When the beauty has nothing to do with the scenery.

When I left for my trip in 2016, people asked me which state I was most excited to see. Without hesitation, I replied, “Montana.”

My answer was purely based on the scenery. I knew nothing about the state except that when I had seen photographs of it, it appeared to be the most beautiful spot in the country.

I can confidently say that driving the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park was undoubtedly the most beautiful drive I experienced on the entire trip.

But it wasn’t the scenery that validated it for me.

In Helena, after the Independent Record published an article about More Good, I received an email from the governor of Montana, Steve Bullock. He mentioned that he was on an airplane traveling out of town that morning and had picked up the newspaper to read. A woman had walked by him on the plane, and when seeing him reading his paper asked, “Any good news?” He replied, “Actually, yes,” and shared my story with her. In his email, he told me he would have loved to meet me if he hadn't left town. Two minutes later, I was notified through my website that he had donated fifty dollars to my gas tank.

I immediately forwarded the email to my sisters with the subject line, “The governor of Montana just donated to my gas tank!”

That afternoon, I had lunch with my host, Meg, and two of her friends. I had connected with Meg because a friend of hers had written to me first. The friend had described Meg as one of the most wonderful people she knew. She also told me that Meg had started something called “Stitching Hearts,” creating 800 Valentine’s cards for a homeless shelter down the street from her. After delivering them, she realized the cards could be even more meaningful if sent to people in domestic abuse shelters. Since then, she has sent thousands of cards to shelters. I emailed Meg immediately, telling her about her friend offering her as a host. It was very last minute, so I wasn’t sure it would work, but Meg replied within ten minutes.

Meg to Me:

Jen did tell me about you, and I was hoping you’d be in touch because your project sounds so cool! We have a lovely spare room/craft room that we’d be happy to have you in. I currently don’t have a cellphone, but I can text you later from my partner’s phone.

Me to Meg:

Woo! I am so excited! I wasn’t finding any connections in Helena, so I wasn’t sure I’d stop, but I feel like it's fate that this will work out now! I appreciate your flexibility! Did you throw your cell phone into a river and are living a life of happiness (LIKE I WISH I COULD!), or are you in the process of getting a new cell phone this weekend?

Meg to Me:

I moved here from Canada last year, and it was too expensive to use that phone. Then I got used to not having a phone unless connected to Wi-Fi, so I’m just going with it for now. It’s a much more peaceful existence.

My stay with Meg was precisely what I had hoped for; she was lovely and made me feel right at home. On our first day together, over lunch, a friend of Meg’s highly recommended that I meet Helena's mayor. I was intrigued. She connected us later that day, and the mayor told me he would happily meet with me. I was shocked by how quickly he was willing to make time for me.

Wilmot Collins was a Liberian refugee and the first Black mayor of Montana. We had met at the Starbucks on Prospect Avenue the next day at 2 p.m. He was already in the corner of the café when I entered the door at precisely on time. I sat down with him with my back to the door, and he began talking. Suddenly, a woman tapped me on the shoulder, only a minute into Wilmot telling his story.

“I’m just going to interrupt for a minute and give you a hug,” she politely said as she wrapped her arms around me. “I saw your car out there and read about you in the paper today, and you’re just awesome. Have an excellent day.” And with that, she vanished.

It turned out that a hug was the most popular response during the trip when people learned what I was doing. I remember in California, at the end of an interview, once everything was packed up, the news anchor said, “I know this might sound odd, but can I give you a hug?” I understood his hesitation; we were right in the middle of the #MeToo movement, and as a man, he seemed nervous even to ask. However, I sensed how harmless his request was. He had repeatedly mentioned how much he appreciated what I was doing and how grateful he was to have been able to highlight my story. I genuinely embraced every hug I received during my trip. They provided immense comfort when I was alone out there. There was a sense of connection in that fleeting moment, held in a stranger’s embrace.

I took another sip of my coffee and focused back on Wilmot. I noticed the seriousness he carried that seemed to melt away the moment he smiled - one of those smiles that lights up an entire face. He returned to his story now that the woman had left.

It was just after he met his wife, Maddie, when the Liberian Civil War began and left them both homeless. He lost two brothers in the conflict before he and his wife were able to escape to Ghana. Years earlier, Maddie had been an exchange student at a high school in Montana and had stayed with a host family that treated her like their own. With everything going on, Maddie reached back out to the family for help. They sprang into action, securing her a full scholarship to Carroll College in Helena and inviting her to live in their home again. Wilmot would have to wait to go through the refugee program before he could meet her in Montana. Just before she left for the U.S., they discovered that Maddie was pregnant.

Wilmot didn’t meet his daughter until she was nearly three years old. He arrived in Montana and was welcomed into the host family’s home while he looked for a place for his family. When he found them a house, it wasn’t long before there was a knock at the front door.

A neighbor had come over to ask if he had seen what was written on his garage door. He hadn't; he walked outside with her, and there, in large painted letters across the side, were the words “KKK Go back to Africa.”

“You hear of negativities and racism all across the country, so when I saw that on my wall, I decided to go to the police,” Wilmot explained. “And by the time I got back home, my neighbor had already gotten the neighborhood together, and they had all washed it off.” Wilmot paused momentarily before repeating, “They washed my wall down.”

I took a moment to process everything he had said - the turnaround of it all. Then he added,

“I do not dwell on the act of racism; I dwell on the reaction of my community.”

It made me think of every story I was collecting and what I was trying to do myself. It wasn’t the tragic event or horrible scenario we faced that always mattered the most, but how we handled the aftermath. It was what we chose to focus on more.

Perhaps these events led us to a darker place we didn’t want to be in, and maybe they suddenly became our new narrative: “The woman whose son died or the girl whose mom died.” However, how we continued to write our story from there was our choice. I recalled the widow I met at the start of my trip. She was one month out from losing the love of her life, yet she sat there telling me about the kindness a nurse had shown her while she was in the ICU. Then there was Julie, who lost both arms and legs during a shooting, yet she spent hours in her living room with me, sharing the story of a man who bought her two mechanical hands and delivered them on Christmas.

All of these people I met were reminders that we have a choice every day. Will we focus on the person who painted the evil or the ones who washed it away?

“That story,” Wilmot continued, “sometimes makes me teary when I think about it. Because there are so many people who have gone through that who did not have the kind of experience I had, they were left to struggle on their own, and no community showed up for them the way they did for me,” he told me.

When those beautiful moments occur, they often bring us to tears because they feel so rare now. We don’t hear about them, we don’t see them, we only hear the bad, and we only know the negative.

That's why meeting Wilmot inspired me to keep driving forward and continue sharing these stories. Reminding people that moments of kindness are still buried beneath all the darkness felt like the most important work I could do. For every person who is doing bad, there are a few more who are tirelessly working to do good. And I wanted to keep uncovering them. I wanted to keep my focus on them.

We all have that choice. We get to choose what we focus on…

Will we focus on the one painting the evil or the one washing it away?

As I left the coffee shop that day after saying goodbye to Wilmot, a man stopped me. He told me he had seen my car in the parking lot and handed me $60. “It’s all the cash I have,” he said before walking away. I thanked him profusely and went to the next gas station to fill up.

I was right to think Montana would be one of the most beautiful spots in the country.

But it wasn’t the scenery that validated it for me. It was the people.

A printed photograph for my desk of me and Wilmot at the Starbucks on Prospect Avenue.