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......
Imagine a history professor who, instead of writing monographs, got some canvas, took up a paintbrush, and tried to tell the story of the West through a series of vignettes in oils. That might be the best way to describe Don Oelze: he paints history.......
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......
ARCHITECTURE | NATURAL DWELLINGS ARCHITECTURE CONSTRUCTION | DOMICILE CONSTRUCTION INTERIORS | JUNIPER INTERIORS Don and Sheri Weber loved their old farmhouse, cold drafts and all. They had spent 36 years in their beloved home on the outskirts of Idaho Falls. They’d raised their twins there;......
The giant entered Yellowstone National Park squeezed into the back seat of a white Ford Model 81A DeLuxe sedan, arms akimbo, knees spread wide. It was June 27, 1938. The man was 6 feet, 6 inches tall, with medium-length unruly black hair pulled back from......
The Keep’s castle-like facade emerges from the trees like something from a European fairytale — albeit one with a working Montana ranch across the street, a lush golf course below, and a growing neighborhood above. Inside the restaurant, guests are welcomed to a fine dining......
During the COVID doldrums and lockdowns of 2020, documentary filmmaker Dee Garceau needed a project to shake off cabin fever, as Montanans refer to the condition prisoners call “stir crazy,” and clinicians diagnose at its worst as “psychopathology.” “I was isolated, depressed, and miserable,” Garceau......
The Western Horse: A Popular History of the Wild and Working Animal Written by Randi Samuelson-Brown A celebration of the Western horse, Randi Samuelson-Brown’s new book explores the animal’s ability to capture our hearts and spirits and how horses have come to symbolize the American......
Located in Dillon, Montana, just east of the Continental Divide and tucked against the Blacktail Mountain Range, is the internationally renowned Montana Center for Horsemanship (MCH). With a mission to redefine the nature and scope of human-horse interactions to enrich, improve, and augment the lives......
Wild Rag by Rusty Sagebrush and Rawhide Slide by Bebout Braiding 44-inch Wild Rag: $85 Scarf Slide: $70 rustysagebrush.com When Montana rancher Kate Mannix was discovering botanical dye, she added silk fibers that were first dyed with fresh sagebrush leaves to a bucket of rust......
In memory of Richard Roberts [1919 – 2007] The woods allow a road but only as wide as axled wheels will ride, and in the untrod center protest with tiny pines. The woods permit at noon equality of shade and light, one so black, one......
Big Sky’s Music in the Mountains free concert series brings nationally touring artists to southwest Montana each summer. Now, because of critical support from a local foundation, music fans can see more of Montana’s best up-and-coming bands as the series continues through September. The nonprofit......
Montana-based artist Dana Boussard’s Earth to Hand, Hand to Earth, a visual narrative of Gallatin Valley’s history, was recently installed in Montana State University’s (MSU’s) historic Romney Hall as a part of a $32-million renovation of the 1920s structure, which added 1,000 classroom seats and......
Jackson, Wyoming-Based Stio has teamed up with Taylor Guitars to create a limited-edition series of acoustic guitars that celebrates the mountains through brightly colored graphics designed by nine regional artists. According to Stio, the collaboration celebrates “music’s power to bring people together and the creative......
Altamira Fine Art will once again represent work by the late contemporary American artist John Nieto in its Jackson, Wyoming gallery. Nieto, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 81, is lauded for his dynamic style, which was defined by his use of......
For nearly 50 years, the Sweet Pea Festival has been promoting and cultivating the arts through a gathering held the first weekend in August in Bozeman, Montana. Though the festival has significantly grown since it launched, Sweet Pea continues to offer a range of family-friendly......
The museums, galleries, and curated art events that celebrate the artists of the Northern Rockies offer an intimate glimpse at life in the American West. Upcoming calendar highlights include: Through August 17 James Chronister: And We are Green, Greener Than the Hill, Where Flowers Grow......
These Creatures of a Day Written by Marc Beaudin Featuring 56 poems by Marc Beaudin that delve into our connection and disconnection with the natural world and each other, These Creatures of a Day is a collection that inhabits its readers. Beaudin’s pieces run the......
Four years after moving the Pavilion Project’s Town Enclosure to Bozeman’s Story Mill Community Park from its inaugural location at the Center for the Arts in the heart of downtown Jackson, Wyoming, the large-scale installation continues to engage public audiences with its inquisitive design and......
Silt, spit, soot, wheat, and the sound of railroad ties are some of the materials at play this year at Bozeman’s Tinworks Art under the new direction of Director Jenny Moore, who assumed her role at the gallery in 2023. With an extensive curatorial background......
