On the coldest of winter days, when the Montana sky is at its crispiest, palest blue, there’s nothing better than setting out for a morning of cross-country skiing. Maybe that sentiment doesn’t immediately resonate with you. At face value, strapping on a pair of skinny skis...
At 14 months old, Harpy makes her way over upended picnic tables, through tires, and across a wooden ladder suspended 8 feet in the air. Her blond jackrabbit legs slip out from underneath her, first one, then the other. She freezes long enough for the...
If you’ve driven many of Montana’s 13,000 highway miles, you’ve experienced the pit-of-the-stomach dread that one of those mule deer grazing the shoulder will lunge into your lane or that an unseen elk or moose will sprint across the road, forcing you into a dangerous...
In Montana, ice climbing has a bit of a medieval-cult feel. Those who belong are fiendishly devoted; those who’ve never tried it wonder why anyone would fall into its grip. Hanging off frozen icicles, with razor-sharp daggers that might bite more than the ice if...
If there were ever a flavor that could define a place, Missoula, Montana might be best captured in a cup of tea — specifically, a cup of Evening in Missoula. Add hot water to the herbal blend from Montana Tea & Spice Trading, and the...
On July 25, 1877, a band of weary Nez Perce began to descend the Bitterroot Mountains into Montana. As the subtitle of this piece suggests, I’ve chosen to focus on the Montana leg of the Nez Perce flight toward Canada for several reasons: I live...
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...
Like many of his grain-growing neighbors on northern Montana’s Hi-Line, Ryan Lankford has fully integrated computers and satellite connectivity into his farming operation. His John Deere tractors are guided by GPS waypoints, and his newest combine has forward-facing cameras that detect the amount of stubble...
When I was stationed as a medical officer on the Fort Peck Reservation 50 years ago, I fell in love with the prairie but missed trout fishing. I found a few farm ponds with stocked rainbows, but that didn’t satisfy my need for dry flies...
We should bother with keeping sage grouse in the West because they are a measure of how the environment is doing,” says Martin Townsend, the conservation director for the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance. “If sage grouse go downhill, we have a large-scale problem.” Less than a dozen...