The Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation has long been renowned for its spectacular beadwork and horsemanship. On June 25, 1805, two Canadian fur traders, François-Antoine Larocque and Charles McKenzie, witnessed the equestrian parade of more than 2,000 Crow people, including some 645 warriors, who filed through Hidatsa...
Last winter, temperatures plunged well below zero at my home in northwest Montana. Our regular outdoor thermometer stopped at minus 40, so when I trudged out through crystalline snow to feed hay to the horses, I checked the thermometer on the pickup and my husband’s...
A cider wind teases melancholy memory. Slanted light brushes the horizon gray. Shadows peer, and crawl, and rise. An embracing maple colonnade invites. Earthen musk hovers. Brittle stalks chaff and scream, restless. Orange specks punch the landscape, soon to be leering. Metal air stills. The whisper of goodbye returns Echoes. Cling. And let go. Fleeced light voyages across...
To call Sun House (Little, Brown, and Company, $35), by David James Duncan, a novel is akin to calling the sun a decent-sized campfire. This book, coming in at nearly 800 pages, commands attention. But the caliber of writing, at any length, would cause the...
Before a flight, I search the U.S. Forest Service website for the latest fire response and air attack restrictions, scan webcams for measly weather reports from “airports” that seldom report any, and listen carefully to the gems that grizzled backcountry pilots might drop in casual...
“The buffalo furnished them meat, robes for bedding, skins for teepee coverings, clothing, foot gear, sinew for sewing, bone splinters for sewing awls, and many other items they required.” — Dominic Michell, Salish Tribal Elder, Circa 1942 While precise numbers are impossible to determine, most authorities estimate...
As we leave Crow Agency in his Tribal Fish & Game pickup, Benito Morrison hands me a foil-wrapped globe the size and heft of a pool cue ball. “The original trail mix,” Morrison, a Crow game warden, says with a laugh. We’re going to view...
The Seeley-Swan Valley, located in northwest Montana, is nestled between — and populated by — giants, both topographically and botanically. No peak in the region eclipses 10,000 feet in elevation, but the Seeley-Swan is bordered by the Mission Mountains and Swan Range, which collectively encompass...
I’ve killed many deer, and I’ve eaten them all, including one I accidentally killed with my car. It was February 2018, nearly midnight in Montana, a few miles west of the Continental Divide. The muley appeared as I curled around a bend where U.S. Highway...
It’s August and somewhere out beyond Big Sandy, behemoth machines crawl across the landscape. It’s harvest time in Montana. In late summer, the “Golden Triangle” of central Montana is alive with men, women, and machines bringing in the summer’s crop of wheat — the iconic product...