Growing up in Sun Valley, Idaho, with a father who was passionate about bird hunting, Sarah Tilt learned how to use a shotgun at an early age. But it wasn’t until about 20 years ago, when she moved to Montana’s Gallatin Valley and decided to...
Vestiges of the lawless wilds of the Old West, the ghost towns of the Northern Rockies are the perfect backdrop to a fall weekend road trip. And with the departure of summer tourists, these historic treasures have been abandoned anew, making autumn the ideal time...
Fishing is a year-round endeavor, but the fall season is my favorite. Low, clear, and cold water makes for accessible fishing and hungry trout. This fall should be one of the best in recent memory, as the past winter’s snowpack blessed most drainages with ample...
THE PLAN WAS HATCHED LESS THAN 24 HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE. It had been too long since we’d been out. Enough of town, traffic, chores, work, and deadlines. We didn’t have much of a window; we couldn’t leave until after work on Friday and had to...
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...