AFTER LIVING IN AND AROUND the Greater Yellowstone area for some time now, I’m used to driving over a rise and being blown away by what I find on the other side. It might be a valley full of grazing elk, a peak jutting triumphantly...
THERE'S A CANOE HANGING FROM THE CEILING of Dick Idol’s art studio, and it’s not just any old boat. Purchased from a fur trade museum in Michigan more than 35 years ago, this 16.5-foot Ojibwa birch bark canoe was made between 1850 and 1880 in Northern...
ATTRACTION, ATTACHMENT, AWE — all come with having a sense of place, a strong resonance to one particular locale on Earth, which speaks to us in a language that feels tailored to our hearts. For artists, this sense of place serves as a generous wellspring...
"EVERYONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT a cowboy is,” says Nikki Todd of Visions West Contemporary in Bozeman, Montana. “You watch people come in the gallery and see his work, and they’re immediately drawn to that iconic imagery.” [caption id="attachment_16565" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Faster Silver | Acrylic...
CODY, WYOMING-BASED ARTIST MIKE "M.C." Poulsen remembers the genesis of his epic Yellowstone Waterfall Project. An accomplished painter since his early 20s, Poulsen was attending an author’s presentation of the then-newly released book, The Guide to Yellowstone Waterfalls and their Discovery, when he was hit...
THE SUN IS RISING IN THE SMALL TOWN OF DRIGGS, Idaho, and like most summer mornings in the Teton Valley, there’s a distinct chill in the air that will fade as the day progresses. Sleepy spectators wander from their cars, making their way across the...
I’VE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO STAY AT MORE than two dozen Forest Service cabins around Montana since I moved here nearly 30 years ago. And I’ve stayed in many of them more than once, some for several days at a time, and during every season...
LAST YEAR, WRITER THOMAS MCGUANE UPDATED The Longest Silence — his 1999 collection of essays on trout, tarpon, and bonefish — by adding 15 new chapters, including a final one called “Shrink to Fit: Fly Fishing While Old.” In that essay, he recounts how he...
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S BIOGRAPHY OF A GRIZZLY has been a classic illustrated animal book for children since it was first published in 1899. Despite the factual-sounding title, the book is fiction; Seton invented the storyline for his bear-hero Wahb. But there was a real grizzly named...
ONE AUTUMN DAY, I WAS SITTING ON A RIDGE in the foothills of the Alaska Range glassing for caribou when I spotted a strange, dark form scampering across the tundra a hundred yards away. Despite my familiarity with wildlife in Alaska, I’d never seen anything...