On a raw December day in western Montana, several dozen visitors enjoy a welcome dose of the tropics thanks to the grand opening of the state’s new educational attraction: the Missoula Butterfly House & Insectarium. Inside the main exhibit area, visitors of all ages eagerly...
I hike in the dust of Morley, my one-eyed mule guide, with each step taking me deeper into the wilderness. He saunters up the trail, slightly swaying under the weight of my food. His deliberate and practical rhythm slows my anxiousness and excitement into contented...
Editor’s Note: Retrieving antlers on public land remains a balance between opportunity, access, safety, and conservation. Last year, the Wyoming Legislature created a resident-only season on select public lands during the first week of May, with nonresidents who purchase a conservation stamp allowed after May...
Ask any author, historian, or cowboy with an eye for the great Old West, and they’ll credit Dick and Dora Randall as the heart and soul of the OTO, Montana’s first dude ranch. Situated along Cedar Creek in the Absaroka Mountains, 10 miles from the...
Still have that old canary-yellow Schwinn Varsity bicycle hanging from the rafters in your parents’ barn? You know the one: the steel-framed groaner whose tires haven’t been inflated since the Carter administration. Pull it down, grease its chain, tune its brakes, and see if those...
For Martha Scanlan Driving the backroads of Montana Gravel unspools to the horizon Fields of wheat and mountains surround me I’ve got all the good day long left to drive. My dog is asleep beside me There’s a creek up ahead that I know Where cottonwoods and trout lounge in the shadows Good...
Dave Carty captures the spare poetry of Montana landscapes, specifically the Shields River Valley, in his poignant novel Red is the Fastest Color (Guernica World Editions, $18.95). He takes the reader through the seasonal changes that dominate life in this region, and those mirrored in...
Some 12 years before Theodore Roosevelt’s rapid rise to the U.S. presidency, he experienced a bear hunt that was more troublesome than most of his earlier expeditions. As related in Roosevelt’s book The Wilderness Hunter, he engaged a guide named Griffin, an old man skilled...
Most of us have at least a passing familiarity with the Texas longhorn. You could probably draw one right now if you had to. You or your kids may have had photos taken with one at a county fair or local rodeo. The unmistakable silhouette...
From an early age, Montana-based illustrator and painter John Potter has treated the world — the land, the animals — as family. “The trees feel like relatives, the mountains like grandfathers,” says Potter. “That’s how I look at the natural world.” Growing up, his mother...