Summer 2025 Mountain Outlaw

DAVE MATTHEWS:

GREED, WONDER & WILD SPACES

RE-INDIGENIZING YELLOWSTONE

GALLERY: WHERE THE MOUNTAINS BURN

THE NEW YELLOWSTONE WOLF ERA

MICHAEL KEATON

At Home in Montana

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Experience Montana Rivers in a Reel Way craftyour dreamguitar

FEATURES

The New Wolf Era

Thirty years ago, wolves laid tracks in Yellowstone National Park for the first time since their systematic removal. The anniversary of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction is a milestone that reminds us of the predator’s legacy of controversy in this critical ecosystem. To understand The New Wolf Era in which we find ourselves, Mountain Outlaw Deputy Editor Sophie Tsairis shares the stories of three wolves in honor of the anniversary’s three decades that each illuminate a facet of the wolves’ relationship with this landscape—and our relationship with them.

140 Spokes in a Wheel

When a regional entrepreneur looked down at a swath of the Gallatin Range from a helicopter in the ’90s and said “I’ll take it,” he set in motion a series of events that would consolidate much of Greater Yellowstone’s previously checkerboarded land, leading to the establishment of the Yellowstone Club and a series of other influential events. In her feature, Outlaw Partners VP of Media Mira Brody examines the history of land swaps that set the current playing board for the Gallatins, once referred to as Spokes in a Wheel, and how that board is now poised for the next move.

164

Of Smoke and Big Sky

At age 73 and with many notable credits, Michael Keaton is well known for his long and successful career as an actor. But in addition to the big screen, you may find him in jeans and a ball cap sipping a cold beverage at the Murray in Livingston, Montana. In this issue’s Featured Outlaw profile, writer Toby Thompson examines Keaton’s long relationship to Montana and the West, and reveals how the actor’s story is as much Of Smoke and Big Sky as it is of the silver screen.

Actor Michael Keaton strolls on his Montana property with his son, Sean Douglas. Read more about Keaton and his Montana haven on p. 164.

Photo by Andy Anderson

DEPARTMENTS

INSIDE OUTLAW

19 Letter We invite you home

20 Publisher’s Lens Beyond Partisan Lines

FIRST TRACKS

28 Trailhead Our editor’s picks, from books to bites

33 Shorts GYE news in brief

34 Reviews In-depth takes on new regional media

38 Recipe Faye’s pork with lavender and apples

OUTBOUND GALLERY

42 Home is Where the Mountains Burn

ADVENTURE

56 To RV or Not to RV A longtime tent camper tries sleeping on wheels

64 Adventure Guide Teton Crest Trail

71 Home An interpretation by Semi-Rad

72 Currents to Tides A trout fisherman’s foray in Caribbean flats

LAND

80 ‘The New Yellowstone Wolf Era’ Yellowstone wolf reintroduction—30 years later

88 Learning the Language of the Land Fighting plant blindness at home

96 Poem Hey Skunk

98 1,000 Hours Outside The benefits of raising kids in nature

100 Built for More Warriors and Quiet Warriors serves veterans

CULTURE

106 Fractured Trust Native News Project reports on Montana tribes

114 Welcome Home Returning indigenous roots to Yellowstone

122 River Poets Trails of legendary poets converge on Montana rivers

130 ‘Not Slightly the Same— Precisely the Same’ Q&A: Dave Matthews

136 Ferguson Guitars Functional art and master craftsmanship

HISTORY

140 ‘Spokes in a Wheel’ The land swap that changed Greater Yellowstone

148 Rolling Toward Yellowstone Yellowstone rail history lives on in new trail

154 Onward Through the Dragon’s Breath The (slightly) fictionalized Washburn-Doane expedition

FEATURED OUTLAW

164 Of Smoke and Big Sky Michael Keaton finds reprieve in Montana

LAST LIGHT

179 Home for the Night

Owned and published in Big Sky, Montana

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MANAGING EDITOR

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Jason Begay, Chandra Brown, Kaley Burns, Joe Cusick, Sarah Faye, Heather Hansman, Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan, Chris La Tray, James Mckew, Shelli Rottschafer, Caitlin Styrsky, Toby Thompson, Leath Tonino

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS/ARTISTS

Melissa Adler, Andy Anderson, Marc Anthony Martinez, Kaley Burns, Chandra Brown, Mike Cavaroc, Joe Cusick, Taylor Decker, Jon Flemming, Jacob W. Frank, Brantley Gutierrez, Audrey Hall, Halle Hauer, Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan, Neal Herbert, Laura Holman, Ashton Hooker, John Klicker, Chris La Tray, Brendan Leonard, Kyle McCrohan, Maddie McCuddy, Kyle Miller, Terry Musgrove, Barry O’Neill, Jim Peaco, Owen Preece, Micah Robin, Mak Schwaiger, Max Smay, Dan Stahler, Michael Stewart, Sanjay Suchak, Jeremy SunderRaj, Madeline Thunder, Sam Walter, Victoria Will

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THE COVER

Actor Michael Keaton poses for a photo in Montana, where he's had a home for decades. Read more about Keaton's relationship with the state in our featured outlaw profile on p. 164. Photo by Victoria Will/Getty Images

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Heather Hansman

Learning the Language of the Land | p. 88

Heather Hansman, the best-selling author of Powder Days and Downriver, writes about the confluence between land use, climate change, culture, and the ways we get outside. She likes wild rivers, mellow skin tracks, and public land. She lives in Southwest Colorado, where she's working on plant identification and a book about the untold stories of women outside.

Leath Tonino

Hey Skunk | p. 96

Leath Tonino is the author of two essay collections about the outdoors, The Animal One Thousand Miles Long and The West Will Swallow You. A freelance writer, his prose and poetry appear in The Sun, Orion, New England Review, Tricycle, Adventure Journal, Outside, and dozens of other magazines. He received the Waterston Desert Writing Prize in 2024, and a piece of his will appear in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025

Chris La Tray

Welcome Home | p. 114

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He writes the newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025 and has written three books, most recently Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home (2024, Milkweed Editions). Read more at chrislatray.com.

Kyle Miller

Outbound Gallery: Home is Where the Mountains Burn | p. 42

Originally from Northwest Montana, Kyle Miller started working for the forest service near his hometown in 2004 before accepting a position with the Wyoming Hotshots in 2010. He currently lives in Cody, Wyoming, with his family and is now a captain for the Wyoming Hotshots. Photography started as a hobby when he realized the uniqueness of working in wildfire. Now he carries his camera on all fires to try to capture a bit of what life is like on the fireline.

Brendan Leonard

Home: An Interpretation by Semi-Rad | p. 71

Brendan Leonard first started exploring mountains as a University of Montana graduate student in 2002, and has now spent more than two decades telling stories and creating films and illustrations about adventure and the outdoors. His work has appeared in Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Alpinist, Runner's World, Adventure Journal, and dozens of other publications. He's authored a dozen books, including I Hate Running and You Can Too and Bears Don't Care About Your Problems He lives with his family in Missoula.

Madeline Thunder

Hey Skunk | p. 96

Madeline Thunder is a freelance artist, graphic designer, and part-time bike mechanic based in Bozeman, Montana. Her work is featured across the local outdoor community, with clients including Big Sky Resort, Jackson Hole Land Trust, Duckworth, and Go Fast Campers. With a deep curiosity for wild landscapes, she is especially inspired by geologic timescales, migratory birds, and summit snacks. When she is not creating, she can usually be found reading a book or playing outside.

FROM THE EDITOR

We invite you home

Dear Reader,

Soon after asking our contributors to send us stories on the theme of home, I worried we’d gone too big. The aptness of our writers, photographers and illustrators notwithstanding, could we do justice to a concept as fundamental as the bones in our own bodies?

Then, I was interviewing wildland firefighter Kyle Miller, the photographer behind this issue’s spectacular Outbound Gallery. When I asked what home was to him, he struggled to explain it. Instead, he described the healing warmth of a campfire after a long day working in freezing temps and the way smoke softens both sun and firelight. It evoked my own concept of home, not in words but in senses: the rub of tannic huckleberry juice stained between thumb and forefinger, the scent a sage plant releases when summer rain hits dry dirt, the whistle of a marmot echoing in the high country, and the numbing chill of a frosty river when releasing a trout back to its current. Home is an inner anthology of feelings, stories and images. It can’t be told because it must be experienced. When I remembered that, I realized this magazine is the perfect place to capture the concept of home.

As always, we present Mountain Outlaw as a collage of Greater Yellowstone in this particular moment, but this time we’ve asked our contributors to dive into one of the most personal topics there is, and what’s resulted is something more intimate—immersive, even. Rather than just a window into our region, these pages beckon you inside to experience their stories. Lay your back against the ground in Yellowstone National Park next to Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray as he stargazes through the top of a tipi and ponders the past and present Indigenous presence in the park (p. 114). Walk with Deputy Editor Sophie Tsairis in the paw prints of wolves through the years as they reshape the ecosystem around them since their reintroduction to Yellowstone in the ’90s (p. 80), or enjoy the view from one of the summits on the Teton Crest Trail, explored in this issue’s adventure guide (p. 64). This issue will bring you

to places, dear reader, you otherwise couldn’t go, like the glowing frontlines of a wildfire (p. 42), or walking streamside with actor Michael Keaton on his Montana property (p. 164). We’re also proud to publish some of the latest work produced by the Unviersity of Montana School of Journalism’s Native News Honors project (p. 106), which the concept of home has always oriented as students report and photograph stories from Montana’s 12 Indigenous tribes— this year’s project focused on the myriad challenges these tribes are facing at the onset of a new administration.

Home is personal, but it’s also shared. This summer, we’re grateful to share our homes with you through these stories and hope they remind you to hold the places and the people you belong to sacred. Honor them, and be a good citizen of them.

Welcome to our home. Come on in.

Bella Butler Managing Editor

Beyond Partisan Lines

How Conservation Could Unite a Divided Nation

By Eric Ladd

Lately, I’ve found myself in what author David Brooks calls the “second mountain” of life—a place where the pursuit of success gives way to a deeper commitment to purpose. For me, that purpose has become conservation. My entrepreneurial spirit has shifted toward something larger: helping find more effective, efficient ways to protect our natural heritage. I’ve joined nonprofit boards, helped organize fundraisers and even ventured to Washington, D.C., to support policy efforts. That journey led me to a seat at the Montana table inside the hallowed halls of the Washington National Cathedral at the annual Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership gala.

Surrounded by soaring stone architecture, conservation leaders from across the country were gathered to celebrate progress, honor leadership and reignite purpose. The table where I sat reflected Montana’s rising influence in the national movement—Sen. Tim Sheehy, Congressman Ryan Zinke, their spouses, prominent business leaders,

the soon-to-be Deputy Secretary of the Interior Katharine MacGregor, and conservation leaders from Property and Environment Research Center and

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

– Native American Proverb

the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. That evening, Rep. Zinke received one of the TRCP’s highest honors.

A clear theme echoed throughout the vaulted space: Bipartisan leadership is not only possible—it is essential. And on that night, Montana was in the spotlight.

In today’s highly polarized political climate, the question remains: Can conservation still serve as common

ground? While Democrats have traditionally been viewed as leaders in conservation efforts, the current political landscape requires a closer look at Republican leadership in this area, particularly as they hold significant legislative control at state and federal levels. Reflecting on the GOP’s historical and modern commitment to conservation is more important than ever. With the environment often caught in ideological crossfire, there is growing urgency to reclaim conservation as a unifying cause.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.” His words are as relevant now as they were more than a century ago. The challenge before us is clear—will leaders from both parties come together to protect America’s most treasured resources for the benefit of all?

Conservation has long been a foundational pillar of the Republican party’s legacy, dating back to the 19th century when leaders recognized the

intrinsic value of America’s natural landscapes. One of the most celebrated figures in Republican conservation history, Roosevelt is often referred to as the “Conservation President.” His legacy to protect America’s wilderness includes establishing five national parks, 18 national monuments and more than 150 national forests, conserving more than 230 million acres of public land. His advocacy laid the groundwork for future environmental policies that would shape the nation’s preservation efforts for generations to come.

Half a century later, President Richard Nixon played a crucial role by signing the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, and strengthening laws like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. In 1990,

President Roosevelt speaking of Yellowstone Park, in Gardiner, Montana, during his 1903 Western tour. Everett Collection Inc via Alamy Stock

The Roosevelt Arch at the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park with Electric Peak in the background. Adobe Stock image

President George H.W. Bush further advanced environmental policy by amending the Clean Air Act to combat acid rain and ozone depletion, promoting a market-driven approach that balanced ecological responsibility with economic growth.

The perception of conservation as a partisan issue stems from decades of political and cultural shifts. Although the Republican Party played a

many Republican leaders truly stand on conservation. Issues like energy development and national security often dominate the headlines and policy agendas, overshadowing more nuanced or supportive positions on environmental stewardship within the party.

Still, some Republicans continue to champion conservation legislation, often by aligning it with values like national security, economic resilience

“There are two types of leaders: those who want to make a point, and those who want to make a difference. The ones that really want to get an outcome and are willing to work with both sides... are the ones who will truly get a conservation win.”

– Sen. Steve Daines

foundational role in early conservation efforts, today’s political landscape reflects a more pronounced ideological divide. Recent environmental scorecards from advocacy groups reveal a significant disparity in how members of each party vote on conservation-related legislation, underscoring a growing gap in environmental priorities. However, some of this discrepancy stems from a lack of understanding about where

and property rights. The path forward for conservation depends on finding shared priorities and building bipartisan coalitions.

This is both the challenge and the opportunity for conservation groups: Can they find ways to craft bipartisan bills and encourage more Republican leaders to step confidently into the conservation arena?

THE SCALE OF AMERICA’S CONSERVATION NONPROFIT SECTOR

The nonprofit conservation sector is one of the most powerful and wellfunded forces working to protect America’s environment. According to IBISWorld, the combined market size of conservation and human rights organizations in the United States is projected to reach approximately $53.8 billion in 2025. Within this broader field are more than 2,300 land conservation groups employing nearly 12,000 individuals. These organizations collectively generate over $4 billion in annual revenue and manage more than $21 billion in assets.

Despite these impressive numbers, environmental nonprofits receive less than 2 percent of all charitable donations in the U.S.—with approximately $8 billion directed to conservation causes in 2020. This relatively low figure is partly due to the perception that conservation is a government responsibility, as well as the more immediate emotional pull of causes like health care, education and disaster relief. Still, some leading organizations have built substantial financial capacity. The Nature Conservancy, for example, allocated $249 million toward conservation and policy programs in a recent fiscal year, while Conservation International reported $247.4 million in expenditures.

Left: Rep. Zinke at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership gala at the Washington National Cathedral. Photo by Jon Flemming Right: Sen. Daines and wife Cindy on one of many hikes in Southwest Montana’s landscapes. Photo courtesy of Sen. Daines

These figures underscore the immense scale and influence of the U.S. conservation nonprofit sector—and the critical role it plays in preserving the country’s natural heritage in partnership with government, business and local communities.

VOICES IN CONSERVATION

In 2020, Montana’s Sen. Steve Daines co-sponsored the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, providing permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and addressing maintenance backlogs in national parks. Daines called it “the greatest conservation win in 50 years,” adding, “It was bipartisan… we got it signed by President Trump.” He has also introduced the America the Beautiful Act, furthering GAOA’s programs.

“Our national parks are crumbling because we’ve not maintained them … not just the bridges, but wastewater systems and employee housing,” Daines said.

In 2023, Daines introduced the Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act, releasing more than 100,000 acres from wilderness study designation— aimed at improving land management and public access. He also proposed legislation preventing federal agencies from banning lead-based tackle and ammunition without scientific evidence.

Congressman Zinke is likewise engaged in public land stewardship. He recently convened a roundtable in Bozeman with leaders from eight conservation groups to discuss federal funding, access and protection strategies.

“Public lands must remain public, and the federal government has a responsibility to manage and ensure access to those lands,” Rep. Zinke said. “If there’s one thing I learned as a Navy SEAL, it’s that you’ve got to go to the front line. Your organizations are on the front line.”

At the roundtable’s conclusion, Zinke and his staff expressed optimism that at least three conservationoriented bills could emerge from the discussions—including one focused on Wild and Scenic Rivers protections in Southwest Montana.

Montana Representatives Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing recently have joined

forces with Democrats Gabe Vasquez and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to form a bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, uniting lawmakers across party lines to protect and expand access to America’s public lands. Their collaboration underscores a shared commitment to conservation and sustainable land management, reflecting Montana’s and the nation’s deep-rooted values in public land stewardship.

As conservation efforts continue

to evolve, both policymakers and environmental organizations are advocating for greater support. Leaders from key conservation groups have highlighted their priorities and the ways in which the current administration can assist in achieving meaningful environmental progress.

Blake Henning of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation explained that the organization’s continued

The Creation and Economic Impact of Yellowstone National Park

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park became the first national park in the United States—and the world. The idea of preserving this landscape arose after early expeditions revealed its stunning geysers, waterfalls and wildlife.

Explorer Ferdinand Hayden, painter Thomas Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson played pivotal roles in persuading Congress to act. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, setting aside more than 2.2 million acres of wilderness for the enjoyment of future generations, sparking a worldwide movement, and establishing a new standard for conservation. President Theodore Roosevelt, visiting in 1903, famously remarked at the Roosevelt Arch: “The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in the world ... This park was created, and is now administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

Today, Yellowstone remains not only a symbol of America’s conservation legacy but also an economic powerhouse. More than 4 million visitors travel to Yellowstone each year, contributing over $500 million to surrounding communities. National parks nationwide now contribute more than $40 billion annually to the U.S. economy, supporting upwards of 325,000 jobs. These parks prove that conservation protects not only landscapes but also livelihoods, ensuring America’s natural heritage endures.

Artist Thomas Moran painted The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in 1872, and is credited with increasing the American public's interest in conservation efforts in the West. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

influence stems from decades of sciencebased, nonpartisan work.

“To stay effective in a changing political environment, RMEF concentrates on its highest priorities and maintains trusted relationships with key agency leaders,” Henning said. “Being a steady voice— not the loudest—has made us a group that gets called on when real work needs to happen.”

RMEF’s approach has enabled it to remain relevant across changing political administrations. Henning pointed to the Fix Our Forests Act as a recent example of how bipartisan support can be galvanized through consistent, apolitical messaging.

Scott Christensen, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, also weighed in on current conservation priorities. GYC remains focused on conserving the lands, waters and wildlife of the 22-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—more than half of which is comprised of public lands, including leading a 15-year campaign to protect portions of the Madison, Gallatin and Yellowstone rivers under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

“These lands belong to everyone. Public lands are not a luxury—they’re a legacy,” Christensen stated. “They connect us

to the outdoors, to each other, and to what it means to be an American. Once they’re gone, we don’t get them back.”

GYC has demonstrated resilience over four decades by adapting through political changes without compromising

“These lands belong to everyone. Public lands are not a luxury—they’re a legacy. They connect us to the outdoors, to each other, and to what it means to be an American.

Once they’re gone, we don’t get them back.”

– Scott Christensen, Greater Yellowstone Coalition

its mission. Christensen emphasized that their approach is grounded in finding common values and developing innovative solutions.

“We pull up a seat to any table that helps move our mission forward in smart, strategic ways,” he said. “In a time of

divisiveness, I am grateful to work on behalf of a place that is beloved by people of all political stripes.”

Christensen shared examples of successful bipartisan efforts that have protected key landscapes. The Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act, passed in 2019 with broad community and political support, permanently prohibited gold mining on more than 30,000 acres of public land outside Yellowstone’s northern entrance. Similarly, the East Rosebud Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, signed into law in 2018, safeguarded more than 20 miles of East Rosebud Creek, thanks to bipartisan collaboration among Montana’s congressional delegation. More recently, GYC has championed efforts to improve wildlife crossings on major highways like U.S. highways 89 and 191, working with diverse partners to protect Greater Yellowstone’s iconic wildlife migrations.

Montana Sen. Sheehy brings a unique perspective to the conservation dialogue, shaped by his experiences as a Navy SEAL and aerial firefighter. For Sheehy, protecting America’s public lands is deeply personal—a mission rooted in preserving the country’s natural heritage for future generations.

“In a thousand years, someone will walk

Representatives from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Property and Environment Research Center, Wild Montana, Gallatin Valley Land Trust, Center for Large Landscape Conservation, American Rivers, Gallatin River Task Force and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership met with Rep. Ryan Zinke on April 24.

this land who will never know our names, but they will benefit from how we cared for it today,” he said. His belief that “God isn’t making any more land” reinforces his call for responsible stewardship.

Sheehy has made wildfire mitigation a top priority in the Senate. He is backing more than 10 bipartisan bills aimed at improving fire response and forest management, including legislation to create a National Wildland Firefighting Service and establish a 30-minute national wildfire response standard.

“We don’t have to agree on everything,” Sheehy said. “But we can still work together to protect what matters most—our shared heritage and our children’s future.”

One of Sheehy’s favorite traditions is an annual father-daughter hike through Montana’s wilderness teaching outdoor survival and navigation skills. During his senate campaign, a hike in the Crazy Mountains with his wife, daughter and dog reminded him of the deep emotional connection people have to wild places—and why it’s worth fighting to preserve them.

REPOSITIONING CONSERVATION FOR THE CURRENT POLITICAL CLIMATE

To succeed today, conservation must be framed as a national—not partisan— priority. Stewarding these resources is a

patriotic obligation to future generations. Leaders who align conservation with shared values—security, prosperity and legacy—can build bipartisan support.

In today’s divided political climate, success will rely on pragmatic coalitions across government, industry and nonprofits. Conservation’s future depends on its power to unite the country around common goals.

“There are two types of leaders: those who want to make a point, and those who want to make a difference,” Sen. Daines said, offering advice for conservation groups seeking success in the current political climate. “The ones that really want to get an outcome and are willing to work with both sides… are the ones who will truly get a conservation win.

“Politics is about addition, not subtraction. It’s about getting more people on board, not fewer,” Daines said.

The country’s history of conservation is rooted in visionary—and republican—policies of leaders like President Theodore Roosevelt—a clear demonstration that protecting America’s natural resources is not a partisan issue but a national priority. By continuing to embrace pragmatic, market-driven and economically beneficial conservation efforts, the United States can build on this legacy and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

Montana, with its newly elected, fully

Republican congressional delegation, stands poised to be a national model. The state’s leaders have a unique opportunity to emerge as thoughtful voices in conservation—bridging political divides, crafting innovative solutions and advancing bipartisan legislation that protects public lands, water and wildlife while supporting economic vitality.

If real progress is to be made, it will require a renewed commitment from policymakers to reach across the aisle and prioritize conservation as a shared national value. Similarly, conservation nonprofits must evolve, adapting their approaches to funding, collaboration and advocacy to reflect today’s political and economic realities, learning to speak the language of the current administration while remaining true to their missions. That means emphasizing outcomes over ideology and staying focused on common ground rather than division.

