On-rez, you drink wherever. Off-rez, you drink at home or in a bar. That's about the only difference: economics, lack of sophistication, and standard of living are basically the same with variations according to culture. In the "major cities," including Missoula, you get back into what the rest of the nation is used to on a day-to-day basis, though on a smaller scale population-wise.
The sharpest difference is actually Western Montana versus Eastern Montana: completely different culture, standard of etiquette, weather pattern, population density, and economic base.
You do get used to the weather (living here in CA I actually miss the snow), but you definitely do not want your bread and butter dependent on the local economy. The middle-class is virtually nonexistent -- there's either the very wealthy or the barely scraping by (or not).
Fortunately our police in MT are far kinder to vagrants than the CA cops. Our Fish and Game department doesn't fine homeless people for fishing without a permit, doesn't audit the meatpacking places for licensed kills (though they will prosecute trophy kill poaching to the maximum extent of the law), they don't enforce camping permit laws beneath bridges as long as the people there don't get into fights, and they don't enforce renter's laws for camp trailers unless you hook the person in question up to your septic system without a permit (because too many people on one line can contaminate the groundwater). We didn't have a lot of truly street people (most everyone can find someone's camp trailer/back shed to crash in), but those we did have, everyone in the neighborhood knew by name and face. I think part of it was because everyone was so hard up we had a stronger sense of community/"pay it forward," or just because it takes a hard person to let another human being freeze to death -- it's not like California where that homeless person you didn't help can at least survive. You can only live without some form of heat-able shelter for three to four months out of the year. And even then we'd have several a year who pared the choice between heat and food too close to the bone and froze.
So. Yeah. Have outside money, if you do decide to move there. It's beautiful country, but not without cost.
EDIT: Oh, and as far as wolves -- your best bet for wolves is the Bitterroot Valley, along the western and southwestern areas. They were reintroduced there a few years back and have gotten very bold. Sometimes they'll even come as far down as the residential areas between Darby and Hamilton.
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The sharpest difference is actually Western Montana versus Eastern Montana: completely different culture, standard of etiquette, weather pattern, population density, and economic base.
You do get used to the weather (living here in CA I actually miss the snow), but you definitely do not want your bread and butter dependent on the local economy. The middle-class is virtually nonexistent -- there's either the very wealthy or the barely scraping by (or not).
Fortunately our police in MT are far kinder to vagrants than the CA cops. Our Fish and Game department doesn't fine homeless people for fishing without a permit, doesn't audit the meatpacking places for licensed kills (though they will prosecute trophy kill poaching to the maximum extent of the law), they don't enforce camping permit laws beneath bridges as long as the people there don't get into fights, and they don't enforce renter's laws for camp trailers unless you hook the person in question up to your septic system without a permit (because too many people on one line can contaminate the groundwater). We didn't have a lot of truly street people (most everyone can find someone's camp trailer/back shed to crash in), but those we did have, everyone in the neighborhood knew by name and face. I think part of it was because everyone was so hard up we had a stronger sense of community/"pay it forward," or just because it takes a hard person to let another human being freeze to death -- it's not like California where that homeless person you didn't help can at least survive. You can only live without some form of heat-able shelter for three to four months out of the year. And even then we'd have several a year who pared the choice between heat and food too close to the bone and froze.
So. Yeah. Have outside money, if you do decide to move there. It's beautiful country, but not without cost.
EDIT: Oh, and as far as wolves -- your best bet for wolves is the Bitterroot Valley, along the western and southwestern areas. They were reintroduced there a few years back and have gotten very bold. Sometimes they'll even come as far down as the residential areas between Darby and Hamilton.
DragonLady