In 2013, the newly-elected governor of Montana, Steve Bullock, commissioned artist Parks Reece for a painting to be unveiled at his inauguration ceremony at the state capital building in Helena. “I did a weird one,” Reece says. “I mean, I was surprised. [Bullock] gave me...
I woke in the middle of the night from a dead sleep with this poem running through my head, scribbled it down on the notebook beside my bed, and then fell back asleep. When I read it the next morning, I felt like I was...
Many anglers have likely discovered that even though we’re the ones casting a fly, it’s the trout that hooks us. When this happens, the sport becomes not just a game, but a passion. For angler David Stuver, it also turned into a lifetime of education. Stuver...
To say that we need to re-make our relationship with fire is both accurate and dangerous. Accurate because, well, not so many folks cook or heat with wood anymore. I suspect a lot of people’s only experience with it comes once or twice a year,...
Bare branches, you were dark lead around each colored pane. You outlined every piece of winter blue, then the wet violets and gold crocuses of spring. You caged gray flocks of mourning doves, embraced the satin strips of green breaking through black dirt, cupped a cloud, scored the yellow...
In The Stone Sister (Black Lawrence Press, $25.95), Caroline Patterson offers a kaleidoscopic story of loss and redemption centered around a deep family secret and a state institution’s dark past. In the 1950s, infants with Down syndrome were routinely institutionalized, and their parents were told...
I recently had the opportunity to chat with legendary fly-fishing pioneer Joan Wulff, known as The First Lady of Fly Fishing. At 95 years old, she was spirited as she talked about the evolution she’s witnessed in the sport, and because of the tremendous impact...
In 1960, 34-year-old Joan Cummings — later to become Joan Wulff — used a one-handed bamboo fly rod to cast 161 feet and set an unofficial women’s record. Unofficial because there was no women’s distance division in casting events at the time; Joan competed with...
To know a place Written by John Gifford My wife and I have this ongoing debate: Have you visited a place — a state, for example — if you’ve only spent a few hours in one of its airports? Or by driving through it on the interstate?...
“Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” — Henry David Thoreau At some point, about a dozen years into my practice of fly fishing, it became important to me to catch a really big fish. In the...