By working together, government leaders and nonprofits alike can turn good intentions into lasting impact, and make America a global leader in conservation once again.

Eric Ladd is the publisher of Mountain Outlaw, and committed to exploring the intersection of conservation, policy and outdoor recreation. He enjoys exploring Montana’s public lands with his family and passing on the stewardship of this landscape to his young son.

Left: Sen. Sheehy and his daughter enjoying time in the Crazy Mountains in Southwest Montana. Photo courtesy of Sen. Sheehy Above: The Gallatin River is one local waterway that would be protected under the Montana Headwaters Legacy Act. Adobe Stock image

A WARM WESTERN Welcome

TRAILHEAD

Browse all Trailhead features online

The Mountain West can be explored by way of many different directions. At this Trailhead, we offer you paths through film, books, podcasts, music, experiences and places. Enjoy the journey!

–The Editors

FICTION: Birth of the Anima, Ancient Language of the Earth Series

By Kelsey Sather

Bozeman author Kelsey Sather weaves an intricate ecological fantasy in which 12 women known as the Anima develop abilities mirroring apex predators across generations. These chosen few inherit a daunting mission: to restore Earth’s fragile ecological balance and heal humanity’s fractured relationship with nature. Sather masterfully blends mythology with environmental themes. This ambitious first installment of an adult fantasy trilogy establishes a world where the boundaries between humans and wild animals blur, challenging readers’ understanding of their place within natural systems.

NONFICTION: Thirty Below

By Cassidy Randall

Published in the spring, Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali, is written by Missoula author Cassidy Randall, who draws on extensive archival research and original interviews to chronicle the groundbreaking 1970 expedition of the first all-women’s team attempting to summit Denali, led by Alaskan mountaineer and doctor Grace Hoeman. This gripping true story reveals how this historic climb became an extraordinary tale of survival against the mountain’s notoriously brutal conditions, challenging the prevailing belief that women were physically incapable of enduring high altitudes and extreme environments.

NONFICTION: Thinking Like a Wolf

By Rick McIntyre

Thinking Like a Wolf: Lessons from the Yellowstone Pack is book five in renowned wolf researcher and master observer Rick McIntyre’s award-winning Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series. Following eight major wolf personalities, including Yellowstone’s recently deceased matriarch Wolf 907, Thinking Like a Wolf draws on decades of field notes to uncover and explore the intricate world of wolf behavior in Yellowstone National Park. Unveiling power struggles, pack politics and individual animal traits, McIntyre artfully transports readers into the lives of this controversial species.

TASTE

FROSTOP OLD FASHIONED DRIVE-IN

Frostop Drive-in: Easy to miss, but once you’ve been, you won’t pass by again without stopping. If you’ve driven Idaho Highway 22 through Ashton, you’ve likely driven by this hole-in-the-wall diner, and perhaps have noticed the enormous root beer mug jutting from the roadside drive-in. This quirky fast-food-meets-good-food mom-and-pop eatery is a must-stop on your road trip. Frostop Drive-In opened in 1975 and not much has changed since, with offerings from burgers and shakes to seafood and salad. This delicious oasis is a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Showing up in the middle of a snowstorm with places to be? Drive up, and food service staff will come out to take your order so you can eat in the comfort of your car. There is no judgment here; just please turn off your engine. If you’re passing through during warmer months, the outdoor picnic tables are perfect for your co-pilot pup to join you. And of course, you can always grab a table inside for a classic American diner experience.

CALDERA CACAO ROASTERS

In Bozeman, something sweet is tempering—one piece of chocolate at a time. Lauren and Logan Burgess are living their chocolate-making pipe dream from their workshop just off Main Street, transforming raw cacao into liquid magic and roughcut chocolate indulgence. Caldera is more than a chocolate company; it’s a passionate exploration of culture, flavor and craft.

CREEKSIDE MARKET & DELI SLOSHIES

Conveniently located between Jackson, Wyoming, and nearby Grand Teton National Park, Creekside Market and Deli reigns supreme as the original Sloshie sovereign. (Sloshie: noun. A blended frozen beverage containing juice, booze and ice that’s guaranteed to get you sloshed).

Slinging Sloshies since 2012, Creekside created the first and legendary Greyhound—a vibrant blend of vodka and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice—sparking a valley-wide cocktail revolution that’s as refreshing as it is potent.

This unassuming market (they also make terrific sandwiches), has become a grapefruit-consuming juggernaut, purchasing more of the citrus fruit than any other business in Wyoming. On a typical summer day, they’re slinging more than 30 gallons of their signature Sloshie. Creekside always keeps one other creatively curated flavor available alongside its OG, and both are always made with fresh ingredients. The market is frequented by locals stopping in after a long day in the mountains, so you know it’s the real deal. Pro tip: Approach these drinks like an endurance sport—pace yourself, or risk becoming a cautionary tale of summer beverage enthusiasm.

Each batch tells a story of careful sourcing, with cacao beans handselected from Central and South American farms committed to fair trade practices. The Burgesses coax out nuanced flavors that speak to the bean’s unique origin and character. Their approach is scientific and soulful—experimenting, tasting and perfecting combinations that turn simple ingredients into a culinary experience connecting chocolate lovers to distant landscapes and supporting hardworking farmers.

TRAILHEAD

HOW THE LAND REMEMBERS US

In the 2024 short film How the Land Remembers Us, director Jared Wahkinney, a member of the Comanche Nation, crafts a breathtaking visual meditation on Indigenous reconnection that transcends mere documentation. This 20-minute gem—Wahkinney’s directorial debut—captures the Yellowstone Revealed Project, which first took place during the park’s 150th anniversary in 2022 and illuminates the ongoing Indigenous connection to what is now Yellowstone National Park. Far from a simple historical commemoration, the film captures a living continuation of culture and place that predates by millennia the park’s 1872 designation.

How the Land Remembers Us, which premiered at the Mountains of Color Film Festival in Jackson, Wyoming, in June 2024, follows Indigenous families establishing teepees at Madison Junction in August 2022, where they created a temporary but deeply significant reclamation of ancestral space. Among the most visually arresting sequences is of the REMATRIATE project, where Northern Arapaho and Northern Paiute artist Patti Baldes constructs delicate willow-branch buffalo sculptures. When Wind River Reservation matriarchs and their daughters breathe life into these forms through ceremonial drumming and dancing, Wahkinney’s film documents the spiritual dimension of conservation work, where art and restoration become ceremony.

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TIPPET RISE ART CENTER

In a small town midway between Bozeman and Billings, flanked by the West Rosebud River, the Beartooth Mountains and rolling prairie, a groundbreaking fusion of art, music, architecture and nature blends into ranch and farmlands.

Founded in June 2016 by philanthropists and artists Cathy and Peter Halstead, the Tippet Rise Art Center remains the working ranch of its origins, but with an unparalleled experiential opportunity for visitors.

Anchored in the belief that art, music, architecture and nature are intrinsic to the human experience, Tippet Rise is of minimal intrusion and maximum connection to the natural environment. Visitors can explore the center’s 15 miles of trails and 13 miles of gravel roads by foot or bike from June through September, weaving through large sculptures created by renowned artists and architects. Van tours are also available on the ranch.

For lucky winners of a randomized drawing, Tippet Rise also hosts a summer concert series featuring world-renowned performers. For those hoping to draw tickets, entries for the drawing are accepted for a limited time during the spring.

OLD SALT FESTIVAL

Old Salt is not your average music festival; it’s a vibrant celebration of land, food and community nestled in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. Since the inaugural event in 2023, the Old Salt Co-op has welcomed producers, Western creatives, musicians and guests to the Mannix Family Ranch in Helmville, Montana, creating a unique space where agriculture meets artistry. The three-day embodiment of land stewardship is centered around the vision of creating a more interconnected and locally sourced society and includes conversations around ranching, regenerative agriculture and conservation, guest speakers, and a maker’s tent showcasing high-quality artisanal goods.

The line-up changes each year, but the core of it remains the same: music, lawn games, and locally sourced culinary delights with a side of learning opportunities, thought-provoking discussions, and a backdrop of the stunning Blackfoot Valley.

FARM TO CRAG

Farm to Crag is a climber-founded nonprofit in the American West responding to the climate crisis by educating and connecting communities to their local farmers and food system—encouraging choices that support resilient food systems and healthy humans.

The Farm to Crag CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Support Program, new this year, bridges the gap between local food systems and those experiencing food inequity by reducing financial barriers to local produce and CSAs. The program offers the first 100 eligible applicants a $150 subsidy toward a 2025 summer season CSA share with one of its partner farms, three of which are in the Gallatin Valley: Gallatin Valley Botanical, Chance Farm and Amaltheia Dairy Farm.

PODCAST: FOOD, MT

Montanans Emily Stifler Wolfe and Jeremy Nadison are serving up stories of Montana’s food systems, unearthing the complexities around the state’s vital industry. The duo launched a new podcast, “Food, Montana,” in May of 2024 to share voices and stories that explore what it takes to build more resilient local and regional food systems. The show’s guests include bakers, farmers, producers, community organizers and a supermodel-turned-purveyor of local meats.

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- YELLOWSTONE CLUB BIG SKY CLIENT

Yellowstone rally marks mass federal layoffs in history books

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Yellowstone National Park’s North Entrance in Gardiner, Montana, on March 1, joining thousands participating in 145 nationwide demonstrations against mass federal worker layoffs implemented by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. Most probationary employees terminated “for cause” in mid-February have been temporarily reinstated, but their future remains uncertain as legal battles continue.

Around 5 percent of National Park Service workers nationwide have been affected by the layoffs, with additional employees opting to resign rather than face uncertainty. In Montana, approximately 360 Forest Service employees lost their jobs but were rehired a month later. Many remain in limbo without guidance on the future of their positions or the lands they manage.

“The [layoffs] are hurting communities, and they are hurting families, and we’re here to protest that and rally against that,” said Richard Midgette, a laid-off NPS employee and the organizer of the Gardiner rally.

Concerns about the layoffs, including ecological and recreational impacts, extend to how the action will affect gateway communities like Gardiner, where livelihoods are tied to the stewardship of and visitation to public lands.

Montana to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day

Montana joins at least 16 other states in recognizing a version of Indigenous Peoples Day annually on Oct. 13 thanks to a successful push in the Legislature’s 2025 session. The new holiday will provide opportunities for education about Indigenous contributions to conservation, land stewardship practices and the cultural significance of various sites throughout the region.

This victory follows failed proposals in every legislative session since 2019. During last year’s attempt, bill sponsor Sen. Shane Morigeau faced harsh criticism from fellow lawmakers when he spoke about the historical atrocities committed by Christopher Columbus against Native peoples.

Supporters pivoted their approach this session. Rather than seeking to replace Columbus Day, SB 224 created space for Montanans to observe either holiday, or both. This strategic compromise proved crucial to gaining broader support.

In a March House State Administration Committee meeting, Morigeau said SB 224 would establish a “flexible holiday,” allowing people to celebrate the ancestral lineage of all Montanans.

For tribal communities throughout Montana, whose traditional territories encompass portions of this vast landscape—the holiday represents long-overdue recognition of their ongoing connections to these lands.

Sophie Tsairis is the deputy editor of Mountain Outlaw

Melting glaciers reveal 5,000-year-old forest

Melting glaciers in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains have revealed preserved whitebark pine stumps more than 5,000 years old. Scientists uncovered the remains of this ancient forest 600 feet above today’s tree line, offering a window into how the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem might transform as temperatures rise due to climate change.

Gregory Pederson from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center spearheaded the investigation with colleagues from across the region’s scientific community. The research was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The trees are evidence of ecosystem changes due to warming and suggest that current climate conditions could lead to trees moving upslope into areas of the plateau that are now tundra. In a statement, Pederson stressed that “even though the results of the study are site-specific, there are strong connections to climate controls on tree line elevations globally.” According to co-authors of the study, tree line will likely rise as the climate warms, but other factors, like precipitation levels, will determine the structure and extent of new forest. As the ice retreats, it exposes both warnings and glimmers of hope for species adaptation.

Madeline Thunder is a freelance artist based in Bozeman, Montana. When she is not creating, she can usually be found playing outside.

SHORTS // Words by Sophie Tsairis | Illustration by Madeline Thunder

BOOK REVIEW // Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return

By Shelli Rottschafer

Transplanted in the rich ground of Idaho and with a winding path like an unbroken river behind her, CMarie Fuhrman has arrived at an understanding of what it means to be a writer: “to bear witness, to share stories, to reveal the raw and tender truths.” She asserts such in her latest collection of essays, Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, published in March. The essays in Salmon Weather are Fuhrman’s “markers on a growth chart, cairns along a winding path, monuments to the person” she is now. Among the collection of lyrical prose are earnest reckonings with personal loss, the impending and active loss of nature, the ethics of hunting, and the ever-present questions of identity and belonging.

Fuhrman earned her MFA in Poetry at the University of Idaho and now serves as the director of the annual Elk River Writer’s Workshop in Pray, Montana. She is also an associate director of Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing. Her name adorns many notable covers, including as the author of Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems and as co-editor of two anthologies, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. She hosts Terra Firma, a podcast from Colorado Public Radio, and has published poetry and nonfiction in many journals and anthologies.

Fuhrman is of Acoma Pueblo and European-American ancestry. Adopted as an infant and raised with an adopted sister of nearly the same age, she sprouted upon Colorado’s Front Range within a homesteading European-American family. As a child, her scraped knees turned to tough skin, and she was called names in elementary school. As an adult, she deepened her allegiance to the multifaceted nature of her Native identity despite having been taunted as a child.

Adulthood led her to Red Lodge, Montana, where she lived with her husband Randy until his death in a kayaking

accident. She weathered throughout the West until new love and impulse brought her to McCall, Idaho. Remarkably, she notes, “the coincidence of Idaho’s abbreviation: ID. Identity,” is where she has fully developed hers. Fuhrman has lived there with her partner Caleb—a fish biologist—and their dogs in an A-frame cabin near various bodies of water that carve through her life.

Along the winding Salmon River, she’s had many mentors: people, other-than-human relatives, and the land. Like Aldo Leopold’s “Go Lite” theory, she has learned to “go lightly,” to tread literally and deliberately without causing harm. Fuhrman explains that Salmon Weather refers to rain that cascades from ridgelines, flows to creeks and then rushes within the river near her home. This deluge brings enough depth for Chinook and Kokanee to swim upstream where they spawn in tributaries. They release eggs that will be fertilized in pebbled beds to germinate and fledge into hatchlings before eventually flowing downstream, finger-sized.

Her book of the same name explores her own patterned “continuation of life.” Tragedy releases to slow recovery. Impulse-driven desire leads to love. Fuhrman holds the land’s beauty throughout each of her life’s stages “in order to believe in something as difficult as hope.” This is the grace she gives herself so she can go on living, recognizing her mistakes, questioning her choices and making new stories.

In Salmon Weather, Fuhrman continues to return as a witness to her own past. She echoes poet Walt Whitman, saying “I contain multitudes.” She is both a hunter and a giver. She is an abandoned child and lover. She is a found woman building strength in her own identity upon the buckskin-colored earth and beneath the clear blue skies.

True to her reputation for weaving stories to connect with the wild, Fuhrman “depends on wilderness to power [her] imagination.” The art of the natural world ignites her emotions and sparks her writing. Salmon Weather is Fuhrman’s wisdom on the page. She hopes it may be “something of value. Something useful. To not be forgotten. Something that someone might uncover with an oh and remember what it feels like to be filled with wonder.” In the face of Salmon Weather that spills rain down ridgelines, toward streams, she hopes her written lines may be the banks of a river that hold fast and true.

Poet, educator, and advocate Shelli Rottschafer (she/her/ ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico in Latin American Contemporary Literature (2005). From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught Spanish at a small liberal arts college in Michigan. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Western Colorado University (2025). Shelli resides in Louisville, Colorado & El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner, Daniel Combs, and their Pyrenees-border collie rescue pup.

PODCAST REVIEW // INDIGENOUS LED

By Sophie Tsairis

While Western conservation tends to quantify success through data and discourages the role of emotion in policymaking, Indigenous wisdom remembers and illuminates what these metrics often overlook: that humans are not separate from ecosystems, and everything is connected. INDIGENOUS LED, a new podcast released in April, reminds us of this.

“Buffalo is, to me, my way of helping to bring back a big part of our culture that was taken away, and helping restore that,” said INDIGENOUS LED co-founder Ervin Carlson in the inaugural episode. This perspective becomes a thread woven throughout each conversation as guests help reframe wildlife management through the lens of cultural revitalization, spiritual practice and ecological healing.

Through its podcast, the organization of the same name amplifies voices of Native contributors essential to a healing land movement anchored in the sacred connections that bind land, people and culture together. This work is a return to relationship-centered land stewardship that predates modern environmental movements.

What distinguishes INDIGENOUS LED is its unwavering commitment to holistic understanding. Rather than compartmentalizing discussions about land, culture, spirituality and ecology as separate topics, each episode demonstrates how these elements remain inseparable within Indigenous worldviews. Upham’s thoughtful facilitation allows conversations to breathe and develop organically.

In episode 2, “Braided Science,” ecologist Stephanie Barron reflects on how Indigenous mentorship guided her toward a more holistic, land-based approach to wildlife and resource management. After many years of working within the Western framework of the field, a trip to Tanzania prompted her interest in community-based conservation and led her to realize the dissonance she felt working within the Western paradigm of conservation.

The podcast’s first season, “Voices of Belonging,” weaves rich conversations exploring Indigenous science, conservation practices, cultural continuity and ecological relationships. Listeners hear from a thoughtfully gathered circle of voices, including Indigenous Led co-founders Ervin Carlson and Cristina Mormorunni, ecologist Stephanie Barron, youth leaders Sarah Little Bear and Ethan Running Crane, and First Nation Kainai Elder Shane Little Bear.

Host Lailani Upham guides these conversations with reverence and care, creating a listening experience that transcends the conventional podcast format. An Amskapi Pikuni (Blackfeet Nation) tribal member and descendant of the Aaniiih, Nakoda and Dakota tribes, Upham’s background in journalism, filmmaking and entrepreneurship adds a unique lens through which she interviews show guests. Each episode unfolds more like a council gathering than an interview, with stories of belonging, restoration and relational responsibility that invite listeners into a circle of mutual care.

“There was no recognition of the spiritual; there was no recognition of animals as being whole, independent beings themselves,” she said. “They were just numbers and just data, pieces of an ecosystem that rarely were acknowledged as beings that cooperated together, and that we were a part of that system too.”

While the series thoughtfully examines differences between Western conservation models and Indigenous approaches, these comparisons never become divisive. Instead, they open pathways toward understanding how different knowledge systems might complement one another in service of shared goals.

INDIGENOUS LED serves as both a witness and a road forward, documenting healing land movements already underway while creating pathways for broader understanding and participation. For those who approach these episodes with open hearts and curious minds, the podcast offers medicine for our collective journey toward what one guest eloquently describes as “remembering our belonging to each other and to Earth.”

Through careful listening to this groundbreaking series, we are invited to recognize Indigenous leadership not as a novel approach to modern challenges, but as the continuation of time-tested wisdom that offers essential guidance for restoring balance in our relationships with the living world.

Sophie Tsairis is the deputy editor of Mountain Outlaw.

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RECIPE // Faye’s Pork with Lavender and Apples

Introduction by Bella Butler | Photo by Audry Hall | Recipe by Sarah Faye

The first time I stepped into Faye’s Café in Livingston, Montana, I was filled with a fresh breath I didn’t even know I needed. Fittingly located in the Shane Lalani Center for the Arts, the space is glossed with a rainbow palette, from the brightly dressed servers to the menus, which encourage customers to order based on adjectives rather than pre-designed dishes. The plates coming out of the open kitchen are no exception, some decorated with sliced strawberries and sprigs of cilantro, and others with the brightness of a golden egg yolk. But after a few visits to the café, I’ve learned—as the restaurant’s many regular patrons do—that its well of vibrancy comes from Sarah Faye herself, the restaurant’s chef, owner and namesake.

Following other iterations of her culinary career, which included working as a chef on a yacht in Alaska, and catering and private cheffing in Montana, Faye opened the café in her hometown in 2014 to support her family as a single mom and spend more time with her kids. She found breakfast service a natural fit.

“I realized it’s the best place to have the most access to

Pork with Lavender and Apples Serves 8

Ingredients

4 lbs pork tenderloin (2-3 whole tenderloins)

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1 ½ C julienned shallot

3 tbsp vegetable oil

2-3 large Honeycrisp apples, cored and sliced into thick wedges

¼ C butter

1 C brown sugar or ½ C coconut sugar

1/4 C finely chopped rosemary

2 tbsp culinary lavender (Faye prefers AKL Maui)

¼ C heavy whipping cream

people, to share peace, love and happiness,” she told me. Faye’s isn’t just a restaurant. Faye wants people who walk in her place to feel inspired, welcome, and most importantly, safe. She says in a world that accepts us less and less for who we are, such feelings are sacred. Faye’s is a sanctuary.

In a perfect expression of her creativity and aptitude for finding flavors that feel like an embrace, Faye presents her recipe for pork tenderloin with lavender and apples, an elegant yet approachable dish inspired by her roots in Montana and in cooking.

“I wanted a classic recipe that could be used for guests,” she said. “Simple with complex flavors. My Grandma loved to pair pork with apples. This reminds me of her.”

This recipe was sourced from Sarah Faye’s cookbook “Yumtwist: The Art of Spontaneity in the Kitchen.”

Bella Butler is the daughter of a chef who taught her that food is a central part of home. She’s the managing editor of Mountain Outlaw.

Directions

1. Trim, rinse and pat dry the tenderloins, then season heavily with kosher salt and fresh ground white, green, or pink peppercorns.

2. Lay the tenderloins on a sheet pan and spray them lightly all over with a non-stick spray. Grill on all sides at medium-high heat. This process should take 5 minutes. Pork will be very rare still. Slice into 1-inchthick medallions. Toss in extra virgin olive oil and set aside.

3. Heat a large, thick-bottomed stainless or cast-iron pan to medium-high and add vegetable oil. Add shallots, stir and sauté for 5 minutes, or until shallots start to caramelize. Slide the shallots to the side and place pork medallions in the center of the pan in a flower pattern. Add butter, apples, rosemary and lavender on top. As soon as the butter is melted and the pork is sizzling, sprinkle brown sugar over the pork and apples.

4. Remove the pork medallions and place on a serving platter. Drizzle the heavy cream into the pan and continue to simmer on medium-high, whisking the sauce together.

5. Once the sauce is mixed together and bubbling, add kosher salt to taste. Pour sauce and apples over the pork medallions and garnish with fresh lavender and rosemary. Serve and enjoy!

Faye’s Twists

• Replace heavy cream with maple or plain yogurt.

• Replace lavender with garam masala seasoning mix.

• Use a squeeze of lemon and fresh lavender to garnish.

• Use pork chops instead of pork tenderloin.

• Drizzle AKL lavender honey over the dish just before serving.

