in language appropriate in a family paper, this is a likely reply. “I’d wave it and return the Gallatin Valley to what it was when I graduated from high school.” This is not to be. Here’s a sketch of the dynamics that confront and confound my friends’ souls and status.

From the Civil War until Earth Day, only approximate benchmarks, our region had a coherent culture, economy, and politics. The glue holding them together was commodity exploitation and conversion. The folks who mattered in community life manipulated real stuff, cows and trees and water and grain, not symbols and electrons. People dealt with the furniture of the world and cheating was easily exposed. Folks were interdependent, knew it, and acted accordingly. That’s what’s gone.

Now things really are different. Ever more people’s incomes are independent of their locations. And ever more folks want to live in places with Bozeman’s qualities. Consider growth in America. The locational advantages of Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit are gone -- all have lost population. What’s booming? Bellingham, Boise, Bend, and Billings all are growing rapidly.

What attracts the new arrivals? A sense of community, good schools, safety, short commutes, safety, clean air -- and the absence of a threatening underclass. These are powerful magnets indeed. Due to these features, even the cities of the Dakotas are booming.

Bozeman has this set and far more. We have MSU (the University of the Yellowstone), spectacular wild lands, wonderful air service, and a wealth of cultural activities. We have a great tapestry within which folks can weave their lives. People visit, imagine their futures here, and migrate.

We’ve only seen the beginning of a fundamental transformation. If a magic wand appears in my stocking, I’ll wave it and new neighbors will appreciate the values we’ve maintained. They will respect and help us preserve our small-town feeling and our open space. Let’s work for happy Christmas returns.