Close to Home: PhotographsRichard S. Buswell, 80 pages, hardcover: $39.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Montana photographer Richard Buswell has documented the state’s landscapes for more than four decades. In the book Close to Home, he narrows his focus, providing an unsentimental look at objects discarded from pioneer life. Many of the images are […]
Montana
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Other voices: the debate on wolf hunting from both sides
“Overall, they’re making it too easy to kill wolves. (It’s) persecution of wolves on a huge level. … I think we’re on the road to re-listing wolves in the Rocky Mountains.” — Marc Cooke, president of Wolves of the Rockies “The hunting has put such intense pressure on the packs, they’re dispersing, they’re disrupted; the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Seeking Ben Kennedy: a quest to find a mysterious Montana philanthropist
Ben Kennedy didn’t talk a lot. He was never a family man. He liked having a beer or a cup of tea with his soup and seldom got around to bathing. He died essentially alone, a man without means and with few close friends. He was born in 1922 in rural Belt, Mont., about 100 […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Trappers catch a lot more than wolves
As the feds handed management of gray wolves to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming over the last few years, reactions were mixed. Conservationists worried that wolf numbers would plummet, while hunters and trappers were thrilled they’d get to legally pursue the predators. All three states have hunting seasons now. Idaho started allowing wolf trapping last year; […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
Reviving Custer: Re-enactment and revision at the Little Bighorn
Rick Williams always bore an uncanny likeness to George Armstrong Custer. It was the nose, beakish and narrow, and the plush, platinum mustache. This was fortunate for a Civil War re-enactor. One day in 2002, a tailor outfitted Williams in a red tie and Union general’s coat. “It was scary,” he recalls. “Everyone was saying, […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Who is Denny Rehberg, really?
The three candidates look too formal for Montana, dressed in suits and neckties for the first debate in the state’s most important race this election season. But the setting is classic Montana: A pine-paneled room in a lodge on the edge of the Big Sky ski resort, beside a trout-filled river surrounded by mid-June wildflowers. […]
Posted inWotr
West to East, and a world away
A few months ago, after 20 years, I moved from the West to the East, reluctantly, carting a truckload of artifacts and memories, literal stones and actual stories, each one a product of the forests, mountains or deserts of Bend, Ore., Missoula, Mont., Argenta, British Columbia, Canada, and beyond. My little 4-cylinder truck labored under […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Remediating a Superfund sacrifice zone on Montana’s Clark Fork river
I spent last summer and fall floating down the country’s largest Superfund site in a canoe. I was living in a borrowed cabin near Georgetown Lake, about 20 miles from the headwaters of Montana’s Clark Fork River. I wanted a closer look at a disaster before it was undone. Speak the words “Montana river,” and […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Stories like a bale unrolling: a review of Conjugations of the Verb To Be
Conjugations of the Verb To BeGlen Chamberlain193 pages, softcover: $11.95.Delphinium Press, September. The fictional ranching town of Buckle in eastern Montana is the setting for Bozeman writer Glen Chamberlain’s short-story collection Conjugations of the Verb To Be. The stories, though independent, are skillfully intertwined; the lives of the characters overlap and intermingle in the many […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Where has Montana’s water gone?
An old compact may not be enough to keep the Tongue River from running dry
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
‘Clean and healthful environment’
Montana’s constitution could stop a huge mine
Posted inWotr
Wolves: The debate is seldom rational
The wolf pot continues to boil in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Now, another state has been added to the stew. In Oregon, environmentalists are protesting the piecemeal removal of wolves from the Endangered Species list, hunters want less competition from wolves, and ranchers complain that wolves are killing their livestock. In eastern Oregon, where there […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
No backup on the Northern border
A rural county is saddled with international responsibility.
Posted inArticles
Clean coal is an oxymoron
After Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer made a fiery speech at the Democratic Convention, some people suggested that he’d make a fine secretary of Energy, no matter who wins the election. But although Schweitzer, a Democrat, may give a good speech, his near-fanatic promotion of coal should give one pause. The West has long suffered the […]
Posted inWotr
Nailing down the heart of Montana
Everyone in Lewistown, Mont., used to know that the heart of the state was under Mrs. Dockery’s kitchen sink. The prairie town’s claim to host Montana’s geographic center has been unabashedly celebrated, debated and defended since 1912. That was the year the Akins family moved into their stately home, newly built atop a hill on […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
Bears saved from the ‘burbs
Grizzly bears often wander through Montana’s Swan River Valley, as is shown in this satellite map tracking 10 grizzlies’ movements from 2000 to 2004. The bruins, increasingly threatened by development, are expected to benefit from “The Montana Legacy Project” — billed as the biggest private land-conservation deal ever put together. The Nature Conservancy and the […]
Posted inArticles
Regulating the river
Jim Hagenbarth has spent his life ranching along the banks of the Big Hole River in southwestern Montana, on land his family has worked for more than a century. The area remains sparsely populated and mostly agricultural, much as it was when Hagenbarth used to get in trouble as a kid for riding calves behind […]
Posted inApril 14, 2008: Taking to the Trees
A Montana rancher stands his ground against subdivision
Name Vernon Gliko Age 86 Hometown Belt, Montana Occupation Farmer/rancher He Says “They were friendly people back then. Everybody was trying to help everybody because they were in the same situation. Well, now, you know, you may not even know your neighbor.” Biggest change in his lifetime Transition from using horses to tractors Known for […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Heard around the West
UTAH Jim Stiles, publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr in Moab, has been called cynical, chronically ticked off, dour and – more kindly perhaps – curmudgeonly. He is greatly annoyed by the Lycra-clad bicyclists that invade his part of the world, and he’d like the rip-’em-up crowd of ATV and four-wheel-drivers to take a hike. […]