• Garnish with rough-chopped cooked bacon and rosemary sprigs.

OUTBOUND GALLERY

HOME IS WHERE THE MOUNTAINS BURN

Photos by Kyle Miller

Words by Bella Butler

Home is something we know in our bodies, a series of senses logged in our system. For Kyle Miller, it’s the smell of smoke, the crackling of burning trees and revving of chainsaws, the hearty pat of a hand on your back at the end of a long day. His home—at least in part—is among a crew who have also dedicated their lives to managing wildfire.

Miller is a captain of the Wyoming Interagency Hot Shots, an elite wildland fire crew based out of the Bighorn National Forest. What began the summer before college as a seasonal gig in northwest Montana, where he grew up, blossomed into a deep passion, and from there, a career. Now 39, Miller lives with his wife and two young children in Cody, Wyoming, but spends much of the year fighting wildfire—and photographing it.

Though headlines tend to favor wildfire news, especially during its season in the American West, an opaque wall still separates the public from some of its most intense domestic frontlines, impeding visibility, but also understanding, Miller says. Through sharing images from places where many journalists can’t even go, he’s breaking down that wall—or at least punching a hole through it.

He first brought a camera on assignment in Alaska in 2004. It was a cheap disposable, and the photos he captured of the crew’s daily jetboat commute up the Tanana River were blurry and low-quality. He bought a nicer camera, still hoping to capture the unique places his work was taking him and the action he was seeing. Two decades later, his photos have been published widely, and are currently displayed at Cody’s Buffalo Bill Center for the West in an exhibit called “Fire on the Mountain.”

There are two layers to Miller’s photos: the visual and the story. At first, his photos are striking. Heavily focused on the role light plays in the images, Miller captures how light is made soft by smoke, and how it is made brilliant by flames

against a night sky. His work masterfully renders the shape and weight of a landscape and its features, and despite the surrounding drama, his images nearly always draw the eye to the subject, often a wildland firefighter.

“When I see people shooting wildfire, a lot of people are looking for big flames, and I’m really never looking for that,” Miller says. “I’m usually looking for something that makes the photo simple.” He looks for a clear subject, usually a subject doing something.

This is where the second layer begins. The strikingness of the photos is what draws you in, but the story is what asks you to linger. Evidence of his intimate understanding, Miller is a master at capturing a web of relationships—between the firefighter and the land, the land and the fire, the firefighter and the fire, and sometimes the firefighters with each other.

He says wildfire poses a bit of a contradiction in terms of home. For much of the year, it’s the thing that takes him away from one of his homes, the one he shares with his family. But in another way, it’s the element that defines home for him. One of his photos included in this gallery explains it well. Gathered at camp after an intense day working on a fire in southern Wyoming in 2016, campfire illuminates the smiling, dirt-stained faces of his crew, and moonlight strikes their hunched backs. There’s a closeness you feel in the photo—a bond Miller tries to describe with words but says he falls short of. Put simply, it’s a photo of home.

Kyle Miller is a captain for the Wyoming Hotshots and a wildfire photographer. He lives in Cody, Wyoming with his family.

Bella Butler is a freelance writer from southwest Montana and the author of the Feeling Through Fire series published by Mountain Journal . She is the managing editor of Mountain Outlaw

Previous page: After a long day on the Pedro Mountain Fire in Wyoming 2019, Kyle Miller’s Wyoming Hotshots crew was getting ready to bed down for the night. As Miller threw out his sleeping bag, he set up his camera and tripod to capture this long-exposure shot of the burn in the night.

Opposite: A sawyer, silhouetted by sunrays filtering through the dense smoke and ash, cuts down a tree on the Hope Fire in Dolores, Colorado, in September 2023. The sunrays diffuse as they penetrate the wildfire haze, causing an almost ethereal glow and softening of the surroundings.

Left: Titled “The Ember Tree,” this image from Wyoming in 2014 is the longest single-exposure shot Miller has ever taken. “To the eye it was almost hard to tell this tree was burning except for the occasional lonely ember drifting down,” Miller said. “We were monitoring a prescribed burn through the night in Custer State Park. Most fuels there are flashy fuels, meaning they burn out quickly, leaving us with a fairly slow night. I was able to use a pocket tripod and leave the camera with the shutter open for nearly an hour, creating the wild ember trails.”

Above: Miller’s Wyoming Hotshots crew poses for their annual saw squad photo on a Douglas fir branch in 2014 after containing a Northern California fire. Hotshot crews are comprised of 18-25 people and are broken into squads. Most crew members fill one of two jobs: They either dig using hand tools, or they’re a sawyer. Sawyers work in teams of two, with one sawing and the other swamping (removing the material being cut). These sawyer teams make up the saw squad on a crew.

The Wyoming Hotshots hike off the 2017 Mill Creek Fire in Hayden, Colorado, for the evening. “Our crew had parked and accessed the fire from the same location the day before and it looked like it would make for a neat shot,” Miller said. “The second day I hiked slightly ahead so I could walk around the back of the pond as the crew went by and line up this shot."

Above: In this 20-second single-exposure, the Alder Creek Fire burns along the Big Hole River in Montana in September of 2021 with the Pintler Mountains in the background. This was taken from what is called a spike camp, which is a small campsite where wildland firefighting crews spend the night. In order to cut down on travel time and maximize time spent working on the fire, spiking out close to the fire is fairly common.

Top right: Miller’s crew ends the day at their spike camp while working a fire in September 2016 south of Encampment, Wyoming. Spike camps are small, typically made up of just one or two hand crews that have chosen to camp closer to the fire’s edge. One of the benefits of a spike camp is the reduction in morning and evening travel times, allowing crews to unwind a little after a long shift. “This was a late-season fire with temperatures dropping to the low teens in the mornings, so a campfire at spike is almost a must-have in the evenings,” Miller said.

Above: A sawyer watches for embers that might threaten to start a spot fire on the wrong side of the containment line while working the 2017 Strawberry Fire in Hulett, Wyoming. Sawyers play an important role on wildfires. They cut down trees that are burning to reduce the risk of hot embers blowing across fire lines and potentially starting new spot fires. They also work to create firebreaks by reducing the ground and ladder fuels that would otherwise allow fire to climb up towards the crowns of the trees. Another duty is to identify and remove snags and widow-makers (dead and dying trees that could fall on crewmembers). Sawyers undertake specialized training and must earn the appropriate certifications to operate chainsaws and to identify and mitigate hazards to ensure their own safety and crew’s safety.

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ADVENTURE

56

Feature: To RV or Not to RV 64

Adventure Guide: Teton Crest Trail

Illustration: An Interpretation by Semi-Rad

Essay: Currents to Tides

Runners enjoy a flat section of terrain and a clear view of the Grand Teton along the Teton Crest Trail.

more about the TCT in our Adventure Guide on p. 64. Photo by Kyle McCrohan

To RV or Not to RV

What’s gained—and lost—when a longtime tent camper tries sleeping on wheels.

Words by Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

TTo tell the truth, I didn’t want to like the adventure van. Shiny and mechanical, the tricked-out Winnebago Solis PX Pop-Top just seemed like a little too … much. An actual mattress, a stovetop and running water, a toilet—even a shower? Weren’t we supposed to be going camping? Weren’t dirty fingernails and midnight squats in the bushes a key part of the whole experience? This was a hotel room on wheels, for Pete’s sake. Yet there we were, my husband Norman and I preparing to load our two kids into a rental adventure van to spend Labor Day weekend in Yellowstone National Park. Maybe you can tell I come from a backpacking background. Fifteen-mile hikes into camp, dehydrated stew cooked on a stove the size of a thumb, wadding up a jacket to use as a pillow—that’s camping. You have to strip away the trappings of civilization to really get to the soul-cleansing benefits of nature—at least, that’s what I’ve always thought. Car camping, with flush toilets within walking distance and the room to pack undried fruit, already felt pretty luxe to me. But somehow, I found myself on the other end of the camping spectrum, buckling myself into the front seat of the Winnebago. What happened to me? Exactly when and where had I lost my edge, my cool, my authentic connection to the great outdoors?

I guess I’m not the only one. Strolling through the Many Glacier Campground in Glacier National Park a few summers back, I noticed something weird. Just behind our electric-blue NEMO tent squatted a mini

village of giant RVs, and on the other side of us, a kitted-out adventure van. On the walk to the bathrooms, we passed a rooftop rig, a camp trailer and another monstrous motorhome. Here a teardrop, there a fifth wheel. There we were, in a premier national park campground in high summer, and the four of us were literally the only people within view camping in a tent.

Recreational vehicles—and here I’m including everything with wheels, from 45-footers to campervans to rooftop tents—are nothing new. But in my 20 years of both front- and backcountry camping across the West, I recall tents reigning supreme. There were always some motorhomes scattered about, but they didn’t dominate the scene. Sometime within the last five or six years, though, once-quiet campgrounds have turned into RV parks.

The COVID-19 pandemic was one major catalyst. Given the peril of indoor spaces, Americans flocked to outdoor activities across the board, RVing very much included. RV shipments, a proxy for sales, leaped nearly 40 percent from 2020 to 2021. This, amid a landscape of the already-popular #vanlife social media phenomenon, which gives us attractive 20-somethings posting photos of themselves and their custom adventure vehicles in gorgeous places.

So why was I so reluctant to embrace this RV renaissance? No better way to figure it out than try one myself, I figured, keeping score along the way. Here’s what I found.

A camper is parked in front of the stunning backdrop at Pebble Creek Campground in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Neal Herbert

Pro: RVs are easy

The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. on our first morning in Yellowstone. We’d spent the night in the Mammoth Campground near the park’s North Entrance, but we’d planned to go wildlife-spotting at dawn in the Lamar Valley— an hour’s drive away. We woke up the kids and buckled them into car seats without even changing them out of their jammies; Norman and I brushed our teeth in the sink and pulled down the pop-top from inside. With a bathroom in the van, I didn’t even leave the vehicle before we pulled away just minutes later.

Early-morning sun lit the valley as we parked in a pullout with a wide view overlooking Slough Creek. Temps hovered around 40 degrees, so we prepped coffee and oatmeal in the warmth of the van, the kids tucked under down blankets. Scores of bison grazed nearby, and after a couple of hours, we even spotted wolves loping in the hills through binoculars. The kids played outside until they got too cold, then warmed up in a vehicle with enough room to chase each other around before heading back out. It was a chill, comfortable, supremely enjoyable morning.

Could we have done the same thing with our usual tent setup? Yes. Would it have been a heckuva lot harder? Also yes. With the ease of the RV, there was no frantic stuffing of sleeping bags and packing of the tent, my freezing fingers hardly able to touch the poles. No dragging cold, whining kids off to the bathroom in the dark. And instead of a cramped car, we had a spacious home base for the wildlife show—which, yeah, very likely let us hang out a lot longer than we might have otherwise.

Con: RVs are huge

Those 40-foot motorhomes are slow, gas-guzzling land yachts that struggle on twisty mountain roads and cost as much as an actual house—and I mean a really nice house. I want no part in driving one of those, much less maneuvering one into a campsite. Plus, it’s hard to get into the outdoor spirit when you’re surrounded by buzzing generators on vehicles tall enough to block out the stars. Honestly, I’ve slept in campgrounds that felt less like a quiet escape and more like a Walmart parking lot.

The adventure van wasn’t nearly that hulking (though I still made my husband drive it). And according to Christopher Lynch, an employee of the Yellowstone concessionaire Xanterra who’d worked at the park’s Madison Campground for five years, from what he’s seen, much of the recent RV boom has been made up of smaller rigs like vans, rooftop tents and shorter trailers. So perhaps this complaint will shrink along with the vehicles themselves. After all, is there much difference between a minivan and a teardrop trailer?

The author’s two kids play in the dirt while her husband preps dinner at Indian Creek Campground in Yellowstone.

Photo by Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

A camper is parked in a beautiful spot at Pebble Creek Campground in Yellowstone. Photo by Neal Herbert

Pro: RVs are more comfortable

By the time we pulled into Indian Creek Campground for our second night in Yellowstone, I was feeling a bit, well, stinky. That chilly morning in the Lamar Valley had turned into an 85-degree afternoon, and after a few hikes in the beating sun, I was dusted with dried sweat. I can’t pretend it didn’t feel heavenly to squeeze into the van’s shower, even though I forgot how to turn on the hot water and it ended up being a cold rinse (we later figured it out, and Norman and the kids got true showers that evening).

While I generally sleep very well on a sleeping pad in our tent, I’ll cop to the fact that the van’s mattress and pillows count as an upgrade. It’s nice to have heat (and air conditioning, for that matter). And here’s an advantage I’ll unequivocally give to an RV for camping in Wyoming: No startling awake at 3 a.m., wondering if that crackling sound is a grizzly bear getting ready to drag you out of the tent by your head.

Pro: RVs can get you out more

Here’s where I’ll make a confession: We actually already own an RV of sorts. Don’t get too excited. It’s just a 20-year-old pop-up trailer with room for six to sleep, two little tables, and a propane heater that we found on Facebook Marketplace a couple of years ago. I hesitated to buy it, mostly because I didn’t want us to become “RV people.” But we wrote the check anyway, because I knew it would mean more nights outdoors for our family. With that little heater and more space to hang out in during bad weather, the camper has allowed us to stretch our camping season here in western Montana from April to late October.

Aimee Riordan, a friend of a friend in Seattle, has had the same experience with her Volkswagen Vanagon, a metallic bordeauxcolored campervan nicknamed Ruby. Riordan used to take her two kids tent camping, too, but after one memorable night in which raccoons invaded their site, she started thinking about other options. Now, the van has become “an escape pod for us to easily get out of town during shoulder seasons, when I normally wouldn’t have done that,” she says. “It’s gotten us to places we wouldn’t have gone. It’s all there, whenever you decide to go.”

Top: The author’s kids are buckled up in the camper van and ready to drive out of the rental garage. Photo by Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan Above: The author’s secondhand camper takes its maiden voyage along the Yellowstone River. Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

Pro: RVs get more people out overall

I don’t have hard data on this, but I’m sure that the RV boom has allowed many more newbies to dip a toe into camping and old-timers to continue camping. Last summer, we invited both sets of grandparents to join us on multi-night trips in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier national parks. Our parents are all in their 70s now, and as my dad has flatly informed me, their days of sleeping on the ground are over. But the elevated beds and mattresses in our pop-up camper were just comfy enough to lure the elder generation out again. We roasted s’mores, had picnic table feasts, sipped coffee as the morning mist slowly lifted from the surrounding mountains— all multigenerational memories we wouldn’t have made without that RV.

Becky Goodell, CEO of Blacksford, the RV rental company that supplied our adventure van, told me she sees many older customers moving on from their tent days. But she estimates that 60 percent of their guests are brand-new to camping. “It brings in a whole ’nother set of people who would never tent camp,” she says. “But they want to see nature, and they want to be near the national parks. It ends up increasing the world of people who experience nature, who then go hiking, and then feel more strongly about protecting the environment.”

It’s hard to argue with that, even for me.

Con: RVs are easy and comfortable

By our third night in the adventure van—which we spent at a site along the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, just north of the park—I could no longer deny that camping on wheels was easier and more comfortable than our usual tent experience. I was also realizing that fact might be exactly my problem with it.

I’ve shivered through frigid nights in the Utah desert and sweated through the humidity of summer tent camping in Wisconsin. I’ve had mice chew through my pack in Chile, biting bugs attack my face in Turkey, and black bears wander through camp in Washington. Rain has pounded its way through my tent seams; snow has made it damn near impossible to dig a cathole; wildfire smoke has kept me up all night wondering how close the fire was. And I wouldn’t change a single thing about those nights.

Maybe we’re not supposed to be comfortable all the time. Maybe it’s good for us to be reminded that, for all our technology and climate control, we are ultimately at the mercy of forces greater than ourselves. That with the right knowledge and attitude, we can rise to the occasion better than we realize—and if not, hey, suffering through a night of wind or rain or cold sure makes you feel alive.

Something changes when you close the door to an RV. You’ve separated yourself from the great outdoors you’ve purportedly come to experience; you in here, everything else out there. But a thin sheet of nylon and mesh isn’t enough to remove you from the greater world. When I’m in a tent, I’m both in the wilderness and of it, hardly different from the coyotes I can hear calling not too far away. In a time when disconnection from nature has brought us all to the brink of environmental catastrophe, becoming one with the wild world, even just for a night, can only be a very good thing.

Top: A family enjoys a summer camping trip with an RV. Photo by GravityMediaPro/Adobe Stock Above: The interior of a camper van shows the plush amenities of these popular rigs. Photo by Enoch/Adobe Stock

IIdidn’t hate the adventure van. I liked it very much, actually. More than I care to admit. But we won’t be shopping for our own model anytime soon. We’ll stick with our camper for some nights, but I’ll insist on the tent for a good percentage of our trips. Still, I’ll also squash my inclination to judge RV campers when we roll up next to a motorhome big enough to take Taylor Swift on tour—because really, who am I to say my version of camping is any better than theirs? We’re all out here together, experiencing the wilds in the way that works for us.

But if you’ve never tried it—never watched shooting stars under a mesh tent ceiling, never felt a cool breeze in your hair while drifting off to sleep, never touched the existential bliss of a hot cup of camp-stove coffee savored in a sleeping bag—I urge you to go for it. You will be less comfortable. There will be hassles. And like me, you might just decide that’s the beauty of it.

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a Montana-based writer and editor who sets an alarm to snag campsites six months in advance.

A tent is surrounded by white after a spring snowstorm at Mammoth Campground in Yellowstone. Photo by Jacob W. Frank/NPS

The author’s kids enjoy some tent camping at Sprague Creek Campground in Glacier National Park. Photo by Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

Adventure Guide: Teton Crest Trail

By Sophie Tsairis

The Teton Crest Trail is a point-to-point 35- to 40-mile trail traversing public land in northwestern Wyoming with over 9,000 feet of elevation gain. You can tackle it in a single ambitious push—or backpack it over several days if you prefer your adventures with a side of sanity.

My first time running this high-altitude route, the landscape proved an effective distraction from the physical effort. The Tetons burst from the valley floor without prelude or foothills, their granite peaks soaring into the Wyoming sky. As the miles accumulated, so did the sensory rewards: lupine, columbine, and geraniums painting alpine meadows in wild brushstrokes

while crystalline streams carved their ancient paths through glacial moraines.

These mountains don’t simply invite adventure—they command it. They’ll steal your breath twice: first with their raw majesty, then with the thin mountain air. Count on both.

Regardless of your pace and timeframe, the TCT is a journey through multiple jurisdictions—Grand Teton National Park, Jedidiah Smith Wilderness, and the Bridger-Teton and Caribou Targhee national forests—each with their own character that will linger in your memory long after the delayed onset muscle soreness fades.

Hikers on a multi-day backpacking traverse of the Teton Crest Trail descend into Alaska Basin through a field of wildflowers. Photo by Laura Holman.

SEASON

The TCT is a high-elevation trail—you’ll be moving between 8,000 feet and 10,000 feet for most of your run, cresting above 10,000 feet in a few places. Depending on the year, your best window for a mostly snow-free trail and stable weather conditions is between mid-July and early September.

ACCESS

Make it a road trip or fly into the Jackson Hole Airport right outside Grand Teton National Park. If you’re local to the area, this trail is an absolute must—hitchhike or catch a ride from a friend to your starting location. The TCT can be accessed by many different trails, allowing you to choose the best route for your skill level and timeframe. The full trail runs from the Phillips Pass Trailhead halfway up Teton Pass off Wyoming Highway 22 and ends at String Lake Trailhead in Grand Teton National Park, roughly 10 miles after turning into the park from Moose Junction.

+ ProTip:Ifyourunfast,youmightbebacktotown intimetoenjoytacosfromPica’sMexicanTaqueria, orasloshyfromCreeksideMarketandDeli.

ROUTE

The south-to-north route provides endless views of the Teton Cathedral Group, the three tallest peaks in the park—the Grand Teton, Teewinot and Mount Owen. Beginning at Phillips Canyon trailhead on Highway 22,

THE NECESSITIES

Once you’re a few miles away from crowded trailheads, and if you’re lucky, you’ll spend many hours and miles without running into another human—plan accordingly.

Layers: A light-weight water-resistant jacket, hat, and gloves are always a good idea. Weather conditions can change quickly, and fast-moving afternoon thunderstorms are likely in summer. Be prepared for hot and cold temps and precipitation. Read up on lightning safety protocols.

Bear Spray: The drama unfolds at all scales: grouse bursting from trailside brush with heartstopping suddenness; marmots whistling mockeries from rocky perches; moose appearing like prehistoric shadows in marshy meadows; and yes, both black and grizzly bears roaming in search of berries and bugs. Wildlife encounters aren’t rare exceptions here —they’re part of the experience. Expect them, respect them and prepare for them, even as your attention gets divided between scanning the jaw-dropping panoramas and watching your footing on technical terrain.

+ ProTip: ShoutingHEYBEAReveryfew secondswhilejogginguphillisprovento improveyourVO2max.

Water: The TCT offers frequent refill opportunities at streams and alpine lakes, meaning you can travel light with minimal water weight. Bring a reliable filter or purification method—the mountain water may look pristine, but Giardia is never on anyone’s adventure menu and will ruin the appeal of a post-run sloshy and tacos.

Snacks: So many snacks, and then add a few more snacks. You cannot bring too many snacks. The trail offers its own seasonal pantry: huckleberry, wild raspberry and thimbleberry bushes provide trailside treats for the knowledgeable forager. However, approach wild edibles with caution and certainty—several toxic lookalikes grow in these mountains.

Additional Safety Items: A headlamp and extra batteries —don’t get caught without them! Summer days are long, but if you end up out later than anticipated, you’ll be very happy to have a light. Grand Teton National Park now has widespread cellular service, but an inReach or satellite device is always a good backup.

Leave No Trace: Whenever possible, pack it in and pack it out. Nearly 4 million people visit Grand Teton National Park each summer. Be a responsible land steward: Leave only footprints and take only photos.

SLOW THE PACE

The TCT is most commonly done as a 3-5 day backpacking trip, allowing ample time to enjoy your surroundings. If you plan to make your adventure longer than a day, you’ll need a camping permit. Reserve your campsites in advance, or plan to camp outside of the park on Wilderness or national forest lands.

Plan your time strategically. If you can hit some of your highpoints in the morning—Rendezvous Peak, Hurricane Pass, and Paintbrush Divide—you’re more likely to enjoy the jaw-dropping views without the emotional and physical distress of the dreaded lightning stance (a calf-cramp-inducing position assumed by balancing on the balls of your feet and crouching as low as possible to minimize contact with the ground). There are plenty of beautiful and more protected areas to camp. I recommend Marion Lake, Death Canyon Shelf, Alaska Basin and the North Fork of Cascade Canyon.

A runner crosses Paintbrush Divide in Grand Teton National Park on the Teton Crest Trail.

