When artist Meagan Blessing was 9 years old, she filled an expedition-style backpack and walked out the front door of her family’s home in Seattle, Washington. It was summertime, school was out for the year, and she was ready for a great adventure. Her plan:...
In the summer of 1910, Idaho and Western Montana suffered one of the most devastating fires in the nation’s history. It was a conflagration that historians refer to as the “Big Burn,” which killed 87 people and turned 3 million acres of trees — an...
Working as a photojournalist for more than 20 years, Janie Osborne has had the opportunity to travel the state of Montana extensively from her home base in Bozeman. Although Montana is a tourist hotspot, known for Yellowstone and Glacier national parks and an abundance of...
All gifts are temporary The sun, the moon, the stars Stripes on the backs of chipmunks Beaver tracks in the mud. This morning It was a troop of robins Busking for worms Their bouncing advancements timed To a foghorn of cows. Meanwhile The rising sun Didn’t believe in a thing Not me, not you And the...
A regular contributor to Big Sky Journal, John Clayton is the author of Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon and Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America’s Public Lands. In addition to Big Sky Journal, Brian...
“To write a meaningful memoir, I have been told, you must have interesting people living in interesting times,” writes Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel in Waiting for the Revolution: A Montana Memoir (Sweetgrass Books, $17.95). By recounting the lives of her parents, Troxel — a distinguished...
Writer Thomas McGuane made Montana his permanent home in 1978. After working hard in Hollywood and playing hard in Key West, Florida — where he was known as “Dr. Berserko” — he decided to trade in the thrill of a peripatetic life for Montana’s big skies,...
While researching the possibility of building a sleek and modern home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a retired couple went to lunch at a Chicago restaurant with two design principals from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Architect Peter Bohlin had already spent time at the couple’s home in...
THE SUN IS RISING IN THE SMALL TOWN OF DRIGGS, Idaho, and like most summer mornings in the Teton Valley, there’s a distinct chill in the air that will fade as the day progresses. Sleepy spectators wander from their cars, making their way across the...
I’VE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO STAY AT MORE than two dozen Forest Service cabins around Montana since I moved here nearly 30 years ago. And I’ve stayed in many of them more than once, some for several days at a time, and during every season...