I’m not going to pretend I’m an experienced angler. Just one look at me on the bank of a river, struggling with a fish or taking an enormous amount of time to tie on a fly or untangle my line, and I’m instantly exposed for...
As I write this in early November, my home base in South- West Montana is already blanketed in snow, sketchy winter driving conditions are in full force, the biggest of the puffy coats has already had a good amount of wear, and ski gear is...
Watching summer dwindle away is part of life in the Northern Rockies, because, as we all know, it’s fleeting. And it’s busy: Fly fishing, hiking, mountain biking, rafting, visits to and from family and friends, music festivals, and the list goes on, as we stuff...
“An individual is not too distinct from his place. He is his place.” — Gabriel Marcel If you think about it, much of the art we see is connected to the area in which it’s created. Whether it’s a landscape capturing an iconic view or a...
This spring, Yellowstone National Park’s Steamboat Geyser, the largest active geyser in the world, erupted for the first time since 2014. Then it erupted again a month later… and then three more times for a total of five, as of this writing. A seismic phenomenon...
If you’re an angler, there are few fish so momentous as your first real lunker. It’s an initiation of sorts, and it sets the tone for much of what follows. In my case, the lunker happened near Philipsburg, Montana, on a tributary of Rock Creek....
Montana is the kind of place that can take a toll. And not a metaphoric “gee it hurts to get out of bed” kind of toll. A literal toll. As of two years ago (according to a quick Google), the median household income in our...
Fly fishing, among its many other virtues, tends to take place in scenery. Maybe that’s part of why we started fishing in the first place. Good set design and a decent soundtrack (water over stones). Trout need clean water of a certain temperature. That means...
Fall in Montana. It’s possible, at other times of the year, to imagine that better lives are being lived elsewhere. In May, when snowdrifts still clog the high trails and runoff has turned the rivers to coffee … somebody, somewhere is having fun. They’re surfing in Laguna, for instance....
Growing up, I watched my father, the sculptor Burl Jones, make wildlife. He’d start with an armature. Coarse blocks of foam that he shaped and pared down with a kitchen knife. Heavy-gauge wire for arms or legs. Using green clay warmed in a kitchen Crock-Pot, he would tilt his...