Capes by Jennie Montana Jennie Montana tells stories of the Montana landscape, flora, and fauna through capes created with original appliqué and digitized designs that are placed on Melton wool trimmed with bison. She acquires bison hides from area ranches, then stretches and tans them before...
It’s rare, as a photographer, to take an image that you immediately know is once in a lifetime. But on a bitterly cold day in February of 2023, that’s exactly what happened. While trudging through snow deep in Yellowstone National Park, a flash of white against...
After cautiously guiding our horses up a steep and timbered hillside, we were met by knee-high meadow grass and the scraggly trees of the alpine. It was an unusually cool morning in August, and despite the lather on my horse, I knew we had more...
When Laura Orvidas took the reins of onX in 2018, the Missoula, Montana-based company had about 70 employees and did most of its business shipping state-specific digital maps stored on physical chips that users plugged into their handheld GPS units. If that description of the...
What do moths have to do with owls? Just ask Mat Seidensticker. After nearly a decade spent studying owls across Montana and Alaska, Seidensticker focused his research on the flammulated owl, one of Montana’s smallest and most cryptic species. Soon, it became impossible for him...
On a sunny afternoon in late May, Dillon Kouf stands at the heart of Double K, his family’s ranch outside Darby, Montana, surrounded by barns and outbuildings and the vibrant green of spring. Around him, the endless bustle of chores continues: a couple of men...
It was lightly raining the morning I visited Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, wetting the gravel roads just off I-90 in an area that might be called a “light industrial district” if it were anywhere else in the world. Buffalo is not known as...
When my feet sunk deep into the wet ground far away from the hills where I was born, I knew my husband and I had found the right spot. Our horses had steadily climbed the steep mountain trail for 12 miles, weaving through sheer cliffs....
Moisture rising from the little spring-fed pond overnight had condensed, frozen, and crystallized on the willows lining the bank. The December sun didn’t offer much warmth, but it made the hoarfrost sparkle brilliantly in the clear morning air. The temperature was so cold that I’d...
noun sleeping giant: We pass over the mountain’s back, ice licking the treads of our tires, our voices hushed. comforting companion: The mountain yawns but doesn’t shift. Its blankets of tired timber, salted greens, and browned sage wrap over its sleeping shoulders. We curl into the nook of its knees,...