Seeley-Swan High School class of 2023 graduates

The senior class of Seeley-Swan High School filed into the auditorium for their last ever school assembly on Sunday June 4.

The school band played pomp and circumstance from the corner while the rows of parents, extended family and community members sat quietly in rows of folding chairs.

Each student stepped out of the yellow-lined doorway and paused for just a moment before walking down the aisle toward the stage and a new chapter in their life.

For many of these students this gym had served as a proving ground over the last four years, taking the shape of a basketball court, or a dance floor, but for all of them it had been a meeting place for school functions, or simply a classroom. This long stretch of urethane-coated hardwood had been a central piece in the lives of these 25 boys and girls as they slowly became men and women and today would be the last time they all stood together upon it.

The Seeley-Swan High School graduation ceremony was a festival of reminiscence. A collage of academic exploits led into a menagerie of baby pictures peppered throughout with anecdotes and jokes from the years spent in the halls of public education.

Class Valedictorian, Owen Hoag stood a good three feet taller than the podium, making it like a miniature on a set. He bowed his head to speak into the microphone. As his black and gold tassel jostled from one side of his mortarboard to the other he spun a lighthearted speech. He talked about being on the precipice of manhood, poised to step into the rest of his life. He didn't seem as unsure as his words tried to make him sound. As a newly appointed cadet of West Point and a Montana state track champion, Hoag was truly on the precipice. He was coming from a great accomplishment and onto another.

But the prospects of his future hadn't diminished his past. He viewed the moment with a brevity belying his few years.

"They say time flies when you're having fun, but I say it flies no matter what. So, you might as well have fun," Hoag said, closing out his speech to a round of applause.

As important as a high school graduation is to the students about to be turned loose on the adult world, it is doubly important to the parents who begat those students. This milestone of age and (supposedly) of maturity is a test of their resolve. They see a culmination of their efforts as their son or daughter shines through into independence,and as they take flight the nest begins to look empty.

There is pride and sadness. An alchemy born of letting go and mixed in equal parts to form the tears on the faces of the parents of Seeley-Swan High School as they accept roses from their children in a segment of joyous pageantry.

The Seeley-Swan class of 2023 will be attending colleges across Montana, from Billings to Missoula. They will be filling sports team rosters at schools like Providence and Carroll, but they will also be foregoing higher education and entering the workforce. Bypassing those years of exploration to begin early down the road of honest days' work and retirement plans.

Whatever these young men and women choose to do, it will be the first thing they choose as emancipated youths. Their first exercise in total freedom. And whatever they choose to do now will not likely be what they do later, as the ups and downs, and unexpected turns of life are sure to show them.

What do you ask a high school graduate, when they themselves know that they know nothing? What can come for questioning these men and women as they close one door and wait to open another? Ostensibly, nothing. They may impart a passing possibility, or fleeting fickle fancy, but they won't tell you their future in any intentional way.

They have so much to learn and so much to see. Things which will change their minds many times. And they will be all the better for those changes, as Cora Stone pointed out in her closing speech.

"Thank God we didn't have it all figured out in elementary school," said Stone "Imagine all the dinosaur tattoos we'd have."