It was the second week of October, just on the edge of turning weather. A cold rain had arrived a few days earlier, taking down leaves all over town. Rows and rows of damp brown mounds dotted the street gutters like small mountain ranges. The......
Decades ago, I drew a coveted Shiras moose tag for the mountains north of Cooke City. A friend and I headed uphill by vehicle until I thought the habitat looked right, and then packed into a nearby lake. Most lakes on the Beartooth Plateau contain......
I avoid crowds, rather than seek them, when fly fishing. Yet there I was, standing on the timbered, rocky banks of the Yellowstone River for the trout opener in Yellowstone National Park. After my guide, Marty Mononi, had floated me down the upper South Fork......
Simms joins forces with Montana Freshwater Partners to repair and restore a vital and iconic watershed In association with Montana Freshwater Partners, Simms Fishing Products — the preeminent manufacturer of fishing waders, outerwear, footwear, and technical apparel — is launching the Simms Watershed Stockingfoot Wader......
With a nearly imperceptible disturbance of the water’s surface, the fly disappeared. I quickly and firmly — but without too much force — lifted my rod upward with one hand, while pulling in some line with the other. The line went taut and I could......
“You could ride in the morning, or sit in front of the cabin, lazy in the sun, and look across the valley where the hay was cut so the meadows were cropped brown and smooth to the line of quaking aspens along the river, now......
Center to install two sculptures and offer five-week concert season Celebrating the union between music, art, and nature on a 12,500-acre working ranch, Tippet Rise Art Center will open on June 16, 2023 for hiking, biking, and sculpture van tours. The 2023 season will include......
In 2019, diverse stakeholders including agencies, guides, outfitters, landowners, businesses, and community members gathered to form the Flathead Rivers Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has since led collaborative efforts to safeguard the future of Montana’s Flathead Wild and Scenic River system. The organization’s mission is......
Being out on the range in the rural West forces a change in how you relate to the world; your safety depends on it. But even when you’re by yourself, hours from the closest town, you’re anything but alone — the landscape keeps you company.......
The Occidental Hotel started as a couple of tents along Clear Creek, at the foot of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. Charles Buell, a carpenter from Wisconsin, made camp in 1879, just three miles from the new Fort McKinney. As was often the case, an “army town”......
for Lauren Raven at canyon rim fast by talon to stone quietly casts its body upon torrents of wind cottonwood banked below anchored to soil by root drifts a veil of seed over gale of riverflow and all along the ridge the feeling of a......
In Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession, and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman (Patagonia, $27.95), Dylan Tomine casts a line into his life of angling adventures with vivid detail, political and environmental astuteness, and wonderfully infectious humor. The narratives collected here take the reader all over the......
We gaped from our cabin deck as thunder roared and lightning stung the high peaks of southwest Montana’s Gravelly and Madison ranges, 10,000-foot monoliths like Sphinx and Helmet. Rain strafed our roof — a deluge unseen in months — dousing intense July heat and wildfire......
When you drift down the Yellowstone in a wooden boat, you know it: The momentum is different. There’s a glide through the waves instead of a pull. On a July afternoon, it can smell like the trunk of a sun-warmed cedar. A wooden boat sounds......
The chief problem for the grasshopper, in terms of its status among fly fishers, is the mayfly. The mayfly — delicate, slender, standing quietly on a river, the soft peaks of its full wings angling high — is the insect that, to trout-stream fly fishers,......
Madison bluebirds and other miracles Listen to the river sing sweet songs, To rock my soul. — Grateful Dead The ranger at the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park had been adamant: “Do NOT engage in any recreational activities.” Thus advised, my friend Jerry and......
In 1914, as the silent-movie wave swept the nation, Hollywood’s biggest character was Jim Stokes, the Two-Gun Man. In the film The Bargain, Jim wore a six-shooter on each thigh, rolled his cigarettes one-handed, and rode a brown-and-white pinto named Fritz. He was the good......
It’s midafternoon in October, and a bonfire is burning behind our house. With me is David James Duncan, revered Montana author, storied activist, and one of the deepest spiritual and ecological minds of our time. He’s just finished a forthcoming novel, Sun House, a sweeping......
Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Michael Cooperman didn’t have a lot of exposure to the outdoor world. Although he started fishing young, in ponds and the ocean, it didn’t become a passion until he was in his teens, reaching full fruition in his twenties.......
My dad taught me to look under stones. He counseled me on the different bugs that cling to the rock’s surface, as well as those that dart from beneath the disrupted rock and drift in the stream’s cloudy current. He informed my observation, pointing out......
Photo book celebrates rhythms of the American cowboy Traveling solo with just her camera, New York City photographer Anouk Masson Krantz spent two years aiming her lens at Wagonhound Land & Livestock Co., a working ranch embedded in Wyoming’s rugged Rocky Mountains. The result: a stunning photographic......
Warren Miller Performing Arts Center announces 10th winter season This winter ushers in more than just a season of snow: In Big Sky, Montana, it brings a selection of diverse performances to the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center (WMPAC). Acts will include a stand-up comedian,......
Mountains Rising Collection by Marina Kessler For those drawn to the Northern Rockies by the alpine landscape and recreational opportunities, a piece by Marina Kessler can serve as a symbol of that allure. The jewelry designer has created the Mountains Rising Collection for women who enjoy......
The 30th annual Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale in Jackson Hole, Wyoming saw strong attendance and big sales in September. This four-day event brings together craftspeople, collectors, interior designers, architects, and fashion designers with a shared love of the West. In honor of their superb......
