Chris Murphy was 13 when he started washing dishes at the Continental Divide, and he went on to wait tables there through college. Back then, in the late 1980s and ’90s, it was a hole-in-the-wall, with 10 tables and a bar next door where you...
Jessica Kay Ruhle, the new executive director of the Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) in Billings, Montana, cherishes memories of childhood visits to the Polk Museum of Art, a Smithsonian affiliate in her central Florida hometown of Lakeland. Her regular companion on those meanders was her...
I live in a land of sacred spaces. The Triple Rock sits on the bank of the historic Blackfoot River in northwest Montana, in an area known as the Crown of the Continent, one of the last contiguous untamed landscapes in the U.S. There, nature’s...
Paul Harris (1925-2018) exemplifies the back and forth between art and artist, between place and culture, and between male and female dynamics. Although his art defies categorization, Harris worked within the context of other artists and art movements. Post-war American artists bore witness to dramatic changes...
The path from here must be instinctively traced each breath avowed to relational space all thought attribution all feeling atavistic The way rain and snow dance across an interval of shadow scaling in and out of form the way stars darken toward us until our struggle to see them ceases and we are secretly...
When an avid outdoorsman embarked on an ambitious search for a mountain property to call home, he traveled to McCall, Idaho; Telluride, Colorado; and Big Sky, Montana, before discovering a parcel at about 6,000 feet in elevation near the southwest Montana town of Livingston. It...
The summer trail season is here in Big Sky Country, and, whether you’re venturing out for your first time to walk on an unpaved surface or emerging from your winter hibernation cohabitating with some Yellowstone grizzlies you’ve managed to befriend, you could probably use a...
Blackbird Kitchen has been a staple and locals’ favorite in downtown Bozeman, Montana since opening its doors in 2009. Their secret? Simply good food. Head chef Kenan Anderson stays within their formula for success by creating vegetable-forward menus that change with the seasons and feature...
Jamie Ford’s multigenerational and magical tale, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (Atria Books, $28), has him well on his way to becoming the Gabriel García Márquez of Asian-American literature. Like García Márquez, Ford’s ability to paint a deep and vibrant story, while moving expertly...
America has long had a conflicted relationship with its rural spaces. “It’s the rural idyll versus the rural illicit,” says Megan Torgerson, founder of the podcast “Reframing Rural,” referencing the dualistic beliefs that arrived with European colonizers. “Today, people either view rural as this kind...