The July sun is high overhead, casting harsh shadows on the ground. Mid-afternoon summertime dust hangs heavy in the air as we pull the old Ford off the road near the hike-in access point. The farmer across the dirt road was out cutting hay late......
Before you sit down in a plush leather chair in front of a cozy fire and pour your favorite cocktail at the end of the day, contemplate this one question: Could the Last Best Place really be the first best place to define a whole......
Fishing streamer flies is a departure for me, as I suspect it is for most trout anglers. Though it’s a fascinating business, since the huge trout it may unleash echo in every cast and swing of the big, full fly, the genteel delights of dry-fly......
I wound across western Wyoming’s isolated Bighorn Basin in my indefatigable 1977 Chinook micro-camper, 260,000 happy miles under the Toyota’s hood. Summer heat waves shimmered and danced like Sahara mirages over the arid landscape. Miles away, a truck pulling a horse trailer into the backcountry......
The old man couldn’t name his favorite place in the world, but the upper canyon of Moose Creek would be close to the top of the list. It is sort of a canyon within a canyon, and hardly anybody ever goes there. The sheer to......
June 10, 1805, was another busy day for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Camped near the mouth of the Marias River, they finished caching a large supply of gunpowder, lead, and other essential goods in anticipation of returning from the Pacific by the same route.......
Callan Wink takes another step in establishing himself as a major writer of the American West with his new work, Beartooth: A Novel (Spiegel & Grau, $28). Wink, the author of two previous books, Dog Run Moon (a short story collection) and August (a novel),......
Kimball Geisler paints landscapes that draw people outdoors. Whether it’s the distant peaks draped in stubborn snow or the murmur of water skimming a bend, Geisler brings the universal intimacy of nature to his work. To be clear, he doesn’t paint portraits of landscapes; instead,......
It should come as no surprise that upon entering the Bozeman offices of Yellow Dog Flyfishing, I’m greeted by Daisy, a lovable yellow lab whose tail wags back and forth at the speed of light. It’s probably equally unsurprising that she shows me Montana-sized hospitality.......
The alarm goes off, and my eyes open. Ok, let’s do this. “This” is getting out of a warm bed and putting on layer after layer, capping it all off with a somewhat bulky drysuit. It’s going to be a perfect morning: sunny, no wind,......
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......
ARCHITECTURE | DARKHORSE DESIGN GROUP CONSTRUCTION | CEDAR RIDGE BUILDERS STONEWORK | GREENWOOD MASONRY CONSTRUCTION For more than two decades, Darci and Tim Greenwood have spent their working lives fulfilling other people’s dreams. Darci’s nationally acclaimed company, Greenwood Events, is based in Whitefish, Montana, where......
Depending on which way the wind blows, the winter air smells of wood smoke — deep and almost sweet — for blocks around The Union, where meat is being grilled over an open fire. The warm glow from what was once Helena, Montana’s beloved Union......
An anticipated annual event for Western art collectors and enthusiasts, The Russell: A Western Art Experience auction will feature over 125 historic pieces — including more than 20 works by the iconic Charles M. Russell — presenting the largest sale of historic Western art in......
Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming are chock-full of renowned fisheries. Whether enjoyed on a popular river or tucked into a secret hidey-hole, any regional angling adventure can be enhanced by comfortable lodging, a well-prepared meal, and intimate knowledge of the waters at hand. Here, we highlight......
For nearly two decades, Warriors & Quiet Waters has supported post-9/11 veterans through nature-based programming that offers outdoor recreation, camaraderie, and solace, and works to heal the scars that remain when combat is over. With a committed team delivering evidence-based programs focused on fishing, hunting,......
For a boy who only knew red dirt, heavy air, and the threat of twisters, visiting the Northern Rocky Mountains must have been magnificent. He traveled by train from the southern Great Plains to work on a U.S. Forest Service crew in northwest Montana, where......
I help my father Quicken a pinewood blaze Against the falling night. The kerosine stove exhales With its hot oily breath And mingles With the woodsmoke And two days Of stale sweat. Lake water boils, Setting the pot lid chattering. Water For splintered ramen, Instant......
The winter day is often at its coldest as dawn breaks. With crystalline snowflakes gathered on the ground, shrouding the landscape in a soft layer of white, the air is a thin, heady brilliance as it fills the lungs. The cold surrounds, stings, seeps into......
A horse runs across a snowy field — a rider at the reins — as a skier clings to a rope tethered behind the saddle. The skier leaps off jumps, dodges obstacles, and carves turns while spectators cheer. Skijoring is a sport with rich history......
It was raining,” began Howard Zahniser’s account of a horsepacking trip in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains in August of 1947. The horses were saddled, packed, and tied to trees outside a rustic log cabin. But Zahniser — a 41-year-old city gent, a preacher’s kid, and a......
Since its original facility opened in 1927, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming has become a 300,000-square-foot historical center consisting of five separate museums. Its flagship, the Buffalo Bill Museum, chronicles the life of William F. Cody [1846–1917], a Western icon......
Tatiana Lawson is the newly appointed director of the Sun Valley Resort Ski Patrol in Sun Valley, Idaho, and the first female ever to hold that position. And, while women have been involved in Sun Valley’s male-dominated professional patrol for several decades, it’s clear there’s......
You can be forgiven for thinking of Montana’s Class C state basketball tournament, which begins March 12 at the Butte Civic Center, as the culmination of spectacular seasons for eight of Montana’s smallest high schools. A more accurate description of the state tourney is that......
My first backcountry ski lodge experience was back in the late 1990s when some friends and I rented an old yurt two blocks off Main Street in Cooke City, Montana. We paid $5 for a snowmobile ride from town up to Daisy Pass in the......
