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...
Summer arrives to the Northern Rockies with its own kind of relief. There should be a word for it. That long, long exhalation. February, March, April. Then … whew. You’ve had your skiing at Big Sky or Jackson Hole, sure, ice-fishing, maybe a few days spent slinging brassies on the...
When I think of winter, minimalism is not what comes to mind...
From the desk of Seabring Davis ...
Ode to the Arts...
Spring came early to the Northern Rockies this year...