Former Montana resident Roland W. Reed Jr. [1864 – 1934] finally received recognition for his life’s work in a gallery bearing his name almost 100 years after he slipped on a banana peel, leading to his untimely death. Little is known of the photographer —......
The West has intrigued me since I was a kid. I grew up in the Midwest, playing in the woods, observing wildlife, and discovering photography. Given my early affinity for the outdoors, it made sense that I would be drawn to the West, to the......
ARCHITECTURE | LOCATI ARCHITECTS CONSTRUCTION | ROBERT WEBSTER CONSTRUCTION INTERIOR DESIGN | COLLINS AND SWEEZEY Sometimes, bigger is not better; bolder is not more beautiful. Sometimes, the most impressive quality about a home is its restraint and intentionality. Nestled into the rolling contours of Stock......
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......
It’s Friday afternoon, the hottest day of the year so far, and there’s already a line outside the door at Shan in Bozeman, Montana’s northside Cannery District. We figure it will be a while. And we don’t mind. It’s not every day you get to......
Current Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray blends personal memoir and Indigenous history in Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home (Milkweed Editions, $30). Raised with only hints of the Métis and Anishinaabe (Chippewa) heritage of his father’s side of the family, La Tray......
In 2009, John Isaiah Pepion was involved in a near-fatal car wreck that left him homebound for many months. During his recovery, he began drawing daily to pass the time. Pepion had always enjoyed art growing up, starting with watercolors and whatever canvas he could......
Great art can seem transcendent, as though it was born from some higher dimension that most of us can’t quite reach. But talking with Stephanie Revennaugh, an award-winning sculptor and equestrian based in Livingston, Montana, feels like returning to earth. “I think people have this......
Born and raised in Whitefish, Montana, painter Nate Closson has always been enthralled with the state’s beauty. His art is a tribute, a way to reignite appreciation for the region’s landscapes and lifestyles. “This whole world is beautiful, but nowhere more so than Montana,” Closson......
There’s nothing Mary Roberson could be but an artist, though it seems she was the last to know. “The art field picked me; I didn’t pick it,” she says. “I have vivid memories in first grade of drawing my fellow classmates — not because I......
I’ve been making assemblage work for 50 years,” says Stephen Glueckert, an artist and educator based in Missoula, Montana. “But I draw, and I paint, and I play music, and, to me, the older I’ve gotten, the less I see lines between these things. I......
No distractions, no schedule, nobody barging into your space. That’s the beauty of an artist-in-residence program. Admittedly, it’s not for everybody, but those who do take a deep dive into creativity seldom regret it. Across the state, programs vary in the amount of time, type......
When gallery-goers encounter one of Caleb Meyer’s landscapes of the Mountain West, they tend to stop in their tracks, transfixed by the feelings of wonder conveyed by the painter. His recent piece, Full of Life, presents an outstanding example of that phenomenon. Certainly, the size......
Art is ubiquitous. Or more to the point, beautiful scenes, precious moments, wondrous animals, stirring events — they are all around us, and the works inspired by these elements abound. As Whitefish, Montana artist Nate Closson (page 146) says, “This whole world is beautiful. …......
During summer afternoons in the Northern Rockies, it’s nearly impossible not to ponder what writer Rick Bass calls “the power of spaciousness.” Cumulus clouds shift within a cerulean sky, their shapes illuminated by gentle rays of sunshine, casting darkened shadows on the ground. Somewhere, a......
He was the quintessential Montanan, I think. That is to say, the landscape shaped him, as it shapes all of us fortunate enough to be here in this eyeblink of time. Sometimes his music sounded like the first crack in an ice dam — that......
U.S. Forest Service fire lookouts have one of the loneliest occupations on earth. Perched atop remote peaks across the West, we spend summer days in monk-like observation, eyes roaming timbered landscapes, watching the horizon for impending storms and wisps of smoke. When I was 24,......
I hike in the dust of Morley, my one-eyed mule guide, with each step taking me deeper into the wilderness. He saunters up the trail, slightly swaying under the weight of my food. His deliberate and practical rhythm slows my anxiousness and excitement into contented......
On a raw December day in western Montana, several dozen visitors enjoy a welcome dose of the tropics thanks to the grand opening of the state’s new educational attraction: the Missoula Butterfly House & Insectarium. Inside the main exhibit area, visitors of all ages eagerly......
Editor’s Note: Retrieving antlers on public land remains a balance between opportunity, access, safety, and conservation. Last year, the Wyoming Legislature created a resident-only season on select public lands during the first week of May, with nonresidents who purchase a conservation stamp allowed after May......