Amy Lay is a full-time artist. Her work appears in galleries across the country, from Manchester, Vermont to Whitefish, Montana. But she’s also a full-time homesteader — the fourth generation to run her family’s ranch in Oregon. “This property and this lifestyle, they’re responsibilities that...
What does the West mean to you? Is it a place, a lifestyle, a feeling, a philosophy? In the centuries since Euro-Americans first explored the country’s interior, the West has changed beyond the imaginations of those who first mapped it. In that relatively short time,...
If there were only one moment to capture a dining experience, let it be this one: My date and I had just finished the Smoked Mangalitsa Pork Tostada, which we had smelled the moment it hit open flame, the air so smoky and sweet. From...
Mike Morelli leads a tour of wide-eyed adults through the inner workings of Missoula Children’s Theatre (MCT) prior to the opening of one of five performances the theater puts on as part of its Community Series. An expressive and exuberant speaker with dancing eyes behind...
Carving trenches from ageless grass is a lonely ordeal beneath the far gray. A careless horse will die in a ditch so digging them wide will spare us the grief. We toil in the earth in an aging machine, no less weathered by time than the skull of a steer. Under...
The utter largeness that is the legacy and artistic relevance of the late Jim Harrison seems impossible to contain. His novels, novellas, screenplays, and poetry collections have left a once-in-a-generation mark on the literary landscape. Perhaps equally celebrated (or condemned), his life was lived with...
Intended or not, it’s often the simple moments that paint pictures on our hearts: a casual exchange between friends, the striking call of a loon across a lake, an old barn at dusk, flowers in a pot by the front door, swelling clouds before a...
In September, all the water in Montana is low. On the west side of the Continental Divide, there had been no rain since early June. Nikea and I left the creek and climbed the lifted palm of the drainage that held the lake. The basin lacked...
DESIGN-BUILD | CLEAR CREEK DEVELOPING SPECIALTY CONTRACTING | MONTANA TIMBER TECH A Texas couple with family connections to, and a deep affinity for, Big Sky, Montana recently found property in the Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, where they planned to build a secondary home for themselves and host...
On a visit last spring to the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, I was surprised by two insights. First, Russell’s visual storytelling is astounding. Second, some of those stories involved automobiles. The first insight shouldn’t have been a surprise. “Russell was a wonderful storyteller,”...