The winter day is often at its coldest as dawn breaks. With crystalline snowflakes gathered on the ground, shrouding the landscape in a soft layer of white, the air is a thin, heady brilliance as it fills the lungs. The cold surrounds, stings, seeps into......
A horse runs across a snowy field — a rider at the reins — as a skier clings to a rope tethered behind the saddle. The skier leaps off jumps, dodges obstacles, and carves turns while spectators cheer. Skijoring is a sport with rich history......
It was raining,” began Howard Zahniser’s account of a horsepacking trip in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains in August of 1947. The horses were saddled, packed, and tied to trees outside a rustic log cabin. But Zahniser — a 41-year-old city gent, a preacher’s kid, and a......
Since its original facility opened in 1927, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming has become a 300,000-square-foot historical center consisting of five separate museums. Its flagship, the Buffalo Bill Museum, chronicles the life of William F. Cody [1846–1917], a Western icon......
Tatiana Lawson is the newly appointed director of the Sun Valley Resort Ski Patrol in Sun Valley, Idaho, and the first female ever to hold that position. And, while women have been involved in Sun Valley’s male-dominated professional patrol for several decades, it’s clear there’s......
You can be forgiven for thinking of Montana’s Class C state basketball tournament, which begins March 12 at the Butte Civic Center, as the culmination of spectacular seasons for eight of Montana’s smallest high schools. A more accurate description of the state tourney is that......
My first backcountry ski lodge experience was back in the late 1990s when some friends and I rented an old yurt two blocks off Main Street in Cooke City, Montana. We paid $5 for a snowmobile ride from town up to Daisy Pass in the......
Winter Palette A silver palette Of subtle hues Softly tinted grays And Prussian blues A finely honed dawn Blush silver and peach An infinity of polished sky Mountains within reach Evening chills strike a Cold metallic horizon Purple clouds on a sea of ice Dashed......
Sheriff Jules Clement of the fictional town Blue Deer, Montana has returned, at long last, and fans of Jamie Harrison’s mystery series will be delighted with the latest installment, The River View: A Jules Clement Novel (Counterpoint, $28). As with earlier books in this series,......
Lois Keister of The High Lonesome is a layered mix of grit and grace. A contemporary Western artist based in Montana’s Ruby Valley town of Sheridan, she creates fine art glassworks for both display and use. But Keister doesn’t just work in glass, she embodies......
After picking up the rental car, we were jumpy about the bitter weather — an emptiness I could feel in the pit of my stomach. The 115-mile drive from Billings, Montana skirted the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Then it bisected the Crow Reservation, which......
The dog I own is a certified, bird-obsessed, bad-to-the-bone English springer spaniel. Both parents are field-trial champions. She is gaunt and intense, and an absolute killer when it comes to pheasants. Drive is not an issue. Last year, on opening day, she jumped out of......
As the foggy autumn faded beyond my reach, my journey tempted me yonder into the vacuum of winter’s mantle of snow. I was looking for minimalistic subjects, basic in shape. The mesmerizing simplicity is key when I’m looking for a single point of interest. Highly......
Country music legend Charley Pride traveled some of the most significant miles on his pioneering path to the top of his profession while in Montana. He came to Big Sky Country in 1960 as a minor league baseball player, pursuing his lifelong dream to play......
Ski-in, ski-out was the driving concept behind the design of a home up on a ridge in the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Montana. And it made perfect sense for a young family from back East intent on tackling the challenges of the snow and......
At first glance, Spur Restaurant & Bar seems like just what you’d expect from a newly renovated, high-end — but still family-friendly — restaurant at the base of one of the best ski mountains in the country. The rustic-modern exterior, clad in reclaimed corral boards,......
Editor’s Note: In 2024, award-winning novelist Diane Smith celebrated the 25th anniversary of her first book, Letters from Yellowstone, with a special edition of the title. The book, creatively composed in letter format, documents a fictionalized botanical field study in Yellowstone National Park in the......
