In the predawn black, I trek up to a saddle off Emigrant Peak’s west flank, nestling into a small thicket of young Douglas fir to watch the day arrive. My back leans against an old rampike, a once-grand whitebark, stripped and bald, but still standing...
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...
Circling: following a lake’s perimeter and adhering closely to the shoreline while tracing the curve of bays and the tips of promontories. This way of kayaking a large body of water captivates me. Circling something truly marvelous and ending back where I started has answered...
On a picture-perfect June morning, a week shy of the summer solstice, sunlight streams through the spires of the enormous ponderosa pines above me. I sit mesmerized, perched in the palm of a cool granite outcropping worn smooth through a millennium of rushing waters, fixated...
The dog I own is a certified, bird-obsessed, bad-to-the-bone English springer spaniel. Both parents are field-trial champions. She is gaunt and intense, and an absolute killer when it comes to pheasants. Drive is not an issue. Last year, on opening day, she jumped out of...
At 4 a.m., the first alarm sounds — not your typical electronic buzz or ringtone, but the vigorous shaking of collars belonging to two pointing dogs. Within seconds, there’s a cold muzzle nudging me to leave my warm bed to get dressed. This is really...
Oh, how the waters curve and jump — fringed with willows, flickery with trout — between a big wilderness and a small town. That’s the creek, the place where I spend much of my free time. I suppose you could refer to it as a...
In memory of Rick Nyhart (1949 – 2024) Sometimes we go back and see ourselves at a different time and place. We go back and look at where we started. Like the earth we inhabit, we evolve, age, live out our stories, fall into the arrangement...
Tom Rosenbauer can get any uncle excited about a small stream. Alvin Dedeaux can teach you how to almost look cool when you’re chasing bass. Kelly Galloup can demonstrate knocking out a 10-inch trout with a 12-inch streamer. But to my knowledge, no fly-fishing personality...
At the end of last winter, with the final days of the ski season fast approaching, there was a mad dash for tram rides at Big Sky Resort in Montana. The ski area’s iconic lift — installed at the top of 11,166-foot Lone Peak in...