I was walking down Main Street yesterday, enjoying the way the wind tries to push you toward the curb, when I tripped. It was a perfectly good crack in the concrete, deep enough to catch a boot heel and wide enough to hold a bit of mountain silt. I imagine it has been there since at least 1994, maybe earlier.

A young man in a very clean, very white pair of designer sneakers stopped to help me up. He told me he works at the new tech office in the building that used to be the old hardware store. He looked genuinely concerned, suggesting that the city should really pour some fresh, smooth leveler over these “dangerous hazards” so that the downtown area feels more polished for the new boutiques.

I thanked him, but I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of loss. If we fill in every crack and level every uneven paver, we are simply erasing the record of our own feet. That crack was a reminder of the thousands of people who walked to the bank, the pharmacy, or the grain elevator before everything became a place to buy high-end candles and mountain bikes.

Bozeman used to be a place where you didn’t mind looking down at your boots because you knew the ground beneath you was firm and familiar. If everything becomes perfectly smooth, there is nowhere left for the history to hide. We are trading the character of a worn-in town for a sidewalk that looks like it belongs in a shopping mall in a city I’ve never visited.

I walked the rest of the way home very carefully, hoping to find another crack. It is important to know exactly where you are standing.

Phyllis Grainbelt has lived in the Gallatin Valley her entire life and remembers when the Co-op was just a co-op. She does not elaborate on what this means.