This has never happened to me at a restaurant before. I’m seated at a picnic table. Before me, rows of vegetables and herbs unfurl themselves, pushing into the green foothills of the Gallatin Range. The light is golden and coming in slantwise between steel-gray storm...
Rocky Mountain Field Guide: A Trailside Natural History Written by Daniel Mathews In Rocky Mountain Field Guide: A Trailside Natural History, naturalist and writer Daniel Mathews offers a comprehensive guide to the far- ranging flora, fauna, topography, and habitats that define the Rockies, from Glacier National Park in...
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (MT FWP) biologists are collecting wings from hunter-harvested mountain grouse, including dusky/blue, spruce, and ruffed, across Region 3, which encompasses the southwest portion of the state. The biologists will use the wings to identify birds by species and determine whether...
Each autumn, as cooler weather brings color to leaves and deposits dustings of snow in the mountains, a group of cowboys heads into central Montana’s Highwood Mountains on horseback to gather the area ranchers’ cows and bring them home. After spending the summer turned out,...
In a world where outdoor adventuring often feels intimidating, Shyanne Orvis is redefining the narrative one cast at a time. As a guide, conservationist, and passionate advocate for women in fly fishing, Orvis has built a reputation defined not just by her skill on the...
Editor’s Note: This column is adapted from When Montana Outraced the East: The Reign of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886-1900 by Catharine Melin-Moser (University of Oklahoma Press, April 2025). Nineteenth-century Montana folklore tells of a beautiful chestnut-colored Thoroughbred mare named Oriole. On April 10, 1894, the heavily pregnant...
When Charles Fritz moved to Montana in the 1980s, he ran into a problem. Up until then, the Iowa-born artist had carved out a niche for himself in the watercolor market, painting sporting still lifes: wooden decoys, hanging mallards, shotguns. “But when I came out...
John Colter [c. 1775–1812] is among Montana’s most legendary mountain men. His iconic status is predicated on extraordinary feats of fortitude that occurred between the summer of 1806 and the spring of 1810, marking the beginning and end of his career as a trapper in...
Knife maker Will Hutchinson — known to most as “Hutch” — has spent a lot of time thinking about the marriage of form and function. With an undergraduate degree from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio and a Master of Fine Arts from the...
Let’s face it, Old Faithful, Great Fountain Geyser, Norris Geyser Basin, and the various Yellowstone fumaroles don’t get a lot of attention when they’re in the steam phase, which comes after all the “oohs” and “ahhs” and visual thrills of an eruption. Sitting by myself,...