Photo by raquelm/Adobe Stock

CUT IT SHORT

If you only have time for a half- or full-day adventure (pace dependent), the Paintbrush Canyon to Cascade Canyon loop boasts 19.9 miles, and 4,480 feet of elevation gain. You’ll reach the TCT’s highest elevation point, be rewarded by panoramic views, and the shorter outing still packs a punch in ample wildflowers, alpine streams and potential wildlife sightings.

CAN’T GET ENOUGH

The full Teton Crest Trail is 90 miles and traverses the entire Teton Range. Ask a local for more information on this unfrequented add-on, and be prepared for an off trail, exposed, epic sufferfest. Disclaimer: not for beginners—or most humans.

Sophie Tsairis is the deputy editor of Mountain Outlaw. She has had plentiful adventures in the Tetons, learning the hard way to always pack more snacks, filter her water, carry extra batteries and hide her clothes from marmots while skinny dipping in alpine lakes.

+ The TCT traverses the Death Canyon Shelf, a narrow plateau extending for miles from Fox Creek Pass to Mount Meek Pass. Paralleling most of Death Canyon to the east, its cliffs rise several hundred feet to the west. If you choose to make this a backpacking trip, be sure to snag a coveted campsite permit on this part of the trail!

+ Hurricane Pass is perhaps my favorite view from the trail. Overlooking the Grand, Middle and South Tetons, the pass is windswept and exposed. Below, Schoolroom Glacier clings to the mountainside; its meltwater feeds an impossibly blue tarn that seems to hover between earth and sky. On clear days, this high point offers a rare moment where photographs do justice to reality. Linger here if weather permits—views of this caliber deserve unhurried appreciation.

+ After dropping down the rugged high point (10,700 feet) of Paintbrush Divide into Cascade Canyon, cool off in Lake Solitude before descending the last 9 miles to your car.

Photo by skiserge1/Adobe Stock

Photo by raquelm/Adobe Stock

Photo by Laura Holman

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Home: An Interpretation by Semi-Rad

Art by Brendan Leonard

Brendan Leonard is an author, illustrator, filmmaker, ultrarunner, and dad who lives in Missoula.

A silver bonefish is held in tropical waters.

Photo by Web/Adobe Stock

Currents to Tides

The

humbling tale of a trout fisherman’s brief trade of Montana rivers for Caribbean flats

By Joe Cusick

When we arrived at our cheap hotel in San Pedro, Belize — hot, sweating and overdressed — the first thing we did was pour ourselves shots of rum after long days of travel in the Central American heat.

Being from Montana, I’m used to standing in icy cold rushing water, where the chilled blood in my calves percolates into my upper extremities, forcing me to wear a sweater even on hot July days. Despite a tight budget, the dreary Montana winter inspired in me a craving for a new version of a sport I’d always loved. My friends and I booked our trip to San Pedro on a whim, inspired by rumors of catching warm-water trophy fish in the salty Caribbean Sea. I had no idea where these ocean fish might be, but my Rocky Mountain mindset simply figured, “Where there’s water, there’s fish.”

A quick internet search of “Best Flats Fishing” pointed me toward the extensive options on and around Ambergris Caye, the Belizean island that is home to the tourist town of San Pedro. We couldn’t afford a guide, and certainly not an all-inclusive fishing lodge, so our plan was to show up, walk around and pray to find the wandering bonefish—a hardfighting ghost of the sea.

Back home in Montana, the rivers I grew up fishing are a destination of their own. My hometown of Bozeman in the southwest foot of the state is a tourism mecca, with a smattering of nearby luxury resorts and lodges that promise the experience of catching a trout on the fly. Being fortunate enough to grow up where people spend thousands of dollars

to visit, I learned at a young age how to catch trout. My dad took my brothers and me out in his old wooden drift boat, showing us how to read the water for fish. He taught us how to choose flies for the time of day, season and temperature. These conditions, as well as other expressions of the river, tell an angler how to catch fish. They are difficult to teach at a resort and nearly impossible to discover on your own.

Sam Walter and I flew out from Missoula, Montana, and once in Belize met with Max Smay, a friend from Idaho who had already been rambling down the eastern coast of the Yucatán peninsula from Cancun.

Smay picked us up at the San Pedro airport in a yellow, smoking, exhaust-popping golf cart with bad brakes. The blaring sun revealed heavy bags beneath his eyes. After a night of drinking with a few local Belizeans, he’d lost his shoes and hat, cut and bruised his feet, and had ended up owing a man named Naz $60 for some forgotten expense the night before. He may have been even more exhausted than Sam and I were after our overnight layover in Atlanta.

After some rum and a change of underwear, we walked down the street to a local food stand for stew chicken and rice. The ramshackle stand was overlooked by the rich honeymooners and Jimmy Buffett-esque retirees soaking in jacuzzies at the nearby resorts. We ate our meals on a curb by the beach and watched the sunset as an ensemble of local Belizeans performed a baptism in the ocean. The next day we were ocean bound, and hoped the religious omen would bring us productive fishing.

We woke up late but with our minds set on fish. After getting Smay some used tennis shoes that could withstand the hazards lurking on the sandy ocean floor, we took our golf cart to the closest fishing destination we could reach: Secret Beach.

Secret Beach was not a secret, but rather a place where other tourists came to get drunk and sit around halfsubmerged cabanas in the sea. Locals haggled with tourists, convincing them to buy shots of rum and tacky trinkets. They reminded me of the gas stations around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks that sell bear-shaped keychains and pocket knives to tourists looking for proof of having visited that part of the world. We parked our cart and walked down the beach.

I still don’t know whether luck or skill dominates in fishing, but on this day, our stars aligned. We saw fish all day. Barracuda sat motionless, like logs submerged below the ocean surface. Schools of bonefish fed within the slight scope of vision that our heads allowed above the water’s surface. But spotting bonefish and catching them are two separate feats. Sam managed to catch two, but Smay and I came up short. Only the most subtle cast and delicate drop of our flies could get their attention before they spooked.

Eventually, I crested around the point of a dock in water up to my waist. I saw a school of fish and gently cast my line within a hula-hooped distance of these feeding fish. Strip, and I saw them chasing, strip again, and I felt the zing of my line being pulled out of my reel, burning the crook of

a

day

Top: Shortly after missing a shot at catching a permit, Max Smay sits on the golf cart that served as the fishing trio’s transportation while in Belize. Photo by Joe Cusick Above: The author Joe Cusick (left) enjoys a Belikin beer with Smay after

long

walking the flats. Photo by Sam Walter

THE FIRST STEP IN CATCHING OUR TARGETED FISH IS SEEING THEM, AND WE BURNED OUR RETINAS ON THE WATER'S REFLECTION.

my index finger. I had no idea how to fight these fish. I had too much slack, then too little, and the bone broke away. “No bother,” I told myself, and like many trout fisherman, I thought, “There will be other opportunities.” I pictured evening caddis hatches back home: clouds of insects filling the air, tickling my neck and crawling around my ears, a hot summer wind at my back. I pictured myself on the river, with pods of trout rising above smooth water. If I lost one, I was bound to catch another. They were everywhere. I hoped this was true with bonefish.

We celebrated that night by roaming the streets of San Pedro drinking Belikin, the national beer. We danced with a few elderly women at a tourist bar called Palapa and counted our blessings for a good day on the water.

The next few days, we walked in the same flat, far, and with little luck. I caught a few snapper by blind casting into light blue submerged pools in the darker reef and wherever else I saw abandoned fish traps with pelicans diving into the water. We found a broken paddleboard, and Smay stood on it while Sam stabilized the vessel, a feeble attempt at spotting fish. We saw a cruising tarpon pass by, and with frantic yelling and casts, we scared the fish off immediately.

Trout fishing supports a level of hope, even after a day of not catching fish. Walking or floating along bends in the river and casting into deep troughs and drop-offs below the water’s surface are enough to stimulate the angler’s mind: “There must be a fish in this next hole.” The ocean is not this way. The first step in catching our targeted fish was seeing them, and we burned our retinas on the water’s reflection.

After hours in the hot sun, we walked onto a failed building foundation with a rock masonry ledge. We got a better view into the blue rippling water of the gusty flat. We

Left: Smay (left) and Sam Walter walk through the flats near an abandoned resort north of Secret Beach on their first day fishing. Photo by Joe Cusick Above: Cusick holds up a red snapper caught in an abandoned fish trap. Photo by Max Smay

walked slowly and with determination. Finally, with keen eyes, we spotted distinct shimmers in the water, brighter than the dancing ripples reflected by the sun. We cast into this mystery. I felt a tug, set the hook and pulled in my first bonefish. It was small, but a hard fighter. This would be my only bone of the trip.

Another day, we hunted for fish on the eastern edge of the island, driving up the coast toward the northernmost end of Ambergris to Rocky Point. We awakened at 4 a.m., packed extra water and a cooler of Belikin, and headed up the coast.

Our drive took us down a bumpy road through the jungle. A tangle of lush green brush and coconut trees surrounded our narrow roadway, and we passed old, abandoned resorts—now ruins in the jungle.

We reached a point on the coast with a wadable reef break. Despite our earlier bad luck, we excitedly started fishing. Watching the rising waves reach shore, we searched for any fish we could find that might be feeding on creatures tumbling in the surf. Smay and I stood in the waves, catching countless reef fish while blind casting in any deep pools we spotted nearby. Then Smay spotted it, a large tail splashing around in the break.

“Permit!” he yelled.

“Where? Where?!” I responded. Then I saw it. A huge discshaped fish splashing in the waves. A fabled fish for any angler, the permit thrashed its forked tail while aggressively feeding.

We could barely tie on flies with our trembling fingertips. We cast at the fish, sending sloppily presented flies nearby. I got a tug. But it was a small reef fish. I shook the fish off my line. Smay got a tug. Another reef fish. Damn, we’ve never wanted to catch a fish less in our lives. We kept casting, pulling in nuisance reef fish as we watched the feeding giant troll away as the daylight emerged.

Walking on foot makes flats fishing infinitely more difficult.

Perhaps it is solely designed for rich doctors, dentists and lawyers who are able to afford guided trips with experts of the sea. The fish in clear water can see you just as well as you see them. They have fewer places to hide, meaning they are more willing to run. Unlike the trout I know well, they don’t fight against a strong river current, and therefore their entire focus is on feeding or avoiding predation from sharks, birds and foolish anglers.

We sat on the hot beach among plastic rubble, sulking in defeat. Regardless of your location in the world, fishing is not catching. Like many days spent on the rivers in Montana, I was happier to be casting and not catching than sitting at work or being trapped inside on a cold winter day.

We continued to fish hard on our last day, walking our original flat. Smay caught a decent barracuda. We watched a crocodile slink along the surface of a mangrove swamp. We were in a foreign and exciting place, drinking rum and beer with sun-scaled faces, free to walk and explore as much as our bodies would allow. That was just as important as fishing.

I fish for trout. I cast into smooth pockets of water behind logs and large boulders in mountain rivers. The ocean is a different beast than my home rivers. It is a large, living and mysterious body of water I cannot understand. But I will be back again to fish in the sea. On our trip to Belize, perhaps we weren’t the ones dodging tourists as we are at home, but rather the tourists that fish tend to avoid. Their glassy eyes could see us coming from 3,000 miles away.

Joe Cusick currently lives in Missoula, Montana, spending the winter months dreaming of fish and trying to write, mostly to no avail. Although he may never achieve his goal of writing like Harrison, McGuane or Proulx, Joe lives like a Westerner through fly fishing for trout and hunting for wild game in his home state.

Left: The town of San Pedro sprawls across Ambergris Caye in Belize. Photo by Shane/Adobe Stock Right: Smay, Walter and Cusick pose for a self-timed group photo outside the apartment they stayed at in San Pedro, Belize. Photo by Joe Cusick

Wild about the outdoors.

Wild about public access.

Wild about adventure.

There are so many reasons to be wild about the prairie. What’s yours?

To learn what you can do to support protected lands and public access in Montana go to VisitAmericanPrairie.org.

LAND

The alpha male of Yellowstone’s Canyon Pack, Wolf No. 712, stands on a ridge in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park in 2009. Read more about Yellowstone wolves on p. 80. Photo by Mike Cavaroc/Alamy Stock Photo

‘THE NEW YELLOWSTONE WOLF ERA’

Walking in 30 years of wolf tracks since the species’ reintroduction

By Sophie Tsairis

Editor’s Note: On Jan. 12, 1995, paws in shades of gray pressed into the frozen ground at Crystal Creek in Yellowstone National Park, leaving prints in the snow hardly seen in that landscape for nearly 70 years. The tale of wolves in and around Yellowstone has been a winding one, with the reintroduction of the species to the park 30 years ago marking one of its most significant turns. After the predators had been systematically eliminated in the area in the earlyto-mid 20th century, the decision to bring them back was heralded by many as a conservation victory and by others as a grave mistake,

but all understood it as an act that would have major impacts on the ecosystem. On this anniversary year, controversy around how to manage wolves still roils like the thermals of Yellowstone, with most battles playing out in courtrooms and congressional assemblies. To honor this milestone, Mountain Outlaw is returning its gaze to the wild places these creatures inhabit, and to the wolves themselves. In recognition of three decades since the fateful reintroduction, we bring you stories of three wolves that offer insight into how these animals relate to this landscape—and how we relate to them.

The White Wolf: Fomenting Hostility

In the early 1900s, a ghost appeared in the rolling prairies and rugged mountains of Judith Basin, Montana. This specter wasn’t supernatural, but rather a creature of flesh and blood that seemed to possess a mythical ability to vanish into thin air. He came to be known near and far—revered and feared—as the White Wolf.

First spotted as a snow-colored pup near Square Butte in 1915, this lone wolf would go on to haunt Central Montana

for nearly two decades. Sightings of the wolf were reported all the way from the Little Rockies in the north to the Big Belt Mountains in the south. To the ranchers whose livelihoods depended on their livestock, he was a devastating predator wreaking havoc on sheep and cattle. But even to the stockmen that loathed him, he embodied what had, in part, drawn them to the West in the first place: wild mystique, cunning and unbridled freedom.

In 1926, rancher Earl Neill managed what no one else

A Yellowstone wolf pack traverses through snow in Hayden Valley.

Photo by Ashton Hooker/NPS

had—he wounded the elusive wolf with a shot to the hind leg. Maimed but alive, the wolf disappeared once more into the landscape. An article in the Choteau Acantha dated April 3, 1930, chronicled J. Williams’ account of the wolf from the winter of 1923: “It was about this time I began to notice one particular wolf, which from his habit of following the highway most of the time, I began to refer to as the roadrunner. This is the wolf that has been receiving so much attention the last year and has been referred to as the white killer. A reward is offered for his capture … he was shot once and crippled by Earl Neill of Windham but managed to escape to the mountains and outwit his pursuer, who followed him for the next few days … he has been shot at a number of times by good hunters but has always managed to escape. At first he was lucky in dodging traps but soon he became, I believe, the wisest wolf in the state.”

Four years later, A.V. Chaney and his five Russian wolfhounds cornered the White Wolf near Geyser, where Chaney attempted to rope the animal. Once again, the wolf escaped, despite his age and limp, slipping the noose and wounding two of the hounds before disappearing.

The local “wolf war” caught the attention of the Associated Press, and soon the story of Montana’s ghost wolf went national. Professional hunters and trappers descended on Judith Basin, drawn by hefty rewards and the challenge of capturing an animal that had become legendary. They came with horses and snowshoes, planes and dogs, to test their skills against the wolf’s. In bars and saloons around central Montana, the wolf’s exceptional intelligence became the subject of conversation, lore and wagers.

On May 5, 1930, Neill, who had wounded the wolf years before, spotted the aging animal once again. Along with his neighbor, Al Close, and two dogs, Neill gave chase. The hounds finally cornered the wolf in a dense patch of fir, and Close, taking aim from 40 yards away, ended the legendary

animal’s long reign.

On May 11, 1930, Elva Wineman, who covered much of the White Wolf’s life for several news outlets, wrote in Lewistown’s Democrat News, “As he lived, bold, courageous, arrogant, flaunting his contempt for man and beast alike, - so he died, head up, facing the rifle unflinching and fearless.”

When the body was examined, they found an animal that weighed 83 pounds and measured 6 feet from nose to tail. His teeth were chipped and worn from years of survival. At an estimated 18 years old, he far exceeded what was a 10-year average lifespan of a wolf at the time. The stockmen who had cursed his name for so many years found themselves unable to forget such a worthy adversary. In death, the White Wolf achieved a different kind of immortality—mounted and displayed at the Basin Trading Post in Stanford, Montana.

Years after that final hunt, Close would recall the moment before he pulled the trigger: “I almost didn’t shoot because I thought, ‘What a shame to kill such a smart fellow.’ It was the hardest thing I think I ever did. I knew it was the cruel nature of the wilderness, the fight for survival that had made him the ferocious hunter that he was. But I came to and let the bullet fly fairly into the face of the old criminal.”

“I almost didn’t shoot because I thought, ‘What a shame to kill such a smart fellow.’ It was the hardest thing I think I ever did. I knew it was the cruel nature of the wilderness, the fight for survival that had made him the ferocious hunter that he was. But I came to and let the bullet fly fairly into the face of the old criminal.”

–Al Close

In a final gesture of respect, the Judith Basin Stockman’s Association raised money to have the wolf mounted for permanent display at the Judith County Courthouse, where he remained for 60 years. In 2017, the White Wolf was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame.

The reign of the White Wolf marked a period in Montana’s history when wolves were considered “a decided menace to the herds of elk, deer, mountain sheep, and antelope,” according to the 1915 Yellowstone Superintendent Annual Report, and efforts to “exterminate” the population were underway.

Al Close shot and killed the White Wolf of Judith Basin on May 5, 1930. The infamous wolf eluded its pursuers for nearly two decades. Photo courtesy of the Judith Basin Museum in Stanford, Montana

Between 1914 and 1926, at least 136 wolves, including about 80 pups, were removed from dens, trapped, shot and poisoned in Yellowstone National Park.

Once among the most abundant predators in North America, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates through genetic data and extrapolations of wolf densities that likely hundreds of thousands of gray wolves inhabited the continent from coast to coast when Europeans arrived in the 1500s. But it took just a couple of centuries for humans to systematically hunt and trap the apex predator out of existence, wiping out 95 percent of their historic range by the mid-20th century. According to Yellowstone National Park, an intensive survey in the 1970s found no evidence of a resident population of wolves in the park, with the exception of occasional sightings, but no breeding pairs were confirmed.

During the 1980s, wolves began to reestablish breeding packs in northwestern Montana, with 50-60 wolves reported by 1994. Around the same time, public attitudes shifted enough to sway politics toward wolf recovery with human intervention. Under the protections of the Endangered Species Act and some 80 years after the White Wolf was first spotted as a pup, on January 12, 1995, eight gray wolves were released into holding pens in the Lamar Valley of northern Yellowstone National Park. A new chapter in the complex story of wolves in the American West was about to begin.

Wolf No. 9: The Reintroduction Years

Doug Smith was kneeling on the ground, concentrating on disarming a leg-hold trap, when he felt eyes on him. Looking up, he found himself face-to-face with a wolf, just a few feet away, staring at him through the chain-link fence.

It was 1995, and the wolf was female No. 9, one of the wolves reintroduced to the park in the ’90s. As a wildlife biologist, Smith had extensive experience with wolves, even hand-rearing a couple of pups himself as a “wolf mother” while interning at a captive research facility in Indiana early in his career. He continued as lead biologist for the Yellowstone Wolf Project for several decades after helping to reintroduce those first wolves, but this interaction with No. 9 felt like nothing else he’d experienced.

“I had this moment alone with a wild wolf,” Smith said, recalling the day he released her from her holding pen for the second time. “When we cut her loose that October of ’95, she became a free wolf for good—but you get a special bond forever.” That unexpected connection became one of the defining moments in Smith’s 28-year career as Yellowstone’s wolf biologist, and Wolf No. 9 would go on to become one of the most influential matriarchs in the park’s wolf restoration effort.

The 14 gray wolves arrived in Yellowstone that January after

A plan for a “soft release” enclosure in Yellowstone depicts one of three holding pens used to acclimate wolves to their new surroundings and mitigate their instinctual homing responses.

Photo by Jim Peaco/NPS

countless bureaucratic battles to get them transplanted from the Canadian Rockies. They were carried in crates by thenU.S Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beatty and Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley, and placed in holding pens in the Lamar Valley before eventually being released into the wild. Over the course of two years, 31 wolves would be introduced to Yellowstone, eliciting mixed responses from the public, and some biologists who believed wolves would have made their way back to the region on their own.

Smith remembers the sensation they inspired. “It’s truly one of those things when someone walks in the room and the vibe changes,” he said. “These wolves were like royalty.” Transported in crates on a horse trailer, the wolves became instant celebrities, with visitors rushing to take photos beside the trailer whenever it stopped.

The reintroduction team placed the wolves in acclimation pens—a strategy designed to break the “homing response” that might cause them to attempt returning to their capture locations. The pens needed to be far enough from roads to shield the wolves from human disturbance, yet accessible enough for feeding and monitoring.

“The first winter we were so worried about people killing them,” Smith said. Anti-wolf sentiment ran high, prompting 24-hour surveillance of the pens. “Even back then there were so many people with strong feelings against wolves.”

Wolf No. 9, one of the first wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995, in the Rose Creek Pen. Photo by Barry O'Neill

Smith’s journey with wolves began long before Yellowstone. As a teenager growing up in Ohio, he wrote letters to wolf biologists across the country, desperate to work with the animals that had fascinated him since childhood. At 18, his persistence paid off when he secured positions at Wolf Park in Indiana and later as a field technician at Isle Royale. By the time the Yellowstone reintroduction began, Smith brought 15 years of wolf experience to the project.

Among the reintroduced wolves, Smith formed his strongest bond with No. 9, a Northern Range wolf. The accessibility of her territory allowed him to know her better than most. Her story took a dramatic turn when, after being released, she crossed the Beartooth Plateau only to lose her mate, Wolf No.10, who was shot down by a man who claimed he thought it was a wild dog. He was the first reintroduced Yellowstone wolf to die.

In Decade of the Wolf, Smith and co-author Gary Ferguson describe how No. 9 waited loyally for her mate to return. When he didn’t come back, she gave birth to a litter of pups under a large Douglas fir—“the first sizeable litter of pups born in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in some seventy years.”

The mother wolf moved each pup individually to a safer location high on a nearby mountain in a jumble of rocks. In what was very likely a life-saving decision, then-director of the Wolf Project Mike Phillips called for the re-capture of No. 9 and her eight pups and returned them to the acclimation pen in the Lamar Valley.