Winter Palette A silver palette Of subtle hues Softly tinted grays And Prussian blues A finely honed dawn Blush silver and peach An infinity of polished sky Mountains within reach Evening chills strike a Cold metallic horizon Purple clouds on a sea of ice Dashed......
Sheriff Jules Clement of the fictional town Blue Deer, Montana has returned, at long last, and fans of Jamie Harrison’s mystery series will be delighted with the latest installment, The River View: A Jules Clement Novel (Counterpoint, $28). As with earlier books in this series,......
Lois Keister of The High Lonesome is a layered mix of grit and grace. A contemporary Western artist based in Montana’s Ruby Valley town of Sheridan, she creates fine art glassworks for both display and use. But Keister doesn’t just work in glass, she embodies......
After picking up the rental car, we were jumpy about the bitter weather — an emptiness I could feel in the pit of my stomach. The 115-mile drive from Billings, Montana skirted the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Then it bisected the Crow Reservation, which......
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......
As the foggy autumn faded beyond my reach, my journey tempted me yonder into the vacuum of winter’s mantle of snow. I was looking for minimalistic subjects, basic in shape. The mesmerizing simplicity is key when I’m looking for a single point of interest. Highly......
Country music legend Charley Pride traveled some of the most significant miles on his pioneering path to the top of his profession while in Montana. He came to Big Sky Country in 1960 as a minor league baseball player, pursuing his lifelong dream to play......
Ski-in, ski-out was the driving concept behind the design of a home up on a ridge in the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Montana. And it made perfect sense for a young family from back East intent on tackling the challenges of the snow and......
At first glance, Spur Restaurant & Bar seems like just what you’d expect from a newly renovated, high-end — but still family-friendly — restaurant at the base of one of the best ski mountains in the country. The rustic-modern exterior, clad in reclaimed corral boards,......
Editor’s Note: In 2024, award-winning novelist Diane Smith celebrated the 25th anniversary of her first book, Letters from Yellowstone, with a special edition of the title. The book, creatively composed in letter format, documents a fictionalized botanical field study in Yellowstone National Park in the......
This Fall, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the winners of its 2024 Regional Pollution Prevention Recognition Awards. Bridger Bowl Ski Area, located 30 miles north of Bozeman, Montana, is among three businesses to receive the award within Region Eight, which encompasses Colorado, Montana,......
Some people are born to do amazing things, but not before a baptism in fire. David Riggs, founder of K9 Care Montana, is one of them. At just 17, Riggs was profoundly injured, paralyzed, and left in a wheelchair with surgeries and little else to......
Capes by Jennie Montana Jennie Montana tells stories of the Montana landscape, flora, and fauna through capes created with original appliqué and digitized designs that are placed on Melton wool trimmed with bison. She acquires bison hides from area ranches, then stretches and tans them......
It’s rare, as a photographer, to take an image that you immediately know is once in a lifetime. But on a bitterly cold day in February of 2023, that’s exactly what happened. While trudging through snow deep in Yellowstone National Park, a flash of white......
After cautiously guiding our horses up a steep and timbered hillside, we were met by knee-high meadow grass and the scraggly trees of the alpine. It was an unusually cool morning in August, and despite the lather on my horse, I knew we had more......
When Laura Orvidas took the reins of onX in 2018, the Missoula, Montana-based company had about 70 employees and did most of its business shipping state-specific digital maps stored on physical chips that users plugged into their handheld GPS units. If that description of the......
What do moths have to do with owls? Just ask Mat Seidensticker. After nearly a decade spent studying owls across Montana and Alaska, Seidensticker focused his research on the flammulated owl, one of Montana’s smallest and most cryptic species. Soon, it became impossible for him......
On a sunny afternoon in late May, Dillon Kouf stands at the heart of Double K, his family’s ranch outside Darby, Montana, surrounded by barns and outbuildings and the vibrant green of spring. Around him, the endless bustle of chores continues: a couple of men......
It was lightly raining the morning I visited Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, wetting the gravel roads just off I-90 in an area that might be called a “light industrial district” if it were anywhere else in the world. Buffalo is not known as......
When my feet sunk deep into the wet ground far away from the hills where I was born, I knew my husband and I had found the right spot. Our horses had steadily climbed the steep mountain trail for 12 miles, weaving through sheer cliffs.......
Moisture rising from the little spring-fed pond overnight had condensed, frozen, and crystallized on the willows lining the bank. The December sun didn’t offer much warmth, but it made the hoarfrost sparkle brilliantly in the clear morning air. The temperature was so cold that I’d......
noun sleeping giant: We pass over the mountain’s back, ice licking the treads of our tires, our voices hushed. comforting companion: The mountain yawns but doesn’t shift. Its blankets of tired timber, salted greens, and browned sage wrap over its sleeping shoulders. We curl into......
All journeys are journeys of the soul, as well as the body and mind. This is delightfully true for Ammalie, the hero of Laura Pritchett’s new novel, Three Keys (Dell, $20). Leaving her empty Chicago home — she’s recently widowed, middle-aged, and estranged from her......
In the spring of 2024, I contacted the Gallatin History Museum in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana, looking for historical photographs of two country schools in the area, Malmborg and Springhill. I wanted to compare the old images with photographs I’d captured. Co-director Charlotte Mills......
Why are mechanical watches so alluring? Especially in 2024 — when a glance at your phone, car dashboard, or microwave can tell you if it’s tea time or cocktail hour. What’s the appeal? Dave Berghold, founder and owner of Bozeman, Montana’s The Last Wind-Up, knows......
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