The Person Who Brings a Guitar to the Trailhead

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0600

You know who you are.

You’ve got the guitar strapped to your pack. You’re sitting on a rock at the Drinking Horse trailhead. You’re playing Wagon Wheel. You’re playing it in a key that doesn’t exist. You’re singing with the confidence of someone who has never been told no.

I didn’t hike twenty minutes through the mud to hear an acoustic rendition of a song I’ve already heard 400 times at every brewery in the Gallatin Valley. I came here for quiet. I came here for the birds, the wind, the sound of my own labored breathing. Nature doesn’t need a soundtrack, and if it did, it wouldn’t choose Wagon Wheel.

Hiking on The Bozeman Daily Bee

The Person Who Brings a Guitar to the Trailhead