Back 40: Who I Call Happiness
A deep pool Water as clear as the air I see She lives there My happiness I know this Though I’ve never seen her Not physically I’ve never touched ...
A deep pool Water as clear as the air I see She lives there My happiness I know this Though I’ve never seen her Not physically I’ve never touched ...
Montana occupies a special place in America’s conservation lore. Not only is it home to the world’s first national park — Yellowstone — but it...
The Western History Association recently announced that a book by Belgrade, Montana author Michele Corriel won the national 2023 Joan Paterson Kerr Aw...
Montana Freshwater Partners (MFP) works to restore and preserve healthy rivers, streams, and wetlands by applying science-based practices to complex p...
Architecture KA Architecture Construction MDM Construction “This is not a mansion. It’s just a home,” says Tim Davis of the primary residence he...
Jim Bortz has been many things. He’s worked at a steel mill and on construction sites, repaired cable lines, led expeditions as a fishing guide, ten...
All mayflies are beautiful, but especially so to the fly angler’s eye. That all mayflies feed and fatten trout makes them, to that eye, more beautif...
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 G...
Water, no matter if it’s at the beach, running through a creek, or even in a puddle, is as fascinating to kids as it is to anglers. They’ll play i...
The Refugee Ocean by Pauls Toutonghi (Simon & Schuster, $27.99) is the kind of novel for which the form was invented. It creates sweeping, lush wo...
Thomas E. Minckler has dealt in rare books, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and art for much of his life. His 2023 book, Montana: A Paper Trail, i...
Upon walking through the front doors of the Simms headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, a passion for angling is immediately apparent: It permeates the ve...
Among America’s most renowned luthiers, Montanan Ren Ferguson has made custom guitars for The Beatles, The Stones, Tom Petty, and Emmylou Harris, ju...
Some might find it strange that one of my favorite trout streams flows through a burned-over canyon. I first visited Roaring Lion Creek in mid-July ...
I am featherlight, tossed like confetti into a brilliant blue sky, jostled about on the velvet wings of thousands of birds — tundra swans, herons, s...
We’re a couple dozen miles down a rolling, dusty, backcountry road that shadows the Greys River in western Wyoming, and I can’t find the dream poo...
From any angle where Main Street meets Callender, the corner restaurant looks unassuming enough. Warm yellow light emanates from within as dusk falls....
Looking back, the country got me first. Spending countless miles driving through the West was intoxicating; an obsession that only worsened after year...
The trout-filled limestone canyon of Montana’s Smith River — twisting through the Big and Little Belt mountains — would have made a magnificent ...
The temperature gauge in my truck reads 1 degree Fahrenheit as we pass through Roosevelt’s Arch at the northwest entrance to Yellowstone National Pa...
Who made your shirt? I’m not asking about its brand or the country where it was manufactured. Who was the actual person who put in work to make your...
The sun is starting to set behind Wyoming’s Rendezvous Mountain as the last and most committed skiers descend to the base area after a beautiful blu...
Architecture Brechbuhler Architects Construction M Squared Construction Bridger Canyon holds a rare beauty that sticks with you, even in a place as ma...
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. T...
Some 20 years ago, I met David Quammen under unusual circumstances. He had written an essay about cougars for a wilderness advocacy publication to whi...
Maps hold a promise of roads untaken, the allure of the exotic, and adventures yet to come. For James Niehues, a legend in the ski world for his bird...
Driggs, Idaho has always been a little eclectic and esoteric, a place called home by extreme athletes, artists, and Mormon families who migrated to th...
What if we took a moment to pray for snow Let’s call it Salmon Weather and let’s stop Calling it a nuisance or an inconvenience Let’s pray to th...
Every year since 1993, Butte has held Montana’s “shortest, loudest, coldest” parade for the Lunar New Year to celebrate the city’s historic Ch...
Each year, the Montana Food Bank Network (MFBN) acquires and distributes millions of pounds of food to community pantries across Montana, allowing yea...
Editor’s Note: The Winter 2023 issue closes Big Sky Journal’s 30th anniversary. In recognition of this passage of time, the editors turned back to...
The man behind numerous iconic images of the Rocky Mountain’s stunning natural features comes into full focus in Tim McNeese’s William Henry Jacks...
Over the past 40 years of photographing wildlife throughout the American West, I have always returned to the American buffalo, or bison. To me, the ...
The Arts Council of Big Sky will host its annual Auction for the Arts on Thursday, February 22, 2024, in the Grand Ballroom at the Montage Hotel in Bi...
When 18-year-old Canadian freeskier Marcus Goguen stood in the starting gate at last year’s Freeride World Tour stop in Kicking Horse, British Colum...
For chef Michael Patria, arriving at Cortina felt like a kind of homecoming. The Northern Italian restaurant sits on the slopes of Lone Mountain in Bi...
Winter in the Northern Rockies means snow and all the accompanying festivities, whether that’s bombing down a hill, clearing ice from a fly rod’s ...
The Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation has long been renowned for its spectacular beadwork and horsemanship. On June 25, 1805, two Canadian fur traders, Franç...
Last winter, temperatures plunged well below zero at my home in northwest Montana. Our regular outdoor thermometer stopped at minus 40, so when I trud...
A cider wind teases melancholy memory. Slanted light brushes the horizon gray. Shadows peer, and crawl, and rise. An embracing maple colonnade invites...
To call Sun House (Little, Brown, and Company, $35), by David James Duncan, a novel is akin to calling the sun a decent-sized campfire. This book, com...
Before a flight, I search the U.S. Forest Service website for the latest fire response and air attack restrictions, scan webcams for measly weather re...
“The buffalo furnished them meat, robes for bedding, skins for teepee coverings, clothing, foot gear, sinew for sewing, bone splinters for sewing aw...
As we leave Crow Agency in his Tribal Fish & Game pickup, Benito Morrison hands me a foil-wrapped globe the size and heft of a pool cue ball. “T...
The Seeley-Swan Valley, located in northwest Montana, is nestled between — and populated by — giants, both topographically and botanically. No pea...
I’ve killed many deer, and I’ve eaten them all, including one I accidentally killed with my car. It was February 2018, nearly midnight in Montana,...
It’s August and somewhere out beyond Big Sandy, behemoth machines crawl across the landscape. It’s harvest time in Montana. In late summer, the ...
Montana’s Lones Wigger was, unquestionably, among the finest competitive shooters in American history. While his fame exists mostly in the marksmans...
For the past eight years, I’ve followed a passion for photographing Native American tribes throughout Montana. Initially captivated by Montana itsel...
Architecture N2 Architecture Construction MKD Construction Interior Design Michele McCarthy Interiors Architecture projects can be driven by a host of...