Smith spent months horse packing up to feed them twice weekly. On one such occasion, a windstorm knocked trees onto the pen, creating gaps, and the pups escaped. Doing what any 3-month-old pups would, the litter quickly took to exploring the area around the pen, using the perimeter of the chain-link fence as a racecourse. Smith and his team set rubber-padded leg-hold traps to recapture them, eventually retrieving all but two. It was during this period that Smith had his memorable encounter with No. 9, made particularly momentous by the scheduled visit of President Bill Clinton, the first lady, and their daughter, who were coming to see the wolves. Smith had gone to the pen early that morning to disarm the traps,

concerned about the possibility of one of the guests stepping in one. Usually, when humans were around, the wolves would stay to the very back of the 1-acre fence, as far away as possible, Smith explained.

“I’m down on my hands and knees digging this trap up and dealing with it, and when I looked up, there was No. 9 just a couple feet away, just staring at me.”

When No. 9 was finally re-released for good in October 1995, she became a foundational figure in Yellowstone’s wolf restoration. Her eight pups and their subsequent offspring established new packs throughout the park’s available habitat.

“She was really one of the key wolves to stand the population on its feet and get what I call the New Yellowstone Wolf Era going,” Smith said. By 2000, approximately 80 percent of Yellowstone’s wolves carried No. 9’s genes. Even today, nearly 30 years later, her genetic lineage persists in 10-15 percent of the park’s wolf population.

As the wolf aged, Smith made the compassionate decision not to recapture her when her tracking collar failed. “She was graying,” he said. “It got harder and harder to catch the wolves because you run them down with a helicopter—you’re chasing them and they’re running for their life, and I just started feeling bad about it. I even remember back then seeing her from the airplane going ‘I don’t know if I want to catch her again.’” Because of this decision, the exact end of No. 9’s story remains unknown—a dignified conclusion for a wolf who helped reshape an ecosystem.

Despite current challenges, and what Smith calls “a return to war on wolves,” his memories of Wolf No. 9 and her contribution to what he called “the New Yellowstone Wolf Era” remain a powerful reminder of what was accomplished 30 years ago.

1479: A Controversial Conservation Legacy

In this 30th anniversary year of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone, Canis lupus remains a hot rod for debate about conservation, predator tolerance and coexistence. Wolves have always been the West’s complicated neighbors—inspiring awe, fear and deep-rooted antipathy.

As of January 2024, there were an estimated 110 wolves across nine packs in Yellowstone National Park. The park wolves are at the center of a larger population connected throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. While protected in the park, wolves who cross the imaginary boundary are managed by the states with varying policies— and tolerances—and often killed by hunters, poachers or because of livestock predation. The Northern Rocky population of gray wolves has been delisted from the Endangered Species List since 2017; wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are no longer protected by the Endangered Species Act. While the number of annual wolf mortality varies upon year, state and accuracy of reports, several hundred wolves are killed by humans each year in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Doug Smith fits a radio collar on a Sawtooth wolf pup in the Lamar barn in February 1997. Photo by Jim Peaco

Within the park today, the average lifespan of a wolf is 3.5 to 4 years. Rick McIntyre, longtime Yellowstone naturalist and author of the book series Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone said approximately 50 percent of deaths inside the park are caused by fights with other wolves.

One such wolf was female No. 907, the revered alpha of Yellowstone’s Junction Butte Pack who died on Christmas Day 2024 following injuries sustained in a fight with the Rescue Creek Pack. She was nearly 12 years old.

Despite losing an eye early in life and developing a limp in her later years, 907 led her pack since 2016, birthing 10 litters of pups, the most ever recorded in the park’s history. She bore her last litter in the spring of ’24—only one pup emerged from the den.

Now nearly 2 years old, that pup—female No. 1479—has big shoes to fill as the only survivor of the famed and recently deceased matriarch’s final litter. McIntyre observed 1479 grow up without the normal play and social interactions involved with having siblings or littermates.

“You could compare it to an only child that grows up in a neighborhood with no other kids their age,” he said. “In some ways she was deprived in that regard, but on the other hand, there were a lot of yearlings that spring and summer and they played with her. She also received a lot of attention from her mother.” McIntyre explained that social and leadership skills are what often determine who becomes alpha rather than physical battles of strength. “I often tell people that there are no two species on earth as similar in social behavior as people and wolves,” he said.

In the battle that lost 907 her life, many other Junction Pack wolves also died, likely including the pack’s alpha male.

“We saw the Junction Pack yesterday on March 20,” McIntyre said. “They number 11 now, with six that were born to the pack, three adults and three pups. Five adult males from the Rescue Pack have joined the group, bringing new vigor.”

McIntyre said Wolf 1479, now a young adult, has only two other older females above her in the pack hierarchy. He thinks it’s very possible that she will eventually take 907’s place as alpha female of the Junction Pack, continuing her mother’s legacy.

These dynamics among the Yellowstone wolves are natural threads woven into the ecosystem’s wild patchwork. But the patchwork is expanding, with a new color thread represented by the increasing—and increasingly deathly—interactions between wolves and the human world. Wolf 907 played an integral role in the species’ Yellowstone-based drama of the wild, but her youngest offspring’s fate could very well take a different turn, one greatly determined in myriad court cases and legislative actions, as well as by polarized public perceptions.

“I often tell people that there are no two species on earth as similar in social behavior as people and wolves.”

-Rick McIntyre, naturalist and author

Thirty years after the reintroduction, it’s easy to forget such a milestone was the product of battles reminiscent of those still surrounding wolves today: What began as a congressional directive in 1988 took six years of exhaustive research, countless public hearings and unprecedented community engagement before wolves were returned to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. And even so, it was not the end of the story. As Smith wrote in Decade of the Wolf, the battle for sustained wolf conservation was far from won.

“When it comes to attitudes about the wolf, especially outside the national parks, on some days it seems little has changed at all in the past sixteen years,” he wrote in the 2012 book. “The animals continue to find themselves in an angry ping-pong game of politics, the result of their kind being neither fully predictable, nor always well behaved.”

Three decades ago, the howl returned to Yellowstone, but we have yet to see if the coming decades will retain such a sound, or merely an echo.

Sophie Tsairis is the deputy editor of Mountain Outlaw.

Left: Two-year-old Wolf 1479 is the only surviving pup of matriarch 907’s last litter. The alpha female of the Junction Butte Pack died in a fight with a rival pack last winter. Photo by Jeremy SunderRaj, Yellowstone Wolf Project Right: The Junction Butte Pack photographed from a fixed-wing aircraft during wolf monitoring by the Yellowstone Wolf Project. Photo by Dan Stahler/NPS

Learning the Language of Land

Fighting plant blindness to feel at home

By Heather Hansman

It was spring when we first saw the house. Out front the lilac was blooming, as were the poppies and the first blush of roses. The massive tree we would soon learn was a water-sucking, bug-hosting, invasive Siberian elm was green and lush. I loved the way the house sat in the landscape, framed by the wildlooking hill behind, surrounded by trails that ran out the back gate into open space beyond. I wanted to live there, on the edge of a mountain in Southwest Colorado.

I’d never had land of my own before. For 20 years I drifted without anchor, searching for somewhere that resonated as home. The places I’d lived the longest were both basement apartments, where I’d set lonely pots of basil and peas on the patios. I was ready to grow deeper roots than that; more than just a house, a relationship with the land around it.

But the second the house was ours, I realized I had no idea what was growing or should grow there. I could identify a couple of obvious flowers, but other than that, the landscape was a tangled green blur. I’d always thought of myself as someone devoted to the outside world and connected to landscapes. I spent as much time as I could outside. But when I dug into my chunk of land, I realized I didn’t really know anything about roots. The hillside that I had assumed

was thick with native plants was actually scabbed with those punky Siberian elms, which seemed to vindictively scatter their seeds in abundance across the landscape. They hung over scrubby stands of bushes and grass, which tangled into each other. “I think we’re growing… alfalfa?” I told my husband after downloading an app that identifies plants. I started pulling things I thought were weeds, and then stopped, unsure if I was digging up something fragile and good. I had no connection to the ecology of my new home. It felt like a language I didn’t speak, one that filled the space around me.

We hired a guy named Moses to

“Our knowledge of our world around us is impactful on our psyche as a species. The more we neglect our environment, the more we continue to seal our fate.”

–Kathryn Parsley, researcher

Step One

+ Slow down. Pay attention. Go outside. Touch grass.

Step Two

+ Grow food.

cut down some of the biggest invasive trees. When I asked him what we might grow instead, he said to look up the hill, past the fence, at the scrub of sage and pinion and oak, to pay attention to the burst of spring wildflowers, and to what survived the winter. “See what does well here, and then make it keep happening,” he said prophetically. But the seeing was the hard part.

Experiencing the natural world as an amorphous green blob, or failing to notice it at all, is a phenomenon called Plant Awareness Disparity, or, until recently, Plant Blindness—a term coined in the ’90s by biology education professors J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schussler. It describes our inability to appreciate the complexity of the natural world around us because we fail to see the details. Researcher Kathryn Parsley, who advocated for the terminology change in a 2020 paper, explained to me that this phenomenon is becoming more widespread. She said it’s pervasive and getting worse due to a number of reasons: our dependency on technology separates us from the physical world around us; a cultural disinterest in teaching botany and natural history; and a fundamental lack of understanding about ecological systems as we become increasingly removed from agricultural practices and natural spaces. Even people like me, who purportedly care about nature, are less tapped into everything growing around us.

According to a 2011 study conducted by the Bureau of Land Management, kids can reportedly identify 100 times more brand logos than plant species. When Parsley studied this disparity in classrooms, students showed a complete lack of interest in plants because there were misconceptions about their value. “There’s no culture to support all the ways plants are important for our lives,” Parsley says.

Kids who don’t recognize plants become adults who don’t see them at all, and who don’t realize that so much of our

food, medicine and ecological stability comes from plants. Parsley says that as we more frequently fail to notice the diversity and importance of plants, and unwittingly turn toward monoculture in our food systems and in our created landscapes (think grass lawns), we divorce ourselves from the crucial web of nature that holds up everything else. This disconnect is a socio-scientific issue, according to Parsley, and is partially rooted in a culture that undervalues science, botany and the natural world, and partially in our visual systems, which are hyper-focused on humans.

She says it’s not a moral failing— humans are inherently focused on humans—but in disregarding the natural world around us we’re losing an important sense of what makes landscapes resilient, and of how much we depend on the diversity of living things. “Our knowledge of our world around us is impactful on our psyche as a species,” Parsley says. “The more we neglect our environment, the more we continue to seal our fate.”

It’s a large-scale problem, because plants undergird so many other things, but she says the best way to address it is individually—to create a framework for people to cultivate personal relationships with plants. She says it often starts in childhood, when we’re more likely to play in the dirt, but it’s harder to institute that connection in schools these days, in part because schools have moved away from natural sciences. A 2022 paper published in Ecology and Evolution reported that botany curriculum had gone from compulsory to nonexistent over the past 20 years. I remember sticking an avocado pit in a cup of water and watching it sprout, but that’s about it.

Parsley says that outside of the formal education system there are opportunities to up your own education at places like national parks, botanical gardens and seed libraries. Still, they’re often selfselecting and geared toward people who

The plant list in my phone grew, unromantic, but a marker of accrued knowledge. It was like putting glasses on and realizing how many details I had missed, how much more nuanced the world was than I had assumed.

So what does someone like me, who is remedially and embarrassingly becoming aware of their own plant awareness disparity, do? Parsley says the first step is to slow down and pay attention. Go outside. Touch grass. Part of the overwhelm is that once you start looking, there’s so much to see and it’s so complex. Just as building community doesn’t happen overnight, you can’t rush the knowing, and you can’t begin planting until you have the lay of the land.

Next, she tells people to grow food. She says it’s the most immediate way to see what seeds need, and to understand soil, light and what it takes for something to grow.

And here’s the good news: You don’t have to figure it out alone like I did, randomly pulling at potential weeds. There are resources. Technology is taking us away from the physical world, but technology like those plant identification apps can also help you learn what you have, what you might want, and what makes sense for your ecosystem.

of growing and dying. I first tried to find a long-term baseline of knowing, an initial branch of roots. Then I watched, chanting names to myself as I did: globemallow, sage, white fir, rabbitbrush. I started to notice those plants in other places. I could see the cinnamon bark of Ponderosa and the spread of scrub oak. I’ve hacked out the trees I knew were invasive; I learned to identify them by their weak limbs and diamond-shaped leaves.

The plant list in my phone grew, unromantic, but a marker of accrued knowledge. It was like putting glasses on and realizing how many details I had missed, how much more nuanced the world was than I had assumed.

Last summer I followed Parsley’s instructions to grow some food, to see what it takes. I had an overabundance of tomatoes and squash because I panicplanted too much, but I learned to see how the kale shot up in succession and how the zucchini blossoms bent to the light. It felt like I was finally putting down roots.

This summer I will remind myself that I have time, that I live here now, and I’m committed to the complexities and the work.

Parsley says it’s our responsibility to be stewards. “It feels like it’s getting worse. There’s such an attack on science happening right now and there are not enough people in power who see our effect on the planet and want to help it,” she says. “But I do also feel like people are starting to catch on, and people are taking things into their own hands.”

I’m catching on and learning that my patch is a prism of so many other places. This land, with its crackly soil and unforgiving weeds along with its pockets of unplanned beauty that spread out into the other landscapes beyond my fence, is slowly starting to feel like home.

Plant.id + A local field guide (find at a local bookstore) already care.

It’s been two springs now in my new home, and I’ve seen the seasonal cycle

Heather Hansman is the author of Downriver and Powder Days. She lives in southwest Colorado.

iNaturalist

USDA Plants Database

PlantNet

Personal Plant Study Chart

The late writer Barry Lopez says that to truly know a place, we must spend time with it. In this chart, we offer you a way to do just that. Take this page with you into part of your home landscape. Locate a few plants for your study, and sit with each of them to sketch and note observations. Take these fields notes home to help identify those plants and conclude whether they are native. Note that some of the identification resources we offer require a photo of the plant. Enjoy your field trip!

Sketch

Take a few minutes to render the plant. If you don't have colored drawing instruments, label the colors.

Native Plant Finder Resources

+ Native Plant Finder by the National Wildlife Federation

+ National Audubon Society National PLANTS Database

+ USDA PLANTS Database

Observations

Note every detail you can observe. What does the plant smell like? Feel like? What's the soil like around the plant? Is it growing in sunlight? What other plants surround it? If there are leaves, petals or needles, how many?

Conclusion

If you're able to identify the plant, label it here with any other notes about it you want to remember.

Native or Invasive?

collections

Leath Tonino is the author of two essay

about the outdoors, most recently The West Will Swallow You. Madeline Thunder is a freelance artist based in Bozeman, Montana. When she is not creating, she can usually be found reading a book or playing outside.

Hey Skunk

Words by Leath Tonino | Illustration by Madeline Thunder

Hey skunk, morning. You’re very tail up, nose down, eh? That’s your way of being here, pawing at the ground, scraping, walking little weavy circles at dawn, lots of stop and go. Hear the log trucks, the saws and skidders? They get to it early, no time for breakfast, those workingman men.

Cutting up where the big boar grizzly hangs out, doing his scrape and walk, his weavy grizzly way of being. You probably know him, don’t you? Bet you know just about everybody in these parts. Whoa, did you see that?

Northern harrier so low she almost hit my head. I try not to flinch out here, try pretty hard to take all this straight on, but it’s difficult. Well, sun’s about to break those clouds and that means I better be going, be on my own weavy way, get back to my own walk and scrape. It’s my last morning here in your valley, got some goodbyes in need of saying. There’s this sweet little female bufflehead on the pond, want to tell her fare thee well.

The coyotes too, of course, and the moose. If I don’t bump into the short-eared owl, the white-faced ibis, or that mad crackly lovable marsh wren, please, pass along my regards. Tell them thanks, hang in there, keep enjoying the air and sky, every last blade of autumn grass. Tell them what they don’t need to be told, that the frost here is special, a special thing to be cherished, that it melts off damn fast, that the silver shine over this place won’t last forever, won’t ever stay longer than an hour. Okay, I’m heading. Have a nice one, buddy. Scrape and circle, walk and weave.

Oh yeah, if you cross paths with that big boar, that beast among the saws and fresh scars, please, tell him good luck.

A Thousand Hours Outside

Appreciating a Montana Childhood

By Kaley Burns

“We tend to forget our connection to the earth, to the sky, to each other, to the life that’s constantly percolating in and around us. When we remember our connections, we become energized, inspired and feel a part of all that’s around us.”

– Margo

Adair, The Call of the Wild

As I watched my son Haydon toddle barefoot through the dewy morning grass, his chubby fingers exploring the earth with eager curiosity, I felt a deep sense of peace. The golden rays of the Montana sun kissed his cheeks as he giggled at a bird calling to him from the tree above. I have always known the benefits of nature—after all, I had spent years studying natural health—but now, as a mother, I experience them firsthand in the most profound way.

Like many parents, I want to give my child the healthiest foundation possible. But in today’s world, where screens glow enticingly and schedules overflow with structured activities, I worry that nature is becoming an afterthought. That’s why I committed to the 1,000 Hours Outside challenge—a simple yet powerful movement encouraging families to balance the time spent indoors with time spent outside or with screens.

The Science Behind Time in Nature

1,000 HOURS OUTSIDE IN A YEAR = 2.7 HOURS OUTSIDE EACH DAY

As a naturopathic doctor, I’ve seen the effects of nature deprivation in children: rising rates of anxiety, attention disorders and weakened immune systems. Studies show that children today spend on average only four to seven minutes engaged in unstructured outdoor play daily, while screen time can surpass seven hours. This imbalance is wreaking havoc on their health.

The research is clear—children who spend more time outside experience:

• Improved Physical Health – Outdoor play strengthens growing bones,

enhances coordination and reduces obesity rates. Sunlight exposure is crucial for vitamin D production, which supports the immune system and brain health. A study published in Environmental Research found that children who play outside regularly have lower risks of nearsightedness, fewer respiratory illnesses and stronger cardiovascular health.

• Better Mental and Emotional Wellbeing – A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that spending just 20 minutes in a green space significantly lowers cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. Children who play outside exhibit lower levels of anxiety and depression, and their creativity flourishes in open-ended outdoor environments.

• Stronger Cognitive and Social Skills

– Time in nature enhances problemsolving abilities and executive function. Free play outdoors allows children to develop independence, risk assessment skills and resilience. Studies also suggest that children who engage in cooperative outdoor activities develop stronger social bonds and empathy.

• Deeper Family Connection – When families spend time in nature together, they share experiences that strengthen their emotional bonds. Whether it’s hiking, building forts or simply cloud-watching, these moments create lasting memories.

Kaley Burns cross-country skis with her son Haydon in tow. Photo by Kaley Burns

Our 1,000 Hours Outside Journey

At first, the idea of reaching 1,000 hours outside in a year seemed daunting, equating to about 2.7 hours per day—and I had to account for the harsh Montana winter! But as I started tracking our time, I realized it was less about the hours and more about the mindset. Instead of running errands indoors, we strolled along local trails. Instead of staying in for playtime, we built obstacle courses in the backyard. Even meals became outdoor picnics under the wide Montana sky.

The transformation was undeniable. Haydon, still a wobbly toddler, gained strength and confidence with each barefoot step. The fresh air and physical play helped regulate his emotions. My

own stress levels dropped and our bond deepened as we discovered the simple joys of nature together.

I often think of a quote by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: “Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health.”

This is why I encourage every parent to take the first step. It doesn’t have to be grand—start with a daily walk, a morning coffee outside while your child plays, or weekend adventures in the mountains. The benefits will ripple through your child’s health, your family’s strength and even your own well-being.

While Montanans know the winters are long, there are still ways to enjoy the magic on the colder days. Grab your sled,

Nordic skis or snowshoes! Some days require shorter walks more often, but on those warmer winter days, pack your snacks and soak in the mountain air.

As our bustling world becomes ever more rushed and disconnected, nature offers a safe place to explore and develop a connection with the greater whole.

As the sun sets on another day of exploring with Haydon, I know one thing for sure: A childhood spent outside is a gift—one that every child deserves.

Dr. Kaley Burns is a Naturopathic Physician in Big Sky, Montana. She embraces a natural approach to health and aims to similarly inspire and guide others on their health journey.

Trailblazing together: A mom, her little explorer and their pup making every step an adventure. Photo by Eric Ladd

Built for More

How Warriors & Quiet Waters Helps Veterans Redefine Their Next Chapter By Taylor Owens

Frank Kancir hadn’t even unpacked his bags before he found himself standing at the creek at Quiet Waters Ranch with a fly rod in hand. Fresh off the plane from Pennsylvania, he was welcomed not with small talk or fanfare, but with the gentle rush of water and the steady tempo of casting line.

He was focused only on the rhythm—cast, drift, breathe.

“I didn’t think I was going to be able to change in the way that I have,” said Kancir, a Marine Corps veteran and Built for More Warrior. “If you would have told me how much I’ve changed at the beginning of all of this, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

This lasting change came during his experience with Warriors & Quiet Waters, a Montana-based nonprofit that serves post-9/11 combat veterans through outdoor immersion and evidence-based programming. Founded in 2007, WQW began as a way to introduce veterans to the therapeutic power of Montana’s rivers and landscapes. Since then, it has grown into a comprehensive reintegration program—one that doesn’t just offer respite, but a reimagined path forward.

“We’ve evolved from a week-long fly fishing program into a nine-month program designed to drive meaningful, long-term change,” Brian Gilman, WQW CEO and retired Marine Corps Colonel, said.

That blueprint for meaningful change is embodied in WQW’s flagship initiative, the Built for More program.

For many veterans, the transition to civilian life is marked by a profound loss of structure, purpose and connection. The Built for More program directly addresses these challenges by offering an immersive, multi-phase experience that includes peak experiences in nature, expert curriculum facilitation, peer mentorship, and the creation of each Warrior's personal roadmap forward.

The program offers three specialized tracks—fly fishing, archery and photography—each designed to help veterans dive deeply into an activity that fosters personal growth and aligns with the program's therapeutic goals. Whether learning the art of fly fishing on Montana’s rivers, engaging in the rigorous challenge of backcountry archery hunting, or

exploring nature photography, these tracks provide veterans with meaningful ways to reconnect with themselves and nature. They also equip participants with skills to carry forward after they return home.

Built for More answers a fundamental question many veterans face: "What now?" “When veterans leave the military, they feel a sense of loss—loss of identity, loss of purpose, loss of community,” Gilman said. “That’s the picture we’re looking at.”

Participants are selected from a national pool and guided through a journey that spans months, not days. The goal: to help them uncover their new identity and embrace the idea that their story doesn't end when their service does. Participants move from healing to growth, from being recipients of service to becoming leaders in their families and communities.

An essential part of the Built for More experience is the ongoing community and support available to veterans long after their initial involvement. WQW's Alumni Engagement Program has regional cohorts across the United States, providing veterans with a network of peers who understand their journey and continue to participate in group activities and provide a lifelong sense of community long after their capstone experience in the Built for More program.

“We built the program to strengthen each of the pillars of a thriving life,” Gilman said. “So veterans are empowered not just to heal from trauma, but to grow beyond it.”

