AS SOON AS SHE'S OFF HER LEASH, Milly Bird the dog darts into the tall grass prairie, a white and black streak against the muted umbers of Montana’s late-August grasses. A blur, until she stops and stands still but for a slight quivering. Her tail...
PHOTOGRAPHY, INCREASINGLY, IS AN ACCESSIBLE ART FORM. Anyone with an iPhone can take some kind of photo, and often a pretty good one. At a glance, the distance between a passable amateur shot and a drop-dead professional image isn’t huge. But then you look closer. Anyone can...
As avid skiers, Paul and Caroline Goodfellow have spent a lot of time in ski resort towns, but when they set foot in Whitefish, Montana, at the suggestion of a friend, they knew something was different. They were looking to build a vacation house as...
I can’t blame the guys for figuring I wouldn’t show up. I mean, for two years I’d told them I might meet them at their elk camp on the west side of Montana’s Madison Valley … and never did. This time I told them to...
A tireless advocate for the conservation of natural resources, Jim Posewitz is considered by many to be the father of hunting ethics in America. He sits in his office, perched on a hill above downtown Helena, surrounded by memorabilia from a lifetime spent protecting wild...
“His face was lined and careworn, but he was filled with the old spirit of hope. I couldn’t help admiring the courage of his optimism. Another thing that excited him was that some oil surveys had been made in the Big Horns. Somehow he’d managed...
Whenever I step across the tile-floored threshold of PLONK, I’m struck by the craving for a cocktail. It’s the rattle-slush rhythm of ice in a shaker that greets me as readily as the wave from a mixologist standing behind the crescent-shaped bar. It’s the high...
Predator eye honed, since turning BB-gun-five, to its feathered edge, I catch the ruffed grouse flashing its neon-red failure to blend into the November gray- black bed of quaking aspen leaves matching the bird’s mottled jacket not quite exactly. It cocks its head, eyes me up and down, crouches, stretches, sets sleek-plumed for the raucous launch that trips...
Matt Flint interprets tangible places on our behalf; using layers, glyphs, scratched surfaces, and repeated patterns, he demonstrates new ways of understanding the natural world. Powerfully emotional, he tethers the transient human experience to the land; by following the natural process of growth, decay, and...