For a boy who only knew red dirt, heavy air, and the threat of twisters, visiting the Northern Rocky Mountains must have been magnificent. He traveled by train from the southern Great Plains to work on a U.S. Forest Service crew in northwest Montana, where...
The winter day is often at its coldest as dawn breaks. With crystalline snowflakes gathered on the ground, shrouding the landscape in a soft layer of white, the air is a thin, heady brilliance as it fills the lungs. The cold surrounds, stings, seeps into...
Art is ubiquitous. Or more to the point, beautiful scenes, precious moments, wondrous animals, stirring events — they are all around us, and the works inspired by these elements abound. As Whitefish, Montana artist Nate Closson (page 146) says, “This whole world is beautiful. …...
During summer afternoons in the Northern Rockies, it’s nearly impossible not to ponder what writer Rick Bass calls “the power of spaciousness.” Cumulus clouds shift within a cerulean sky, their shapes illuminated by gentle rays of sunshine, casting darkened shadows on the ground. Somewhere, a...
Building a home is immensely complex. In addition to melding a design-build team, integrating the interests and desires of individual family members, meeting the needs and requirements of the site, and flexibly appealing to a required timeframe, every element of the structure must perform its...
The allure of the river captured me at a young age. Fortunate to have grown up near the banks of a year-round stream, I keenly explored its wonders and secrets, seldom, if ever, disappointed. In middle and high school, in a complete embrace of the...
After cautiously guiding our horses up a steep and timbered hillside, we were met by knee-high meadow grass and the scraggly trees of the alpine. It was an unusually cool morning in August, and despite the lather on my horse, I knew we had more...
Last winter, temperatures plunged well below zero at my home in northwest Montana. Our regular outdoor thermometer stopped at minus 40, so when I trudged out through crystalline snow to feed hay to the horses, I checked the thermometer on the pickup and my husband’s...
I write this coming off a weekend spent in Jackson, Wyoming, having driven through Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming to get there. The fir and spruce forests extending from Big Sky to Island Park open up into rolling cropland near Ashton, which meets the expansive Grand...
This summer, my daughter discovered our horses. Not quite 2 yet, she toddles toward the pasture adjacent to our house, eagerly proclaiming, “Neigh!” the moment she catches sight of them. She asks to sit on their backs, and, once mounted, she energetically gestures directions as...