“When I came here, I was suffering from a lot of survivor’s guilt,” Sean Gifford, a "Marine Corps veteran, WQW Alum, and professional guide, said. “I was angry. I'd go out into town. I'd wish people would start something. I couldn't, I can't really articulate. It was just a shame and a guilt and an anger, and I found an outlet through fly fishing. I keep [the rod] in my truck. See a body of water, I need to take a deep breath—fish.”

For Kancir, the Built for More program came at a pivotal time. After years of physical and psychological recovery, he found himself questioning what came next.

“That's been a big shift in myself mentally during this process,” he said. “It’s that I can be a different way and consistently

making those changes daily.”

Today, Kancir is not only thriving personally, he’s also stayed deeply connected to the WQW community through the bonds formed in his cohort. His story, like so many others, is proof that healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It grows in the presence of shared experience, trust and belonging.

“It's just been really amazing to have that camaraderie with the group, to talk about those experiences that we're all going through, and to know that we're not alone in it,” Kancir said.

That sense of brotherhood doesn’t happen by accident—it’s intentionally cultivated by WQW’s team of veterans, military spouses and civilians who understand that healing is neither linear nor solitary.

“Being a veteran and a fly fishing guide, I can bridge that gap immediately,” Gifford said. “I can find out what unit they're from, what they did in the military, and then I can find some common ground and we can build off of that.”

Built for More gives people a new mission—and a new team to accomplish it with. That team aspect is crucial. From shared meals and immersive nature experiences to guided group discussions, journaling and goal setting, Built for More is designed to rebuild the sense of community that military life once provided.

But it’s not just about looking inward. Participants are also challenged to contribute outward—to their families, their communities and even the next cohort of veterans.

“It’s not a one-and-done, and it’s not a fly-fishing trip,” Gilman said. “It’s not a hunting trip. It’s about driving real change and sustaining that change.”

Renata Nichols is another ripple in that expanding current.

A former police officer, lifelong volunteer, and “mom” at WQW, Nichols has dedicated herself to supporting the veterans who come through the program. After discovering Warriors & Quiet Waters, she knew right away she wanted to contribute.

“I would do anything and everything I can do for soldiers, veterans, anybody involved in this service for our country,” she said. “I stumbled somehow over Warriors & Quiet Waters, and I read a little about the background... and I’m like, I’m in. I can do the dishes.”

Her involvement with WQW quickly grew, and she became an integral volunteer within the community, offering her warmth and hands-on support. Whether helping with meals or making sure veterans feel at home, Nichols has always been there for those in need of camaraderie and comfort.

“You really make sure you welcome them like when your kid comes home after a long vacation... but always very cautiously, not be overwhelming—just be here for them with whatever they need,” Nichols explained.

As someone who has lived a colorful and diverse life— working as a police officer in Switzerland, herding cows, working at a KOA, and cooking for the Warriors—Nichols understands the importance of giving back in any form.

“When you hear the first really heartfelt laughter and smiles, you can just tell: now they are like, I like it here,” she said. “That is just so beautiful.”

Her role at WQW is built around making veterans feel seen, heard, and appreciated, providing a sense of comfort and belonging. But the support doesn't stop once the week at the Quiet Waters Ranch ends. In fact, that’s just the beginning of a much larger journey. Participants return home with new tools: mindfulness practices, communication strategies, and a network of peers and mentors they can lean on.

“Our programs are built around lasting impact,” Gilman said. “We don’t want to give someone a great memory—we want to give them a better future.”

The success of the Built for More program is measurable, with impressive results in areas critical to veterans' reintegration. According to the latest program evaluation, over 90% of participants report significant improvements in their mental health and overall life satisfaction. Additionally, a large percentage of veterans cite a renewed sense of purpose, with many going on to pursue new careers, volunteer work or leadership roles within their communities.

“We know that Built For More is accomplishing what we designed it to do because we measure what we do,” Gilman said. “They’re coming out of the program with a much stronger sense of purpose. They’re coming out of the program with a much stronger sense of thriving.”

But the most powerful metrics are often found in the stories. Veterans like Kancir who are now business owners, community leaders, and changemakers across industries. Men and women who once may have felt unsure of a path forward, now mentoring the next group of veterans.

"If it wasn’t for Warriors & Quiet Waters, I would most likely be a statistic at this point in my life,” he said. “I wouldn’t be doing nearly as well as I am right now."

The land itself is part of the medicine. Big Sky country— with its wide-open spaces, cold rivers and quiet trails—offers a stark contrast to the hyper-vigilant environments many veterans are used to.

“There’s something about this place,” Nichols said. “It allows you to breathe differently. To imagine differently.”

And that’s the heart of WQW’s mission: to create space—for stillness, for growth, for a different kind of strength.

“Combat veterans come to us looking for purpose and direction,” Gilman said. “We help them realize they're built for more. And that realization can change everything.”

Photos courtesy Studio MacLeod

CULTURE

Molly Tuttle performs in Three Forks, Montana, on Aug. 9, 2024 during Bridger Brewing's BrewGrass festival. This summer at Wildlands, Tuttle will perform with Dave Matthews and Lukas Nelson. Read our interview with Dave Matthews on p. 130.

Photo courtesy of Molly Tuttle

For 34 years, the University of Montana School of Journalism’s Native News Honors Project has trained students to cover news events that affect the 12 tribes in Montana. The program’s work this year explores the uncertainties faced by Montana’s tribes in the first 100 days of a new administration. The stories highlight the unique and direct relationship that Indigenous nations have with the federal government that makes these communities particularly susceptible to the actions of the U.S. president.

President Donald Trump released his 2026 budget proposal on May 2, which included more than $163 billion in cuts, including cuts to programs that directly affect Indigenous nations. Some of the more noteworthy reductions include more than $600 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

This budget proposal will very likely go through months of debate, negotiations and revisions, if not a complete overhaul, before it is ever approved. However, it could be seen as a signal that might further weaken the federal commitment the nation’s leaders made in the treaties it signed with Indigenous nations.

In fact, many tribes have been preparing for the worst-case scenarios since the 2024 election.

The following piece is an amalgamation of abbreviated stories written and photographed by the Native News students at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Full versions of these works can be found at nativenews.jour.umt.edu.

–Jason Begay, Native News Honors Project professor

Jerrid Gray, project manager for Little Shell Tribal Enterprises, who benefits from employee housing in Paradise Valley, walks above a cut of travertine at the Yellowstone Rock quarry in Gardiner. Photo by Owen Preece/University of Montana

University of Montana School of Journalism Native News documents how Montana tribes are weathering another Trump term

By the 2025 Native News Honors Project

Owning a piece of home

Homeownership has always been complicated on tribal reservations. Even removing the economic factors like high unemployment on many reservations, the unique relationship that tribes have with the federal government make landownership technically impossible, removing any hope of building equity in a home.

That looks only to become more complicated in the coming years. Not only are Trump’s tariffs expected to increase building costs, but his proposed budget cuts would also take more than $28 billion from various housing and urban development programs.

In fact, the American Dream of a white picket fence is 15 percent less likely for American Indians compared to white Americans, according to a 2022 survey by NeighborhoodWorks America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advances opportunities for affordable homes in every state. Now, with the re-election of Trump, the red tape is thicker, the costs are higher and the dream is that much further for many tribal citizens.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs just had a bunch of agency offices shut down. So that’s going to impact the ability for homeownership in a big way,” said Robert Crawford, a contractor for the BIA. “[The

BIA] haven’t really released any of that information yet. HUD is definitely being affected, but I don’t know to what extent.”

The entire state of Montana is facing a severe housing crisis with skyrocketing prices and limited housing stock, making the state the least affordable in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors.

After 40 years living in Seattle, Amber McEvers White wanted to move home to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Her mother Wilma North Peigan, an elder, was struggling to get around in the tough winters.

To prepare for this life change, McEvers White lined up everything she thought she needed. The land was purchased. She had, in her hands, construction plans for a home inspired by the Yellowstone TV show on a budget; three-bedrooms, two-levels.

Yet, nothing moved forward. Six years passed, and nothing moved forward.

McEvers White had tried to find anything. She applied first for a lease site, buying land and now looking for other options. She had made a flight home, more than 20 phone calls and sent several email messages. But in March of 2023 the builder was ready to cancel the deal.

“It’s just a frustrating process. I felt like I couldn’t

even get anything on my own reservation,” McEvers White said. In Browning, where McEvers White was hoping to build her home, the path to ownership is challenging on a reservation with nearly 10,000 people. There are run-down homes, low-rent apartments and a minimal private rental market.

For McEvers White, moving home was a logical option to take care of her mom and live closer to her family. She took the first steps toward homeownership in 2019.

“I lived away for a number of years and we saved a lot of money to do this because we knew we didn’t want to retire in Washington,” she said. “People that don’t have the money, I don’t even know how they go about getting what they want or getting what they need.”

In the end, McEvers White purchased a home on the Flathead reservation just to be closer to her family and back in Montana.

Flathead youth worry for LGBTQ community

For a lot of Indigenous people, the national conversations about the 2024 election have lingered. Trump ran a campaign that capitalized on criminalizing people of color as well as the transgender community. On the Flathead reservation, the stress from the campaign remained,

leaving the LGBTQ community on alert.

It was a Saturday morning earlier this year when 20-year-old Jet DuMontier stood in the vegetable aisle of a Walmart on the Flathead Indian Reservation. DuMontier was wearing black cargo pants and a gray hoodie. Their partner had just moved into a new apartment and needed to buy basic groceries to start the new chapter of their life. DuMontier enjoyed watching the people surrounding them, while their partner was debating what to buy.

Then a teenage boy lifted his shirt toward DuMontier to show the gun on his hip.

“It was very intentional because he didn’t have his shirt up the first time I saw him,” DuMontier said. “I’m sure he was reacting to us.” DuMontier and their partner were both born biologically female and are both nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. They were affectionate in the supermarket. That’s how DuMontier assumed the boy recognized them as a queer couple.

Concentrating on their shopping list, their partner hadn’t seen the gun. But DuMontier became quiet. As a queer person, all the alarm bells were ringing for DuMontier.

“I felt so unsafe,” DuMontier remembered. “The second I saw that, all this horrible s**t just started going through my head. A f*****g Walmart shooting.”

DuMontier’s thoughts ran wild. They went through all the possible scenarios of what could

Amber McEvers White, 58 and a Blackfeet citizen, sits at her brother’s house in East Glacier. McEvers White lived in Seattle for the previous 40 years before moving to Polson to be closer to her family and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

Photo by Taylor Decker/University of Montana

happen next. How could DuMontier save them from the situation? They only knew of one nearby entrance and exit. They thought of all possible escape routes while DuMontier pushed their partner into the next aisle—away from the gun.

It didn’t come to a shooting that Saturday. The boy’s mother told him to put his shirt back down.

“He didn’t look a day older than 17,” DuMontier recalls.

But even though there was no violence that day and no physical signs of racism or queer hostility were left behind, psychological scars remain. DuMontier is now more mindful of where and when they show affection to their partner in public. They don’t feel safe on their reservation anymore.

Nearly half of young voters across the nation, dubbed Gen Z in popular media, voted for Trump in 2024, a significant increase from his previous presidential bid. About 47 percent cast votes for the Republican president last year while about 36 percent did the same in 2020.

At the beginning of March 2025, there were 2,108 enrolled Selis’ Qlispe and Ksanka members aged 23 and younger, according to Robert McDonald, the tribes’ spokesperson. Like most of Montana, the polling places located in the major towns on the Flathead reservation supported Trump, including St. Ignatius and Ronan. Voters in Arlee supported the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, according to results posted by the Montana Secretary of State’s office.

However, since the election, young people have swayed. Many have grown more concerned with the economy, environmental policies, and the overall treatment of diverse communities. Like DuMontier, some feel targeted by policies of the current administration as their rights to climate mitigation, education and diversity are under attack.

In fact, the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School released a report in April showing that only about 15 percent of young people believe the country is moving in the right direction, and less than one-third approve of Trump’s performance. Young people’s worries are as diverse as they are. Many mentioned school closures, growing racism and the theft of tribal and natural resources as their main concerns. There is also the future. In the face of mass layoffs and an uncertain economy, young people are now worried about job security, especially in nature conservation, which is important to the CSKT tribes.

Political harassment pervades civil discourse

On the other side of the state is Wolf Point, Montana, a town of around 2,500 people that sits in the middle of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. While a majority of the town’s population is Native American, there is a large number of non-Natives living in Wolf Point as well. While the town itself leaned slightly Democratic in the 2024 election, many votes were cast for Trump.

In February, it was a miserable day for Robert Manning. He’d just spent hours dealing with the “five things” email mandate sent by the Department of Government Efficiency on Feb. 22, in which all government employees were required to report their five professional accomplishments of that week.

As the local chapter representative of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Manning spent much of that day easing the unsettled federal workforce on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. At the time, a cluster of presidential executive orders were causing strife and confusion. They suggested big changes for federal employees, perhaps even layoffs.

On his way home, Manning needed to stop at the local auto parts store for brake pads for his son’s truck.

As Manning was leaving the store, he heard his name in a loud voice that echoed through the building. It was a white man who approached Manning. He flexed his arm in Manning’s face and said, “MAGA Strong!”

The moment was quick, but it ate at Manning. He felt purposely targeted and haunted, so he decided

Jet DuMontier, they/them, is passionate about standing up for queer rights and is quite outspoken. DuMontier attended Two Eagle River School, and now attends Salish Kootenai College with their sister, where they run the Spirit of Many Colors Club. This club allows a safe space for LGBTQ members on the reservation.

by Maddie McCuddy/ University of Montana

Photo

to share his experience and confront the man.

About two weeks later on March 3, Manning stood at the end of a long table while the man, Ken Hentges, sat at the other end as a member of the city council.

The small room housed the meeting place for the Wolf Point City Council, which stood at full capacity for the monthly meeting. Those in attendance watched on as Manning read poems and shared handouts, silently listening as his story grew more intense.

Robert Manning reads a poem, “Rich Man’s War,” to city council members after he discussed an incident he had with a council member. The poem, written by his uncle, details the struggle of small communities fighting each other and losing sight of the common fight against oppressors.

“I don’t think you fully understand what your words and your actions really did that day,”

Manning told Hentges. “I don’t think you have the empathy to understand that, and it’s not going to be tolerated. It’s not ethical, and today, I’m asking for your resignation.”

Ken Hentges, who quietly listened to Manning’s public comment, finally spoke.

“You literally just took it the wrong way,” Hentges said. “I didn’t mean anything offensive by it.”

A small argument immediately broke out. The councilman dismissed the event. Manning, his voice booming, equated the dismissal of his feelings as “what bullies do.” Then they were interrupted by Wolf Point Mayor Chris Dschaak, who slammed the table with his hand to quiet the room. There would be no screaming match in his chambers.

“There’s been a divide that goes beyond race, creed, color, religion, all of this,” Dschaak said. “Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, that’s on your personal time. I don’t know how we get back to decency. It seems like

we’re slipping away from that more and more day by day.”

The divide that Dschaak described was much bigger than what could be felt in the council chambers that night. It was bigger than in the auto parts store on the day Manning spoke about. It’s a divide that permeates throughout the town of Wolf Point, the state of Montana and the United States.

In its 2024 study, “Stress in America,” the American Psychological Association reported that 77 percent of adults said the future of America was a significant source of stress. In addition, 69 percent of people said the presidential election was a source of significant stress, an increase from 2016 when 52 percent of people said the same.

Since President Trump’s 2016 victory, and especially since his re-election in 2024, incidents regarding political harassment and violence have heavily increased. According to a 2016 report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the 10 days following the 2016 election, almost 900 reports of harassment were reported across the nation.

In many incidents, harassers invoked Trump’s name directly. Like Manning’s, many others made ties to the Make America Great Again movement.

Still, Montana’s tribes are working hard to expand their sovereignty to either prepare for the worst or further make themselves more independent from federal policy. The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, for instance, is working to become financially independent by leaning heavily into economic development projects.

Little Shell seeks sovereignty security

In his office in Great Falls, Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray picked up a small framed photo of himself and other tribal leaders standing behind former President Joe Biden. It was 2023, and Biden had just signed an executive order strengthening tribal sovereignty, giving tribes more freedom in allocating federal funds and redesigning programs to reflect trust in tribal decision-making.

“Trump just rescinded it,” Gray said. “A**hole.”

Gifts from other tribes hung on the walls, bestowed to the Little Shell after its recognition. The official document recognizing the tribe, signed by Trump in 2019, hung on an inner wall. The irony of the situation was not lost on Gray— the man who had granted their long-awaited sovereignty now threatens to strip it away.

Having held his office since 2012, Gray is often seen as the face of the tribe. And he’s a businessman, having worked in research and development at

Photo by Marc Anthony Martinez/ University of Montana

media agency G&G Advertising for more than 20 years. Leveraging this experience, he aims to lead the tribe to economic success.

“When our economic stuff takes off, [we’ll] just tell the government we don’t need [funding],” he said. “Thank you, but give it to a tribe that really needs it.”

Trump’s early-term rhetoric, Gray said, put tribal citizens on edge. The first few weeks of the new administration saw a frenzy of executive orders that sowed chaos throughout Indian Country. This included potential layoffs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, as well as cuts, or pauses, to funding of tribal programs. Although a lot of the actions have been pulled back, paused or blocked, the chaos remains, and tribal citizens are still on edge.

For instance, if a proposed federal funding freeze had remained in effect, work on the Little Shell’s first housing development would have ceased. Its health clinic would have shut down. More abstractly, the freeze represented a disregard for tribal sovereignty, setting a dangerous precedent.

“We want to be self-sufficient. But it’s going to take a little bit of time,” Gray said. “We need to still rely a bit on the federal government [and] hold them to the [treaty] obligations they agreed to. And when they don’t do that, it tramples all over [our] sovereignty.”

The Little Shell announced its resort plans in December 2024. Though permitting will take several years, it’s projected to bring in more than $65 million annually and $9 million in annual tax revenue. It will include a casino, bowling alley, indoor waterpark and a 9,700-person capacity arena. The completed project will provide more than 430

permanent jobs.

Gray is confident that the resort will attract tourism to Great Falls and benefit all residents, further legitimizing the tribe in a community he says is still laced with discrimination.

Rebecca Ingham, the executive director of Great Falls, Montana Tourism, said she first heard about the resort through the December press release. She said the project seems to align with the community’s strategic initiatives to grow its travel industry, presenting an opportunity to host entertainment, trade shows and larger conventions in Great Falls.

“There’s a great need in Great Falls for available convention space,” she said. “The resort does open up the opportunity to bring additional people into our community.”

Indeed, the Trump Administration’s eventful return to power has sent shockwaves throughout Indian Country, propagating fractures throughout matters of livelihood, mental wellness, economics, community and sovereignty. But the Little Shell’s economic initiatives prove that for every move, there’s a countermove: young marginalized people sharing their stories, city council testimony, calling out efforts that disobey long-held treaties. While these stories rise to the surface of the mere beginning of a term that makes no promises other than change, they indicate a growing strain between Indigenous nations and the federal government— tensions that refuse to be quiet.

The Montana Native News Honors Project is reported, photographed, edited and designed by students at the University of Montana School of Journalism. The work presented is from the publication’s 34th annual edition. Full versions of the stories can be found at nativenews.jour.umt.edu.

The Little Shell Tribe was federally recognized in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first administration.

Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray keeps a framed copy of this document in his office in Great Falls.

Photo by Owen Preece/University of Montana

Welcome Home

A contemplation of ancestors, buffalo brothers and “re-Indigenizing” Yellowstone

By Chris La Tray

It is a sweaty evening in mid-August of 2022 on the second night of my stay at the All Nations Tipi Village in Yellowstone National Park. I’m at Madison Junction, the lush meadow 14 miles from the park’s West Entrance where the Gibbon and Firehole rivers join to comprise the headwaters of the Madison River. The day fading toward dusk has been full of spirited interactions with the public and, while most were overwhelmingly positive, the sun was unrelenting; I am overcooked and socially weary.

The light is fading into pastel colors behind distant ridges and a group of singers and drummers are in the adjacent meadow rehearsing for a performance to come tomorrow night. While drums thump and people shuffle-dance around and between the tipis, a massive bull buffalo emerges from out of the shade of thick lodgepole pines to the north and ambles down a dusty slope into the wide field that separates the line of tipis from the river. There is a collective gasp as lingering tourists, largely campers from the campground just above the meadow, swarm with cameras and excited babbling. A nearby ranger with raised hands urges everyone back to a safe distance. The buffalo, muscular and shaggy and as-much-red-as-brown in this golden hour, pulls big chunks of grass into his mouth. Even from my safe distance perched in my camp chair, I can hear the soil tear free from the earth, the munching sounds of his chewing. He is unconcerned with anyone’s proximity.

A woman approaches me. “Is that a real wild buffalo?” she breathes. “Or is it one from a petting zoo or something brought here to hang around the tipis?” I assure her it is indeed a real wild buffalo. She smiles, though I’m not entirely certain she believes me.

The Yellowstone Revealed’s All Nations Tipi Village backdrops the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone Revealed is a collaborative effort with Mountain Time Arts that brings tipi installations and learning opportunities to each park entrance for a period during the summer. Photo by Jacob W. Frank/NPS

There was a time my ancestors were as familiar with the arrangement of stars in the night sky as I am with the little app icons scattered across the dark glass of the home screen of my cell phone. I am considering this loss of connection with the universe, not entirely self-inflicted but certainly self-maintained, as I stand alone under the sky, deeply moved and reveling in the moment.

Yellowstone Revealed’s illuminated tipis and the Milky Way make for a beautiful night image at Yellowstone’s North Entrance in Gardiner, Montana.

Photo by Jacob W. Frank/NPS

I am here as one of many cultural ambassadors from nearby tribes invited to occupy the village for the better part of a week, all of us here to commemorate the 150-year anniversary of the park. Crucially, we are mostly here to announce and usher in the park’s next mission, which is to re-establish an essential Indigenous presence within the borders after almost two centuries of absence. It is a grand vision and long overdue. We spent the day explaining our presence to anyone who happened by; some, like me, via stories and presentations, others via art, both visual and performance.

Before long, darkness settles and people disperse. Somewhere nearby a small group of men are chatting; by now, I am stripped to my boxers and reclining in my tipi, where I will spend the night on top of my sleeping bag. The voices are low and indiscernible and then fade away.

