By the time you read this, I’ll be in Missoula, Montana. 

Don’t worry. It’s not forever. 

I mean, I’d like it to be forever.  

I’ve been to Missoula several times. Once, my Uber driver took me to all the Yellowstone filming locations. 

Another time, the staff at the Boot Barn told me about standing in line at Starbucks and seeing Kevin Costner. 

So you understand why a girl might want to live there. 

Now, I’m guessing you want me to back up to that Boot Barn thing in three … two … one. 

Yeah. Boot Barn. 

There are a few things about Missoula. 

One is, when I’m in town, there’s a formal dinner I attend. 

As formal a dinner as one can attend when she’s served alligator nuggets and invasive wild boar filets. 

Both of which are delicious, I might add. 

But anyway. 

This formal dinner is in the middle of nowhere. Once, while in attendance, I panicked because the only bathroom seemed to be a row of portable toilets. 

Fortunately, one of the dinner’s organizers — well aware that, to me, a row of portable toilets is not, in fact, a bathroom — ushered me to the solitary indoor bathroom on site.

And I’m here to say you can give yourself airs about eating alligator Chicken McNuggets all you want. You’re still very high maintenance when people are on the alert to rescue you from portable toilet usage. 

The wardrobe suitable for a formal dinner outfitted with portable toilets sits in a very specific Venn diagram.  

Then there’s the Missoula weather.  

I’ve been to Missoula in spring, when a frigid wind blew snow flurries in my face. 

I’ve been to Missoula in a different spring, when my walk to hot yoga demanded no coat, but my participation in an outdoor brew fest later that afternoon sure did. 

As you can see, sartorially, Missoula is a challenge. 

Fortunately, I have a role model. A native Montanan who can slug a whiskey as easily as she can slug some random chick in a honky-tonk eyeing up her husband. 

Beth Dutton. 

Fictional though she may be. 

How many women can make high boots and long dresses look amazing? 

Enter Boot Barn. 

And my cowboy boots. 

My cowboy boots — I am a different girl when they are on my feet. 

That girl still doesn’t use portable toilets.  

They’re incredible boots, but they’re not magic. 

When you need shoes to take you from a snow swept Montana plain to hot yoga to outdoor brew fest to alligator Chicken McNuggets, cowboy boots are up to the task. 

Yeah. You can wear cowboy boots to hot yoga. You can wear bedroom slippers to hot yoga for all anyone cares. Nobody wears shoes once the actual yoga begins. 

So wash your feet before you step onto your mat. 

When you’re hanging in Missoula, where people really do wear cowboy hats, cowboy boots feel like a must. 

Especially when you’re less than ninety minutes from the real, working ranch doubling for the Yellowstone Ranch on Yellowstone. 

I mean, what if I’m in Starbucks — likely — and Taylor Sheridan, who writes Yellowstone, sees me? What if he reads this column? What if he reads this column, and sees me, and thinks to himself, “She’d make a perfect extra except, ooh, no, she’s wearing sneakers?” 

We can’t let that happen. 

So I went to the Boot Barn in Missoula — years ago, on my first trip — to buy cowboy boots. 

“I can wait if you’d like,” my let’s-tour-Yellowstone-locations Uber driver said. 

Unlike Taylor Sheridan, he obviously doesn’t read this column. Me? Make a wardrobe decision quickly? Let’s be honest. I’m lucky I’m still not there, years later, trying to decide on a pair of boots. 

Because there are dozens of them. 

Low ankle and thigh high. Pointed toe and square. Neutrals and every color in a Skittles bag. 

At the formal dinner in the middle of nowhere that night, I looked around. Local Montanans I know and respect were dressed like me — dress, cowboy boots, hair swept high. 

So I nailed that sartorial Venn diagram. Cool. 

I was introduced to a fellow diner. My husband, aware this diner has a home in the quiet Outer Banks town Indy took us for vacation every year of my life, pointed out our commonality. 

“You know it?!” the diner asked skeptically. It’s not one of the popular Outer Banks destinations. Most people have never heard of it. 

But I have. 

And I wanted to prove it. 

“You do, really?” he asked again. 

“Yes,” I said. “I was conceived there.” 

Yep. That’s what I said. 

And that’s why it doesn’t matter what you wear. 

Cowboy boots are extraordinary. 

But they can’t fix your mouth. 

And if you believe your Yellowstone, that’s probably hunky-dory in Montana.