Nearly 40 years ago, Robert and Greta Mathis realized their dream to help those with disabilities share in the exhilaration and wonder of outdoor adventuring in Montana by establishing Eagle Mount in Bozeman. At the time, Eagle Mount Bozeman offered a small ski program and......
It’s no secret that the mountains and meadows surrounding Bozeman, Montana offer some of the best cross-country skiing in the country. In fact, the Bridger Ski Foundation, a local nonprofit community ski club, tends to more than 70 kilometers of groomed ski trails in the......
Halfway through the latest phenomena, you stop to observe a small herd of black angus cattle standing in snow in a wheat field outside Ringling, Montana. It is the first day of winter, 18 below & they’ve huddled close together in a wide circle, en......
Architect/Engineer DCI Engineers Builder Clear Creek Developing When used in the context of new construction, “attention to detail” is a catchphrase that, at its most basic, refers to quality of craftsmanship and careful adherence to plans. Taken further, it extends from the macro — form,......
Some might say that if you want to experience all the river recreation that Idaho has to offer, there’s one waterway that rules them all: Henry’s Fork. The official headwaters begin at Big Springs, which produces 120 million gallons of water each day for the......
While attending Montana State University brought me to Bozeman, Montana 32 years ago, it’s the mountains that have kept me here. If I’m really being truthful, what captivated me is just one little range on the edge of a big valley, known simply as the......
The Social Haus experience is like one of those strange dreams where two worlds merge. I’m sipping an elderberry cocktail under the warm glow of chandeliers, watching artisanal chefs prepare cuts of meat, fresh herbs, and broths at a bustling open-kitchen bar. I could be......
“The ocean can be yours; why should you stop Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew? The secrets of the sun are yours, but you Content yourself with motes trapped in beams.” — Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds Large paintings lean against every......
Avis DeVoto takes her rightful place alongside her husband, Bernard, in Nate Schweber’s lively and engrossing biography, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild (Mariner Books, $28.99). Previous biographers have given us Bernard, best known today......
Gnarled, rugged expanses of black and gray lava rock, dotted with muted green sagebrush, define Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in eastern Idaho during snow-free seasons. Miles before reaching the visitor center, a field of hardened lava appears south of the highway,......
A performer walks on stage, acoustic guitar in hand, and a hush falls across the audience. Approaching the mic, the performer — who signed up just a little over an hour ago and has never performed at this venue before — begins strumming and singing.......
Just as surfers will spend the balance of their year waiting for just the right wave, and skiers will rearrange their lives in pursuit of fluffy mountain powder, so do ice boaters watch for fresh ice and stiff winds. They’re monitoring long- and short-term weather......
America’s entry to the Rocky Mountain fur trade closely followed a rapid succession of events: President Thomas Jefferson’s fervent advocacy for territorial expansion, the Louisiana Purchase (1803), and the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–6), the latter of which reported extraordinary populations of beaver, buffalo, and......
Growing up in Bozeman, Montana, cross-country skier Logan Diekmann learned to slide on snow at an early age. By the time he turned 8, he was racing with the Bridger Ski Foundation’s (BSF) Youth Ski League, having started with the program at the ripe age......
Montana had no official eastern boundary in 1805, because the state as we know it did not exist. The confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers served the purpose well enough then, as it nearly does today. The Lewis and Clark expedition reached that landmark......
On a downtown street outside the O’Haire Motor Inn in Great Falls, Montana, it smells like french fries. The sidewalks are empty except for one older gentleman polishing the chrome door handles of the motel. When he finishes with the handles, he wipes the glass......
Ghost Town Guitars might be the most aptly named guitar shop in Montana. To get there, you have to drive about 30 minutes west of Helena to the little town of Rimini, at the base of Red Mountain. It’s a charming collection of old log......
Heavy wet snowflakes drop from the sky, making their wayward descent to the ground. Some catch on the needles of the ocher larch and evergreen spruce and pines. They accumulate where they land, fluffy blankets cloaking all that lies beneath — all season long if......
Architecture Locati Architects Interior Design Locati Interiors Construction Schlauch Bottcher Construction For a longtime Big Sky family, a new build from the ground up wasn’t so much about having a fresh experience as it was about preserving and expanding on what they loved about their......
The possessive apostrophe in Parks’ Fly Shop is intentional, differentiating the Yellowstone gateway business from the national park that’s a long cast to the south. But the punctuation also serves to express ownership, of both the idea of fly fishing as a necessary human experience......
I grew up watching my mother in the kitchen. She was a passionate cook who innovated beyond recipes, filling our table with all kinds of original dishes. She left behind some of her recipes, but not all. And one that I have been curious about......
At 2 a.m. on June 7, 1896, a Great Northern train pulled into the station at Blackfoot, Montana, bringing three Yale graduates to some of the last great stretches of the fabled American West. The privileged leader of the group was Gifford Pinchot, age 31.......
Each time I’ve looked at this tree from the road, I’ve thought there might be an elk standing next to it. It’s an illusion of course. A smaller tree that was once bent by snow looks like an elk standing there. I walked up to......
for Peacock In the mud of the origin of Hopeful Creek, we find a paw print, wolf track, big as my fist, size of the male they found on Deer Creek this spring — a hundred seventy-nine pounds. Plenty lions there, too. A few years......
The first time I dined at Maison, my partner and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was April and the gunmetal sky promised rain. Maybe snow. We’d been trudging around in the mud all day, weeding, pruning, wrestling with winter-rotten rhubarb, hoping spring might someday come.......
In Robert Moore’s paintings, colors and shapes work in concert to make even the most familiar facets of the world look fresh. Aspen trees, garden hollyhocks, cattle standing on an expanse of sunlit grass — none of these are novel sights, especially to those who......