This Fall, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the winners of its 2024 Regional Pollution Prevention Recognition Awards. Bridger Bowl Ski Area, located 30 miles north of Bozeman, Montana, is among three businesses to receive the award within Region Eight, which encompasses Colorado, Montana,......
Some people are born to do amazing things, but not before a baptism in fire. David Riggs, founder of K9 Care Montana, is one of them. At just 17, Riggs was profoundly injured, paralyzed, and left in a wheelchair with surgeries and little else to......
Capes by Jennie Montana Jennie Montana tells stories of the Montana landscape, flora, and fauna through capes created with original appliqué and digitized designs that are placed on Melton wool trimmed with bison. She acquires bison hides from area ranches, then stretches and tans them......
It’s rare, as a photographer, to take an image that you immediately know is once in a lifetime. But on a bitterly cold day in February of 2023, that’s exactly what happened. While trudging through snow deep in Yellowstone National Park, a flash of white......
After cautiously guiding our horses up a steep and timbered hillside, we were met by knee-high meadow grass and the scraggly trees of the alpine. It was an unusually cool morning in August, and despite the lather on my horse, I knew we had more......
When Laura Orvidas took the reins of onX in 2018, the Missoula, Montana-based company had about 70 employees and did most of its business shipping state-specific digital maps stored on physical chips that users plugged into their handheld GPS units. If that description of the......
What do moths have to do with owls? Just ask Mat Seidensticker. After nearly a decade spent studying owls across Montana and Alaska, Seidensticker focused his research on the flammulated owl, one of Montana’s smallest and most cryptic species. Soon, it became impossible for him......
On a sunny afternoon in late May, Dillon Kouf stands at the heart of Double K, his family’s ranch outside Darby, Montana, surrounded by barns and outbuildings and the vibrant green of spring. Around him, the endless bustle of chores continues: a couple of men......
It was lightly raining the morning I visited Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, wetting the gravel roads just off I-90 in an area that might be called a “light industrial district” if it were anywhere else in the world. Buffalo is not known as......
When my feet sunk deep into the wet ground far away from the hills where I was born, I knew my husband and I had found the right spot. Our horses had steadily climbed the steep mountain trail for 12 miles, weaving through sheer cliffs.......
Moisture rising from the little spring-fed pond overnight had condensed, frozen, and crystallized on the willows lining the bank. The December sun didn’t offer much warmth, but it made the hoarfrost sparkle brilliantly in the clear morning air. The temperature was so cold that I’d......
noun sleeping giant: We pass over the mountain’s back, ice licking the treads of our tires, our voices hushed. comforting companion: The mountain yawns but doesn’t shift. Its blankets of tired timber, salted greens, and browned sage wrap over its sleeping shoulders. We curl into......
All journeys are journeys of the soul, as well as the body and mind. This is delightfully true for Ammalie, the hero of Laura Pritchett’s new novel, Three Keys (Dell, $20). Leaving her empty Chicago home — she’s recently widowed, middle-aged, and estranged from her......
In the spring of 2024, I contacted the Gallatin History Museum in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana, looking for historical photographs of two country schools in the area, Malmborg and Springhill. I wanted to compare the old images with photographs I’d captured. Co-director Charlotte Mills......
Why are mechanical watches so alluring? Especially in 2024 — when a glance at your phone, car dashboard, or microwave can tell you if it’s tea time or cocktail hour. What’s the appeal? Dave Berghold, founder and owner of Bozeman, Montana’s The Last Wind-Up, knows......
Imagine a history professor who, instead of writing monographs, got some canvas, took up a paintbrush, and tried to tell the story of the West through a series of vignettes in oils. That might be the best way to describe Don Oelze: he paints history.......
At 4 a.m., the first alarm sounds — not your typical electronic buzz or ringtone, but the vigorous shaking of collars belonging to two pointing dogs. Within seconds, there’s a cold muzzle nudging me to leave my warm bed to get dressed. This is really......
