Faith & Spirit Quote by Gretchen Powers

“Montana is a state of mind” is the kind of line a photographer reaches for when the landscape isn’t just scenery, it’s a filter for living. Powers isn’t selling geography; she’s naming an internal setting you can toggle into. In the age of constant notifications and self-branding, “state of mind” works like a permission slip: you’re allowed to be quieter, slower, less performative. Montana becomes shorthand for spaciousness, the opposite of cramped digital life.

Then she lands the emotional payload: “a place where you can let your soul breathe.” It’s deliberately bodily language, turning spirituality into something physiological and urgent. Breath implies both relief and survival; you don’t “breathe” in places that feel unsafe, surveilled, or crowded. The subtext is a critique of modern claustrophobia - urban density, social pressure, economic precarity, the sense that every moment is monetizable. Montana, in this framing, isn’t escapism so much as recovery.

As a photographer, Powers is also defending a way of seeing. Vast skies and long horizons are visual arguments: your problems are not the whole frame. The line flatters the viewer’s longing for authenticity, but it’s savvy about what authenticity now means - not purity, not isolation, but enough quiet to hear your own thoughts. Of course, it’s also an act of mythmaking. “Montana” here is an idea curated through images, a clean, open promise that conveniently edits out winters, wages, and who gets to afford “breathing room.” That tension is why it sticks.