Jim Williams’ fascinating new natural history book, Path of the Puma: The Remarkable Resilience of the Mountain Lion (Patagonia, $24.95), examines the seeming contradiction behind the current status of these striking, big cats. He explains that while wild animals — and especially large predators —...
ELLIOT GARFIELD IS A MAN OUT OF TIME. Not hourly time, though as a UPS delivery driver, he is in a perpetual dust cloud of a hurry on his route of graveled Northeast Montana backroads. And not seasonally, though he can seem time-deprived as he rushes...
THE ALARM CHIMES AT 6 a.m. I hit snooze for half an hour before I’m finally roused from my cot by the sound of hooves. The metal roof of the classroom, my makeshift bedroom, amplifies the soft rain. Looking out the window, I see men...
ON A COLD, CLOUD-HEAVY SPRING DAY in Southwest Montana’s Paradise Valley, a Belgian malinois named Pepin trots from one pile of elk scat to the next, tongue lolling, nose glued to the ground, intent. Not far behind, his handler, Megan Parker, follows, providing words of...
ALTHOUGH THE EVENTS TOOK PLACE NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, I still remember them as vividly as yesterday. A warm September sun hung suspended in the endless prairie sky, reminding me why my new Montana license plates seemed so proud of the sobriquet they bore. To the...
I’M STANDING ON THE CHUNK OF MADISON LIMESTONE in a meadow filled with grass and midsummer flowers. Asters, yarrow, buckwheat, prairie smoke with its Einstein-hair stamens, lupine with pods, yellow paintbrush, buttercups, delphiniums, grass, and piles of horse poop surround the rock and fill the...
Whitefish Lake, northwest Montana’s spectacular high-altitude destination, has been drawing out-of-staters for generations. Seven miles long and only a mile wide, the lake is anchored at its southern tip by the quaint town of Whitefish. For one couple, part-time residents but longtime homeowners who once...
You don’t have to be crazy to hunt mountain goats, but being so doesn’t hurt your chances for success. Think about it: Goats spend most of their lives above 9,000 feet in elevation, often clinging to precipitous habitat, meaning sheer rock walls and outcrops. Hunters who...
A March wind blows over the Beaverhead Valley and piles dark clouds on the horizon, harbingers of the coming snow. Tucked into a fold of land outside of Dillon, Montana, a low-slung barn reverberates with noise: Sheep bleat, dogs bark, people holler, and above all...
When the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Alfred Mathews — a man opposed to slavery and secession — found himself in a discomfiting position as a schoolteacher in rural Alabama. Under threat of arrest, he was compelled to join a...