ARCHITECTURE | NATURAL DWELLINGS ARCHITECTURE CONSTRUCTION | DOMICILE CONSTRUCTION INTERIORS | JUNIPER INTERIORS Don and Sheri Weber loved their old farmhouse, cold drafts and all. They had spent 36 years in their beloved home on the outskirts of Idaho Falls. They’d raised their twins there;......
The giant entered Yellowstone National Park squeezed into the back seat of a white Ford Model 81A DeLuxe sedan, arms akimbo, knees spread wide. It was June 27, 1938. The man was 6 feet, 6 inches tall, with medium-length unruly black hair pulled back from......
The Keep’s castle-like facade emerges from the trees like something from a European fairytale — albeit one with a working Montana ranch across the street, a lush golf course below, and a growing neighborhood above. Inside the restaurant, guests are welcomed to a fine dining......
During the COVID doldrums and lockdowns of 2020, documentary filmmaker Dee Garceau needed a project to shake off cabin fever, as Montanans refer to the condition prisoners call “stir crazy,” and clinicians diagnose at its worst as “psychopathology.” “I was isolated, depressed, and miserable,” Garceau......
The Western Horse: A Popular History of the Wild and Working Animal Written by Randi Samuelson-Brown A celebration of the Western horse, Randi Samuelson-Brown’s new book explores the animal’s ability to capture our hearts and spirits and how horses have come to symbolize the American......
Located in Dillon, Montana, just east of the Continental Divide and tucked against the Blacktail Mountain Range, is the internationally renowned Montana Center for Horsemanship (MCH). With a mission to redefine the nature and scope of human-horse interactions to enrich, improve, and augment the lives......
Wild Rag by Rusty Sagebrush and Rawhide Slide by Bebout Braiding 44-inch Wild Rag: $85 Scarf Slide: $70 rustysagebrush.com When Montana rancher Kate Mannix was discovering botanical dye, she added silk fibers that were first dyed with fresh sagebrush leaves to a bucket of rust......
In memory of Richard Roberts [1919 – 2007] The woods allow a road but only as wide as axled wheels will ride, and in the untrod center protest with tiny pines. The woods permit at noon equality of shade and light, one so black, one......
Big Sky’s Music in the Mountains free concert series brings nationally touring artists to southwest Montana each summer. Now, because of critical support from a local foundation, music fans can see more of Montana’s best up-and-coming bands as the series continues through September. The nonprofit......
Montana-based artist Dana Boussard’s Earth to Hand, Hand to Earth, a visual narrative of Gallatin Valley’s history, was recently installed in Montana State University’s (MSU’s) historic Romney Hall as a part of a $32-million renovation of the 1920s structure, which added 1,000 classroom seats and......
Jackson, Wyoming-Based Stio has teamed up with Taylor Guitars to create a limited-edition series of acoustic guitars that celebrates the mountains through brightly colored graphics designed by nine regional artists. According to Stio, the collaboration celebrates “music’s power to bring people together and the creative......
Altamira Fine Art will once again represent work by the late contemporary American artist John Nieto in its Jackson, Wyoming gallery. Nieto, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 81, is lauded for his dynamic style, which was defined by his use of......
For nearly 50 years, the Sweet Pea Festival has been promoting and cultivating the arts through a gathering held the first weekend in August in Bozeman, Montana. Though the festival has significantly grown since it launched, Sweet Pea continues to offer a range of family-friendly......
The museums, galleries, and curated art events that celebrate the artists of the Northern Rockies offer an intimate glimpse at life in the American West. Upcoming calendar highlights include: Through August 17 James Chronister: And We are Green, Greener Than the Hill, Where Flowers Grow......
These Creatures of a Day Written by Marc Beaudin Featuring 56 poems by Marc Beaudin that delve into our connection and disconnection with the natural world and each other, These Creatures of a Day is a collection that inhabits its readers. Beaudin’s pieces run the......
Four years after moving the Pavilion Project’s Town Enclosure to Bozeman’s Story Mill Community Park from its inaugural location at the Center for the Arts in the heart of downtown Jackson, Wyoming, the large-scale installation continues to engage public audiences with its inquisitive design and......