I am the only ambassador actually sleeping in a tipi. The rest are up above in the campground. Apparently this— spending the week in the campground— had been the intention of organizers all along, but I never got the memo. When I arrived the previous evening and no one was around, I set up a nest in the tipi marked “Little Shell Chippewa Tribe” and no one has made me move since. So here I am, in my tipi, the first stars beginning to pop from the sky as seen

through the opening at the apex of the tipi where the 14 poles cross. I drift off, the entire area to myself. Or seemingly so. Later, just a couple of hours past midnight, I wake up and emerge from the low flap of the tipi into the chill of the night and walk out into the meadow. I can hear the river swirling and a slight breeze rustling the pines like whispers from this other, and simultaneously familiar, universe. Without so much as a

but certainly self-maintained, as I stand alone under the sky, deeply moved and reveling in the moment. I feel born fresh into existence, like Nanaboozhoo, the first Human in the creation story of my Anishinaabe people, instructed by Creator to go out and meet the world and all of our more-than-human relatives for the first time. I believe this is what it might have felt like: everything ancient, everything brand new,

My buffalo brother wasn’t here by happenstance. He was here to celebrate the return of our shared presence on this particular stretch of land.

nail clipping of moon to brighten things, the stars in the sky are stupendous. Gobsmacking. Truly and literally of other worlds. The Milky Way stretches far overhead. I don’t see anything like this anywhere near where I live, what with city lights and porch lights and headlights and any and all kinds of encroaching, human-made lights.

There was a time my ancestors were as familiar with the arrangement of stars in the night sky as I am with the little app icons scattered across the dark glass of the home screen of my cell phone. I am considering this loss of connection with the universe, not entirely self-inflicted

everything magnificent.

My reverie is broken with the sound of a deep, explosive, “Uungh.” I pause. This is Yellowstone. It could be anything. I hear the rumble again. “Uuuuuungh….”

I reach up, flick my headlamp on, and turn around. Some 20 or 30 feet away is the buffalo, bedded down behind the tipi two positions adjacent to mine. Staring eye to blinking eye at the buffalo, my alarm drains away. I turn the lamp off. I can hear him breathing and imagine the glitter of his dark eyes. I move slowly back to my tipi, saying aloud as I pass, almost giddily, “I hope you rest well tonight too, my brother.”

Left: A bison lingers around the All Nations Tipi Village at Madison Junction. Photo by Chris La Tray Right: Chris La Tray offers opening remarks at the opening ceremony for Yellowstone Revealed in 2024. Photo by Jacob W. Frank

Many people get indignant when we dare to “anthropomorphize” our more-than-human relatives. I find the word mildly repugnant and a perfect example of human arrogance. Who are we to pass judgment on the inner world of creatures we’ve never tried to understand beyond what we can measure with our own tiny view of existence? My connections to the world are deeper when I accept that it isn’t the animals that are dull and stupid; it is that all too often we are. Not only are we the last to arrive on this world, according to Anishinaabek cosmology, and prone to gigantic mistakes, we are the ones whose failures of humility have disconnected us from the rest of the world. The world was fine without us before our arrival and would likely, if the last few centuries are any indication, be better off with us gone again, a future we seem to be hell bent on embracing. But it’s not too late to change this apparent fate; Anishinaabek teachings assure us of this too. I believe the land and our animal relatives would miss us if we left. Same as we miss the ones we’ve driven to extinction.

Consider the relationship Indigenous people have had with what we call Yellowstone Park, or the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for thousands of years. We have been absent from it for more than 150 years at the decisions of men who believed nature wasn’t pure

unless people—non-white people in particular, it seems—weren’t part of it. In the case of our national parks, Native folks aren’t allowed to live in them as we have for centuries, yet tourists are allowed to trample all over them. There is no sense in this.

We can learn from our mistakes. The stumbling, early efforts in Yellowstone to “re-Indigenize” are steps in the right direction, however long it takes to arrive. Lying in my tipi, realizing my great relative, literally the symbol in the center of my people’s tribal flag, was taking his rest just a score or so of feet away, I came to a deep revelation. My buffalo brother wasn’t here by happenstance. He was here to celebrate the return of our shared presence on this particular stretch of land. My heart was full with gratitude. I thanked him in prayer.

Sometimes a buffalo in a meadow is just a buffalo in a meadow. But sometimes, like this experience in Yellowstone, the buffalo—bizhiki in Ojibwemowin—is visiting as one of our Seven Grandfathers, representing Manaaji'idiwin, or Respect. I think that, like so many people who saw these tipis assembled in this beautiful meadow for the first time in 150 years, this buffalo came to pay his respects to us on behalf of all of his Nation. He was reminding us to be mindful that we are indeed all connected, living being to living

being. That we must be honorable in the teachings we are sharing with the curious. That we need to give of ourselves to make things better for everyone. Reminding us. And welcoming us home.

The next morning I am up and making coffee a little after 6 a.m. My buffalo relative is still here too, a massive shape in a dusty wallow, his legs tucked up under him. Small bunches of Canada geese, not even Vs of them, are flying low overhead above the misty river, making their racket. Everything so primeval from last night under the stars is still here in the earliest light of morning, the hissing of the little gas stove brewing my coffee notwithstanding. Things couldn’t be more perfect.

Before long the buffalo heaves to his feet, snorts and snuffles, and starts eating again. He makes his way south along the line of tipis, pausing here and there. He curves around to the west along the bank of the Gibbon River. He ascends the hill, and disappears into the trees.

Chris La Tray is a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He writes the newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025 and the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana.

A bison herd with calves moves through the Lamar Valley. Photo by Neal Herbert

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River Poets

The trails of legendary poets converge in Western Montana

Words by Chandra Brown | Poems by Chris La Tray

In a tradition that lasted the better part of a decade, author and naturalist Peter Matthiessen came to Montana in the summertime. I don’t know how many times Matthiessen fished with writer and ichthyophile David James Duncan, but I know the two went fishing together at least once up the Blackfoot. I know that Oregon-based editor essayist, and author Brian Doyle, according to Duncan, never went fishing and in fact lacked the patience for it. And I know that when Duncan invited Métis poet Chris La Tray to join him for a day on the Blackfoot, joy happened.

The paths of peripatetic poets run like rivers over this landscape. The sometimes-solitary work of truth-telling is supported here by literary legacy and lineage. Words build on each other like waves. Writing, like water, shapes the world around us. Writing, like water, changes our landscape and floods it with complexity and meaning. To write alongside, or about, or in service of rivers is to work in tandem with the force of water and the force of words. This truth was evident in August, several years back, just below the place where the Blackfoot and Clearwater rivers meet, where I witnessed a confluence of histories, of humans and stories

living across time, and an eventual revelation of paradox. Where two rivers meet, so do twin currents of elation and grief, generosity and ambition, levity and ponderance.

La Tray first came to the river at 8:30 on the morning of August 4, 2019. Long braid snaking out from under a floppy hat, leather satchel slung over one shoulder, he ambled over the bridge that crosses the Blackfoot near its confluence with the Clearwater. I met him at the downstream end of the bridge, just uphill from the beach where our group had camped the night before, my hand gripping a steel mug in the way old river guides— for whom caffeine is an essential vitamin—do. I shook La Tray’s hand with my free one and led him down the trail to our beach, where he took a seat next to Duncan in a circle of mismatched folding camp chairs. The group was quiet, river guides making breakfast, participants rinsing sleep from their throats with coffee. Duncan beamed at La Tray from his seat. The elder poet, Duncan, put his arm around the younger one, La Tray, and someone snapped a photo of them there, side by side, dewy Ponderosas shimmering behind their backs.

This was a river-based writing workshop that Duncan and I had planned and plotted over winter months. The cohort was filled with teachers and poets, fathers and sons, old friends, seekers, leaders—all of whom were there to learn about the craft from Duncan. La Tray was Duncan’s invited and esteemed guest. He would join us as we traveled downstream, in rafts, on that late-summer Blackfoot, low and warm and rocky.

I don’t remember what we began to talk about in our morning circle exactly, but given the

Left: Freeflow Institute workshop participants enjoy writing and reflection time on the banks of the Blackfoot River on August 4, 2019. Photo by Chris La Tray Right: The South Fork Salmon River, as witnessed from the downriver trail on a 2021 Freeflow Institute writing workshop led by Idaho poet CMarie Fuhrman. Photo by Chandra Brown

Sunshine gets all the fanfare, but I live for foggy mornings on the river, mist rising in clouds from its surface, herons overhead heard, unseen.

Storms rage, trees stagger and crack, rivers surge, and all most of us can do is cling to something familiar in an effort to keep afloat.

nature of our gathering it was likely something about writing, likely something about paying attention, about activating one’s senses. I remember La Tray sat still as stone, unsmiling, his eyes gazing beyond the rainbow of puffy jackets that defined the circle’s perimeter. Some minutes into our conversation, he raised an arm and motioned across the river. There, on the old railroad grade that parallels the Blackfoot for much of its course, stood a mountain lion. She stared at us, in the broad morning light, frozen, brazen, in full view. I was breathless. I’d not had this experience before. I had no relationship to mountain lions, had never seen one, although I was told they knew me well by now, that they saw me each time I went into their woods. It was a unidirectional knowing.

La Tray managed to capture a photo with his camera (an actual camera, not a phone) before the lion sauntered off into the plain-sight places where cats, like secrets, become invisible. He would later give a copy of that image to Duncan, who is certain that La Tray called that cat in to us. I imagined something more problematic, that the mountain lion must have been trapped between river roads, or between fences, that she wouldn’t have visited us in that way, in such clear sight, unless circumstances forced her to. La Tray, for his part, simply remembers, with uncomplicated gratitude, that it was a gift to see her.

In 2019, Duncan assembled a mosaic of Doyle essays, or “proems,” as they are sometimes called, delightful swirls of prose and poem folded into something as elegant and digestible as a piece of sake sashimi, or as a delicate nymph, tied and twisted to perfection. The collection, which Duncan curated along with Orion Magazine editors Chip Blake and Katie Yale, is a beautiful posthumous volume called One Long River of Song. (I take the hardcover version with me on every river trip now. The stories within it are love songs and also medicine: To treat what pains you, take in one Doyle essay per day, read aloud on the river, until there are no more left to read –and then start over again.)

In his forward to One Long River of Song, Duncan, whom so many of us affectionately call DJD, tells us he called his dear friend “BD.” He

describes Doyle’s courageous sentence crafting as making “timid readers feel as though they’d been thrown into a kayak and sent careening down a literary equivalent of Idaho’s Payette River at spring runoff.” DJD says that he shared with BD a bold “willingness to speak of almost anything we perceived as spiritual truth.” He

Left: A river runner paddles through the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Photo by Micah Robin Right: A mountain lion saunters through the forest just above the confluence of the Clearwater and Blackfoot rivers on August 4, 2019. Photo by Chris La Tray

celebrates BD’s fearless, experimental use of words as a mode of awakening the linguistically trepidatious to the wild possibilities of language. In a footnote to Doyle’s essay “The Lair,” Duncan recounts a drive up the Blackfoot with his friend, Peter Mattheissen, in eventual pursuit of trout. In the vehicle, Mattheissen told Duncan a story—the same story that Doyle recalls in “The Lair”: At Auschwitz and Birkenau, sometime quite recently, more than 100 people were gathered on retreat. They were there to dwell, be silent and pray within that “dark scar” of evil. These people were visiting the camps intentionally, with Matthiessen and at least one “rabbi”—who was, Duncan’s footnote reveals, Tetsugen Bernard Glassman, a Zen Buddhist roshi. They spent a week there, setting themselves down in the darkest of places, among the ghosts of the tortured and murdered, and among the ghosts of those who tortured and those who murdered. Then, after consecutive days in the place, they were one night “assailed

by a sustained joy that moved those who didn’t flee to join hands and gently dance.” There is no conceivable possibility of joy, of dancing, in a place so drenched in darkness—and yet Duncan and Doyle report, as Matthiessen maintained, that it happened.

Entangled in phantom threads of sordid histories, these witnesses—visitors, ancestors— wept together, shoulder to shoulder within the deepest well of discomfort. And yet, these three literary grandfathers—the younger two, Doyle and Duncan, retelling the tale of the elder, Matthiessen—maintain that a collective and gentle swaying to the silent song of an unambiguous elation, happened “We are capable of unspeakable evil, every one of us,” Doyle writes in “The Lair.” And yet, he postulates that perhaps our moral evolution has sped up, and, “What if this evolution sometimes feels like reasonless joy?”

In June 2024, five years after meeting the mountain lion on the Blackfoot and now the poet laureate of Montana, La Tray taught another river-based workshop on Idaho’s Main Salmon, and this time to a cohort of all women. This gender homogeneity was not by design; it was unplanned. As we stood together watching evening sunlight sparkle on the water’s surface, one young participant asked me, “Do you think women are evolving faster than men? Is that why only women signed up to take this course?” Perhaps a shift in polarity is imminent. Perhaps we are on the verge of an evolution in leadership and influence, edging ever toward the feminine. This theory is buoyed by the work of leaders like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Joy Harjo, Rebecca Solnit and CMarie Fuhrman, who teach more feminine ways of knowing and relating—ways of the land, of water and heart—and who use intuition, science and their own soft power to offer an alternative path through and out of the darkness.

One time deep in winter of 2019, at the Missoula bookstore where La Tray worked back then, a handful of Montana writers gathered to read from One Long River of Song, in remembrance of and reverence for the recently

departed BD. La Tray (whom I like to call CLT) read an essay called “Dawn and Mary,” an account of inarguable tragedy and a potent acknowledgement of courage. The piece closes with a warning that, if we ever allow ourselves to forget the names of our heroes, or to forget what they did, or to forget “that all children are our children, then we are fools who have allowed memory to be murdered too…” Tears pooled in CLT’s beard as they do when he speaks on things that activate his heart, when he speaks on things he perceives as spiritual truths.

On a page preceding the first chapter of his book The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen stamped a quote from Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke:

“That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called ‘visions,’ the whole so-called ‘spirit-world,’ death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.”

The River Poets teach us to keep our senses activated and practiced. To stay alert to the possibilities of mountain lion on the Blackfoot, snow leopard in the Himalaya. In order to open to the joys of this sweet world that we inhabit for only a moment, for only a wing-beat, we must be courageous. We must welcome the ineffable, the wonders that defy explanation, the miracles hidden just beyond the edge, just on the other side of discomfort. We cannot let our senses atrophy. We cannot be afraid to sway gently in joy adjacent to darkness, even if only the joy itself knows why.

Chandra Brown is a Missoula-based writer, educator, and river guide. She is the founder and director of Freeflow Institute, which builds artsbased outdoor learning opportunities.

Right: The author, Chandra Brown, takes a cold plunge. Photo by Mak Schwaiger

Anyone who questions the notion that “water is life” has never felt a wild river moving in their body days after physically leaving it behind.

‘Not Slightly the Same— Precisely the Same’

Q&A: Dave Matthews

By Taylor Owens

hether it’s for his music, the improvisational nature of his shows, the thoughtful and emotional lyrics, his continuous activism, or just the man himself, one thing is true: Thousands upon thousands of people love Dave Matthews.

He crashed into our musical consciousness in the early 1990s, and today, it’s clear that Matthews captures something elemental that we can all feel through his music: the ache of time, the absurdity of existence, the joy of dancing anyway. He invites listeners to feel deeply, to question boldly and to love without reserve. His activism, threaded through his art and

Mountain Outlaw: Many of your most beloved songs are filled with wonder and a deep reverence for life. Do you find that those themes shift as you’ve evolved as an artist, or have they been a constant through your music and your writing?

Dave Matthews: I think I write out of experience and sometimes more autobiographically than I plan to. But everything is, you know, what else is there? What else can we pull from other than our own experience? I write about relationships, and I always somehow turn them into love songs just because it seems easier because I’m lazy. But that’s not entirely true. And I’m not entirely lazy. But I just look for things that paint a beautiful picture. I do care deeply about the environment because, you know, without it, we’re nothing. I also love people, and I love being around people. I just think there are so many sad and terrible situations in the world, usually caused by greed or power, want of power. And I think that’s also the same thing that faces our environment. I love a walk in the woods or sitting on a wild beach, suntanning and listening to the sound of the birds. Or, watching a bald eagle sitting in a tree.

But if I ever worry about the world, it’s that we forget that it’s the only thing we have.

And the wilderness of it is the only thing

actions alike, reveals a man who doesn’t just observe the world but insists on engaging with it—messily, honestly and with relentless heart.

Mountain Outlaw spoke with Matthews as he prepares to return to Montana to perform at Wildlands, this summer’s celebration of live music and conservation in Big Sky. He took us deeper into his relationship with wild places, the power music has to rally around causes and how his reverence for life shapes his artistry. Most notable of all, perhaps, we learned that he is a quirky, humble and deeply profound human.

“I’s all up to you,” Matthews said. “I won’t apologize for any of it. However, you write it down.”

that’s real. I mean, we can build ivory towers and rocket ships and fly around like we’re somehow separate from it. But we’re so attached to it that the behavior of greed and violence and unkindness is the behavior of, you know, it’s like what cancer does. Cancer eagerly and selfishly devours its host. And then it’s dead too. I think of us like that, but I also think of us with wonder.

“If we can't wonder at the wild places and protect them, we don't deserve it.” –Dave Matthews

I think about all the people that make the effort to look after our wild spaces and also be part of them. I think of the possibilities of how we could be toward our only home. And I dream that one day, maybe I’ll be here for it, but maybe it’ll be my children that can enjoy it, when we’ve found our sanity again. That we’ll live on a planet that takes care of each other, whether they’re your neighbors right next door or your neighbors on the other side of the planet.

Our neighbors, whether it’s the trees or whatever, when I think of things like this, that we share 20 to 60 percent of our DNA with plants, that blows my mind.

I don’t know how we can feel separate when we’re made from the same stuff, not slightly the same, but precisely the same. Just because we took this tangent of thinking about ourselves as something special, we’re not really, unless we’re all in it together.

MO: You’ve long used music to support causes, whether that was Farm Aid or Standing Rock and through your own Bama Works Fund. What do you think it is about live music that makes it such a powerful tool for rallying people around a cause?

DM: I think one of the first things that comes to mind for me is that it’s so easy. I can now come there, and we’re going to celebrate, but also raise some awareness and some money for these events.

From my perspective, I can go and get in front of 20,000 people, and we can have an awareness together about why we’re doing something. I’m very lucky that I can be there with people that are testing the water in the streams or that are looking at wildfires or weather or, you know, counting eggs, so to speak. And those people are doing all the real work. Then, if I can somehow amplify that by going somewhere and performing, and music is a specifically convenient art form because people come together for live music. When you have different artists come together from different corners and

Dave Matthews’ career spans decades, his music drawing one of the most loyal and passionate fan bases in modern music.

Photo by Brantley Gutierrez

musical forms, then you can really bring people together to have conversations.

Farm Aid is a great example. I mean, it’s irritating that it’s still happening because of the plight of small farmers and family farmers still being an issue. And I think it’s only going to get worse in many ways until some awareness changes. I think music is sort of like a perfect storm of availability. You don’t have to do anything. You can just go up there and do your dance steps and have lots of fireworks. And people have a good time and that’s valid. That’s one thing. You can also go up and raise awareness about a cause. There’s a possibility of some really direct communication of ideas and of common space.

I mean, that’s how Jimmy Carter became the president. That was one of the things that made him president was that he went on stage. Nobody knew who the hell he was. And he went on stage. It’s interesting that he would go to like the Doobie Brothers concerts and Willie Nelson concert. And he said, “Could I talk before your shows?”

MO: What is your own relationship to wild places? And how have those spaces shaped you?

DM: When I was a kid, maybe I was 14

or 15 with my mom, we were in a very big park in South Africa called Kruger Park. It’s quite well known. We were driving down this little dirt road. The sun was just coming up, and then we saw all these elephants in front of us. And so, you know, it was very exciting.

It was very thick bush. Like so thick it was hard to see two feet into it. Then, all of a sudden, the bush right next to the car started moving, and there was this elephant right there. My mom was a very tame driver, but she put it into reverse, and we flew backward. We were alone. Nobody, very few people were driving around at that point. But I remember the excitement of that. The reason I bring it up is because they are the most magnificent animals. Because of their stature and their size, they are sort of an example of a thing that’s threatened by greed and encroachment.

All this greed is the enemy of our future, in my opinion. And we shouldn’t tolerate it. I’m very lucky and I live a very lucky life. But when I think of the percentage of elephants left from that moment 45 years ago to now, we probably have a fraction of as many elephants in the world as we did then.

I still find when I walk in the woods in Virginia, or walk in the woods here in

the Northwest, or when I visit places as magnificent as Montana, I like to take the opportunity to go into the wilderness. The part that’s thrilling is that those things have such resilience. But the part that’s terrifying to me is that we take them for granted.

There are so many people who would rather shoot an elephant than wonder at an elephant, that would kill it rather than be amazed by it and the society that these great animals create and to learn from them. The same goes for trees, the same goes for rivers, and the intelligence of nature is so profound. I mean, sure, we can build a rocket, but we can’t make a tree, and a rocket is fairly impressive, but all it’s doing is burning old trees. The very power that allows us to do that, or drive a car across the country, or take an airplane, or fly a rocket to space: the very thing that allows us to do that is the power of nature. And if we can’t wonder at the wild places and protect them, we don’t deserve it.

I love the wilderness. I love people because I think we’re the same thing.

MO: Your music—and especially your live shows—have built a powerful sense of belonging for so many people. Was building that kind of community something you set out to do intentionally?

DM: No, I think almost from the beginning, I was a huge fan. I was sort of friendly with, for instance, the late sax player LeRoi. We were in the same room quite a lot. I knew Stefan a bit. You know, my mom taught him art when he was 12. I knew him also as a musician and a kid who played jazz. I knew Carter. I met Carter quite a few times, but I really was a huge fan of his music. When we got together, I may have had a vision of what I thought the band would be the very first time we got together. But the four of us—when we got into a room together and started making noise with really no idea of what was going to happen—It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be because all of us had our own voices, and I didn’t come in with a clear plan.

The music or the sound that we make together came out of our own voices and our own reactions. There’s a natural thing to it. So maybe that led to a certain amount of spontaneity. We have songs that have a harmonic structure to them, but, after that, there’s a sort of openness. There is a relationship to our audiences that seems very natural.

We went on stage, and were like “This is what we got, and I hope you like it.” Then there was the insane good fortune of people being moved by it.

Maybe that’s our shtick is that we just roll out there and play. We don’t start with a fog machine and 1812 overture or anything like that. We just wander out there.

Sometimes we wave, sometimes we just start playing. And so far, it has worked out.

MO: While you’ve played a few private shows in Montana, it’s been decades since your last large public concert here. What are you looking forward to most during your time in Big Sky?

DM: Well, I love it. I love Montana. I was there not long ago. And sometimes, it’s a sort of a shocking place. I’m really good friends with Lukas [Nelson] and Molly [Tuttle]. So, I’m really glad that ended up that they’re both there.

I love their music. I’m slightly intimidated, but that’s okay. That’s just my nature. I look forward to that.

I love getting the challenge of playing by myself, because it’s real different. But I think I can make a fairly big sound if the speakers are big enough by myself. I look forward to that.

There’s a little bit of a freedom in playing by myself just because if I screw it up, I’m the only one that has to pay for it. And that’s okay. I’m looking forward to it very much.

And the sunshine and the starry nights and the beautiful mountains. I’ll try and make sure I get enough air in me.

Taylor Owens is the content marketing director at Outlaw Partners.

Wildlands: More Than Just Music

The annual Wildlands event in Big Sky, Montana, has raised nearly $1 million for conservation beneficiaries since 2022. The music and community celebration honors the wild and scenic spaces of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—featuring two nights of Dave Matthews, Lukas Nelson and Molly Tuttle on Aug. 1-2. Meet this year’s conservation partners.

American Rivers

American Rivers protects and restores rivers to ensure clean water, healthy habitats and thriving communities. American Rivers recently presented a fresh look at the Montana Headwaters Legacy Act, an act that aims to permanently protect the Gallatin, Madison and Yellowstone rivers.

“We’re trying to bring the Wild and Scenic Rivers back home, where it was born,” said Scott Bosse, Northern Rockies regional director for American Rivers. The bill, he added, has a 90 percent approval rating in Gallatin and Madison counties.

Center for Large Landscape Conservation

Center for Large Landscape Conservation studies ecological connectivity in landscapes globally, connecting and protecting vital lands to ensure safe passage. The mouth of the Gallatin Canyon and the junction of U.S. 191 and Montana Highway 64 are priority sites for them. In September 2024, they teamed up with the Montana Department of Transportation to apply for funding for a wildlife crossing bridge over U.S. 191. In December, CLLC learned that their project proposal, valued at about $22.8 million, was rejected.

“We’re certainly not giving up on this project,” said Elizabeth Fairbank, road ecologist with CLLC. “It’s not getting better on its own.”

Dave Matthews has dedicated his musical influence to philanthropy that spans environmental, social, and global concerns, performing at Farm Aid and Soulshine.

Photo by Sanjay Suchak

Ferguson Guitars

A Legacy of Functional Art and Master Craftsmanship

By Taylor Owens

“Ilove to work. I love to create. I have to create,” said Ren Ferguson, renowned luthier and owner of Ferguson Guitars. He’s seated in his shop, surrounded by pieces of his art that he’s built over his lifetime: guitars; guns; wood carvings; paintings; and many other mediums. The smell of wood fills the air. “Whether I’m building a rifle or a bow, painting a picture, doing a sculpture, carving a guitar neck, or doing inlay—it’s how I feed that part of my being.”

Each guitar that leaves Ferguson Guitars isn’t just an instrument—it’s a singular piece of functional art.

For decades, Ren’s work was known to collectors and musicians who sought out his custom-built guitars—pieces so refined and rare that they were often passed between private hands, almost never seen on the open market. Those guitars have always been elusive. Until now.

In his shop in Belgrade, Montana, Ren’s hands are always busy—chiseling, carving, shaping wood into objects that carry stories, soul and sound. That drive to create has fueled a lifetime of innovation, from restoring instruments in a Southern California music store to becoming one of the most respected names in guitar-making.

“Like everybody else in 1962, I taught myself to play guitar,” he said. “Some kids got lessons. The rest of us just sat around and jammed.”

Ren grew up near what is now the Los Angeles International

Airport. As a teenager, he got a job repairing instruments in a local music store. His father owned a furniture store in Santa Monica, and Ren turned a space there into a small workshop where he began doing more intricate work on guitars.

“I was laying in bed thinking of all the projects—putting a bridge back on one, resetting a neck, replacing a top on a Gibson—and like the proverbial cartoon lightbulb, I thought: I could make a whole guitar,” he said. “I’d never thought of it before that. It just hadn’t occurred to me. I guess I had been waiting for permission.”

Eventually, he decided to pursue a different kind of life— one rooted in nature and tradition. Drawn by the wide-open landscapes and slower pace, Ren made plans to move to Big Timber, Montana.

But art has a way of finding its maker.

“I was living in Big Timber, and I got a phone call from a guy named Steve Carlson of Flat Iron Mandolin,” Ren said. “He told me he looked me up and found out all about me and offered me a position as manager of his company. After a few short years, his company was acquired by Gibson where I accepted a position as VP of R&D.”

Ren and Steve went to Nashville to acquire all of the old tools from Gibson’s Kalamazoo, Michigan factory that had closed.

“Steve was put in charge of the contracting of the building,” Ren said. “I, on the other hand, was given the opportunity to build all of the tooling, fixtures for the production of Gibson Guitars in

Montana. The owners’ only request was to make the best and that he wanted no returns.”

For Ren, it felt like a "Wild West” scenario, one that allowed him the liberty to bring his vision and skills to the fore, knowing he had the creative freedom to do things his own way.

Ren Ferguson's career spans several decades and is defined by key milestones, including his influential work at Gibson and the creation of the esteemed “Master Museum” series – highly ornate and collectible guitars revered by musicians and collectors alike. During his time there, he not only honed his own skills but also mentored hundreds of colleagues, passing on his expertise and elevating both the technological and artistic aspects of guitar making.

Ren’s work is highly specialized, producing rare, heirloomquality instruments that often features intricate inlays and custom designs.

"I have not been very good at retiring,” he laughed. “I don't seem to have an off switch and so I have to be doing something. If it's not building a house or a pigeon coop or a rifle or painting a picture or whatever it happens to be I've got to keep creating."

Designed to resonate with its future owner’s style and soul, every guitar is a handcrafted collaboration between master luthier Ren Ferguson and his two children, Timothy Ferguson and Virginia “Ginny” Staples. Together, they are doing something rare in the world of fine instruments: creating custom guitars with lineage, history and intention behind every curve.

“We live in a time where things are made fast and thrown away. This is the opposite of that. This is slow. Intentional. Built to last,” Timothy said. “When someone orders a custom guitar, they’re saying, “I value craftsmanship, individuality, and legacy—I want something made with soul that on one else in the world will ever have.’”

For the first time, those who have admired Ren Ferguson’s

guitars from afar have the opportunity to commission their own. These instruments are not mass-produced or shelved in showrooms. They’re built one at a time, for someone specific. For someone who values artistry, playability, and permanence.

In a world of fast, disposable goods, a Ferguson guitar is the opposite. It’s slow. Purposeful. It’s designed to age beautifully and to be passed down. And because the guitars are so few and so individualized, they are also positioned as highly collectible—an intersection of craft and investment.

The Ferguson family’s commitment to quality is evident in every instrument, crafted from the finest materials Ren has collected over his lifetime. From rare, aged tonewoods to exquisite inlays, each piece of material is chosen with care, adding depth and character to every guitar. These materials, some sourced from locations with significant history, add a special layer of craftsmanship that makes each instrument a work of art.

At the heart of it all is a family making art together. Ginny calls the experience “something truly special,” not only because of what they’re building, but because of how they’re doing it— shoulder to shoulder, learning, creating, and honoring the time they have with one another.

There’s a shared sense among the Fergusons that each guitar carries more than sound—it carries memory, legacy, and connection. A moment sealed in wood. A heartbeat.

As for Ren, he’s still chasing that heartbeat, still crafting the next guitar.

“People often ask me, where's the guitar you built for yourself?” he said with a grin. “I say, I haven't finished it yet. I'm making another one. I always have to make another one. I’m pretty hard to please, and they keep getting better.”

This August, two Ferguson guitars will be available to the public for the first time in years—each one up for auction at the Wildlands music event in Big Sky, Montana. It’s a rare opportunity to own a piece of the Ferguson legacy: heirloom-quality instruments handcrafted by a family of master luthiers.

Fly Fishing Guitar

Inspired by the clarity, flow, and quiet rhythm of rivers, this guitar reflects Ren’s belief that true craftsmanship, like nature, emerges from patience, presence, and deep observation.

Elk Guitar

This guitar honors the strength and grace of elk, embodying the authenticity, discipline, and reverence Ren brings to his work as both a luthier and a steward of the wild.

HISTORY

'Spokes in a Wheel'

Vintage travel poster for Yellowstone National Park, featuring Old Faithful geyser.

early days of discovering Yellowstone on p. 154. Photo via Alamy stock

A land swap turned the fate of the Gallatin Range in motion. That fate now hangs in the balance.

By Mira Brody

It can be presumed that entrepreneur Tim Blixseth had a twinkle in his eye as he peered out the window during a fateful helicopter ride over the Gallatin Range, wild mountains stretching north from Yellowstone National Park’s upper boundary. It was 1991, 127 years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Northern Pacific Railroad Charter, dividing 47 million acres between Minnesota and Oregon into a checkerboard of federal and private land. Blixseth’s gaze was fixed on one such checkered parcel: 146,000 acres beginning north of the Hyalite drainage and encompassing everything from the rugged spine of the Gallatin Crest to the fertile and species-diverse Porcupine Creek as it flows into the Gallatin River.

At the time, that parcel was owned by Plum Creek Timber Company, a master limited partnership of Burlington Northern that harvested timber from remaining government-owned charter squares across the West. Although lush with timber, that particular tract in the Gallatins had proved challenging for resource extraction, as neighboring checker squares of federal land legally islanded it. But Blixseth, a keen businessman drawn to opportune circumstance, saw value beyond lumber in the land below him.

He asked the pilot to turn the helicopter back around to Bozeman and offered a decisive statement that would send a tremor across the entire gameboard and redirect the fate of the landscape: “We’ll take it.”

Blixseth, known for his eclectic portfolio of investments in the region that met with both success and failure, had just consolidated his holdings in the Pacific Northwest timber company,

Crown Pacific, and had formed Big Sky Lumber Company with partners Mel and Norm McDougal, which purchased the parcel. In a game that perhaps resembled chess more than checkers, that land became a critical pawn in one of the most significant land exchanges in Western U.S. history, an act that would consolidate that fragmented land in the Gallatins, effectively setting the board for a spectrum of fates for a critical stretch of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. But decades later, another move has yet to be made.

UNTANGLING A ‘LAND DISASTER’

Bob Dennee began his personal recollection of events the same way most people involved at the time did: with a deep breath as though preparing to dive deep underwater, a pause, and the declaration of a year. It was 1992, and Dennee was the lands and realty officer for Gallatin National Forest. Big Sky Lumber had bought the 146,000 acres in the Gallatins and had presented it on a platter to the Forest Service in exchange for a smattering of other timber-laden and accessible squares in the region, as well as another piece of land known as the South Block in the Madison Range.

Dennee was the lead contact in dealings between Big Sky Lumber and the Gallatin National Forest and has what he calls a “corporate memory” of the land he’d become intimately familiar with over his career. When he talks about the history of mountain ranges in southwest Montana, it’s like listening to a witness to Pangea.

“Most people today ... they don’t recognize what took place in the 1990s and early 2000s to consolidate lands in these four mountain ranges: Madison, Gallatin, Bridgers and the Absaroka-

The Gallatin Crest stretches south from the Hyalite drainage to Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Mira Brody

Beartooths. It’s just all national forests,” Dennee said. “Most people don’t recognize, well, how did that happen? It used to be all checkerboard.”

Blixseth and his partners had bought the land not for what it could do for them, but what they knew it meant to the Forest Service and area conservationists—and what those parties would give up in exchange for it. Attorney Joe Sabol represented Big Sky Lumber in the deal.

“[Sabol] saw the long-term public value of acquiring and protecting the lands in Porcupine and Taylor Fork, and he did his best to push the owners in that way,” Dennee said.

Dennee said he spent countless hours in Sabol’s downtown Bozeman office drafting proposals alongside Blixseth, the McDougals and Sabol. Dennee, who is retired after 40 years following a legacy of land negotiation on behalf of the Gallatin Forest, said this negotiation in particular, “was a very significant part of my life.”

The exchange was made possible by two congressional land transactions: the Gallatin Land Consolidation and Protection Act of 1993, or Gallatin I, involving the Porcupine and South

Cottonwood drainages; and the Gallatin Land Consolidation Act of 1998, or Gallatin II, involving mostly the Taylor Fork, Bridger and Bangtail ranges. Pat Williams, Montana’s congressional delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1979 and 1997, whose service is most marked by his conservation advocacy, sponsored the bills.

“We were facing a land disaster in the Gallatin,” Williams said. Originally from Helena, Williams spent his public life conserving the landscape he’d grown up in—he passed legislation to establish the Rattlesnake Wilderness in 1980 and the Lee Metcalf Wilderness in 1983—and with the initiative in the Gallatins, he felt a sense of urgency. He, alongside other conservationists, feared that between brute timber extraction and a looming interest in real estate development, they would soon witness the complete loss of a critical wild landscape.

“Just north of America’s first national park, Yellowstone, the Gallatin Range connects the other mountains of the Yellowstone Ecosystem much like spokes in a wheel,” Williams was quoted during the congressional hearing.

● 1864

President Abraham Lincoln signs the NPRC, dividing 47 million acres of land from Minnesota to Oregon into checkerboard.

1870 Northern Pacific begins railroad construction.

Gallatin I was well received. The individuals and organizations that testified in support of the bill were of note: Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, Bozeman Mayor Timothy Swanson, the Montana Wilderness Association, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy, among others. Blixseth remarked that the conservation community and the timber industry being agreeable to a deal made about more than just dollar signs marked a unique moment.

“Certainly today, if we didn’t do this trade with the Forest Service, we would make a lot more money,” Blixseth said at the hearing. “There is a tremendous demand for these properties. There seems to be a big flock of people to the state of Montana just to buy a piece of the wilderness.”

By way of the two acts, the Gallatin National Forest acquired a total of 101,000 acres of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem between 1993 and 1998, most of which had been marooned in checkerboard squares in the Gallatin Mountains. In return for the exchange, Big Sky Lumber acquired 5,763 acres in the north Bridgers, three sections in the Bangtails, one section in the South Fork of the West Fork Gallatin and 12,414 acres on the Flathead and Lolo national forests. This exchange included the South Block, a 15,200-acre parcel nestled to the east of Lone Mountain near what was then the sleepy ski town of Big Sky. In 1999, Blixseth opened the Yellowstone Club on that land, proving his instinct in the helicopter less than 10 years before would yield a great business opportunity.

Map courtesy of the Library of Congress

1872

Yellowstone National Park is established as America’s first National Park.

1977

The Hyalite-PorcupineBu alo Horn Wilderness Study Area is established, temporarily protecting the Gallatin Range.

SETTING THE BOARD

The story of this land swap is of course a story of land value, but to truly understand land value in the West, it’s important to understand the region’s railroad history. When the Northern Pacific Railroad Charter was signed in 1864, much of the country’s wealth was concentrated in the East. The charter was a grant provided by Congress to spread infrastructure to the unruly West with the intention of hauling and extracting resources and encouraging homesteading. It granted land in 640-acre offset squares known as sections; odd-numbered sections were given to private railroad companies and the federal government kept evennumbered sections. Many of Montana’s mountain ranges were chopped into this checkerboard.

Northern Pacific began railroad construction in 1870. In 1880, it consolidated to Burlington Northern Railroad and in 1988 formed a public company, Burlington Resources, to manage its resource assets. A corporate split established the subsidiary Plum Creek Timber Company, which inherited the surface estate of Burlington’s remaining land; mineral rights transferred to Meridian Minerals, among others.

When Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872, the Gallatins were excluded due to their complicated checkerboarding, leaving them an exposed, fragmented arm stretching north from the park’s upper boundary. Still, conservationists who’d had their eye on the land even before Blixseth’s fly-over didn’t yield in their efforts to preserve it. In the 1977 Gallatin Forest Plan, the range was designated

a Wilderness Study Area, granting it temporary protection.

By the early 1990s, Plum Creek owned 146,000 acres of squares across the Gallatin, Madison and Bridger ranges, which were intermingled with sections of other public, state and private land. Unable to extract resources from a majority of their land, whisperings of Plum Creek’s intent to sell trickled through the region.

That’s when Bob Kiesling perked up. Kiesling was the founding executive director at The Nature Conservancy’s Montana-Wyoming field office.

“That was going to create an opening for who?” Kiesling recalled of Plum Creek’s potential sell-off. “For somebody, for some government agency, for some institution like mine, The Nature Conservancy,” Kiesling said. “I mean, who would be interested in those lands that were checkerboard and private?”

If there’s anyone who recalls just how close the Gallatin and Madison ranges once were to coming under conservation ownership, it’s Kiesling. He teamed up with personal and professional acquaintance Bob Anderson, the founding executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and by around 1985, they had outlined a vision of consolidating railroad lands, “creating a contiguous, continuous block of public land from Bozeman down to Yellowstone.”

They called it the Second Century Project, a name with meaning: If the “first century” was when the railroad land grants were issued, the “second century” would blueprint the next iteration for these spliced lands.

“Co-mingled like this, where the corporations own every other section mixed in with public land every other

section, it’s unmanageable for both, so let’s figure out ways to move things around the map here like chess pieces,” Kiesling said. “Let’s figure out how to block up public lands where it’s most important to do so, and figure out how to get the corporations out of these highly important wild lands and into other places where they can make an economic return more sensibly.”

Just as they were setting pieces, the team fell apart. Anderson was ousted from GYC and Kiesling wasn’t able to shoulder the Second Century Project on his own. With the arrival of The Nature Conservancy’s new president, Brian Khan, Kiesling was also feeling a dramatic shift that ultimately led to his departure.

By the end of the century, Plum Creek closed its mill in the Gallatin Valley, shuttering local timber production, and murmurings of a massive land sale increased in volume. This time, it drew the attention of Michael Scott.

“There were quiet discussions that went on,” Scott recalled. Scott was GYC’s

1988

Northern Railroad forms a public company, Burlington Resources, to manage its resource assets.

● 1991

Tim Blixseth flies over the Gallatins. ● 1992

Big Sky Lumber Company purchases 146,000 acres of checkerboard in the Gallatin, Madison and Bridger mountains from Plum Creek.

Timber dealer and developer Tim Blixseth untangled a mass of Greater Yellowstone landscape where others had been unsuccessful. Photo by John Klicker

first program director for six years before he served as their executive director between 2001 and 2008. With fresh staff, GYC, The Nature Conservancy and the Wilderness Society partnered to create a vision to transfer the roadless lands to the Forest Service through the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This included Porcupine Creek in the Gallatin’s Wilderness Study Area, which was rumored to soon become a massive luxury golf course development. The portions with roads would continue to be managed for timber production. Plum Creek’s shut-down mill would be converted into a value-added mill, producing building materials for the developing Gallatin Valley.

“That all blew up for a variety of personal reasons,” he said.

It wasn’t a matter of cash, explained Scott. “It came down to personality differences,” he said. The personalities being TNC’s new figurehead, Khan, and Charlie Grenier, Plum Creek’s executive vice president, and a prominent figurehead in the West’s timber industry for over a decade.

“The rumors at the time were that it came apart from conflict between the negotiators, as opposed to conflict over what the price of the deal would be,”

Scott said.

Enter Blixseth in his helicopter, a character quite unlike any this effort had yet seen. Blixseth—and the many stories written about him—tend to chart the timeline of his life by monetary ups and downs: He grew up on welfare in the logging community of Roseburg, Oregon; as a kid he sold three donkeys at a $150 profit after rebranding them as pack mules; he made his first $1 million with an investment in Crown Pacific; he

1993

The Gallatin Consolidation and Preservation Act of 1993 (Gallatin I) is approved by Congress.

founded the Yellowstone Club with a pickup truck and a hammer. By 1988 his endeavors included a string of defaulted timber sales and bankrupt business ventures. Still, Blixseth’s aptitude for recognizing opportunity was sharp, and it felt fitting that a man with a lifetime of land jiggering under his belt would successfully consolidate the Gallatins where others had struggled.

“I would say that I had to look at things that aren’t, and try to envision what they could be,” Blixseth said.

In 1992, Blixseth’s Big Sky Lumber bought the 146,000 acres of checkerboard squares in the Gallatin, Madison and Bridger ranges, as well as Plum Creek’s sawmill, for $27.5 million, turning a page that had been stuck for decades.

SERENDIPITY

“I never had a vision of Yellowstone Club,” Blixseth said. “When we first bought the property, there was roughly 15,000 acres surrounding a major ski

1997

Blixseth breaks ground on Yellowstone Club.

Left: Map showing land ownership right after the Big Sky Lumber purchase in 1993, but before land consolidation. Orange squares are Big Sky Lumber land purchased from Plum Creek. Green squares are existing national forest.

Right: Map showing postland consolidation in 1998. Dark green was acquired by the national forest, and orange is owned by Big Sky Lumber, including the large orange swath in the lower left, known as the South Block. Maps courtesy of the Custer Gallatin National Forest

1998

The Gallatin Land Consolidation Act of 1998 (Gallatin II) is approved by Congress.

resort, Big Sky. And I just felt that the 15,000 acres had to be worth more than just cutover timber land.”

The Yellowstone Club, an elite mountain haven for the wealthy, broke ground in 1997. The club filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Blixseth left while facing a divorce and legal trouble, some of which ended in jail time for the former timber baron. In 2009, the club was purchased by Boston’s CrossHarbor Capital Partners.

Today, behind a security checkpoint lies 2,900 acres of private skiing, a 28,000-square-foot golf course, 40 miles of private hiking and mountain bike trails, fine dining and countless multimillion-dollar condos and homes. The neighboring Spanish Peaks Mountain Club and Moonlight Basin, also constructed on former Big Sky Lumber land, have taken a similar form. In January 2025, picking up the same tools Blixseth used, the Yellowstone Club exchanged 6,110 acres of private land for 3,855 acres of Custer Gallatin National Forest land in the Crazy Mountains and Madison Range. While both celebrated and criticized, this recent action echoes one thing from Blixseth’s trade: sweeping impact.

“Do I think it’s good for the community?” Blixseth said of the Yellowstone Club. “I think it’s provided a tremendous amount of jobs. It’s certainly driven real estate values through the roof. The negative? It’s probably priced a lot of the locals out of the Big Sky market, and it’s probably increased traffic a lot,” Blixseth paused, a smile clear even over the phone. “And there’s probably more egos per square inch than should be.”

Today, Blixseth’s passion is writing music. He speaks enthusiastically about “Heart of America,” the song

he wrote in 2005 for the Today show’s Hurricane Katrina benefit and how in a year, it raised $147 million. This fall, the band Cycamore gave it new life, a revitalization Blixseth is happy to see.

“After you die, if you write a song that’s a hit song that people will play 50 years from now, that’s more satisfying to me,” Blixseth said. “If you make a billion dollars, as soon as you die they don’t put your name on all those billion dollars.”

Blixseth leaves behind another legacy

in June 2024 that would protect 250,000 acres across the Madison and Gallatin ranges, but at this stage, it remains a debated proposal.

“There’s a reason this final designation of the Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn has not been resolved,” Dennee said. “It’s because of the strong different interests in how best to manage that landscape.”

While he comments that the partnership’s proposal is “a compromised solution,” Dennee, who still works as

“Just north of America’s first national park, Yellowstone, the Gallatin Range connects the other mountains of the Yellowstone Ecosystem much like spokes in a wheel.” -Rep. Pat Williams

through his role in the land swap story, a narrative that has chapters yet to be written. While the consolidation accomplished in the ’90s set a playable board, today’s interested parties (still many of those same conservation groups) have yet to decide what game will be played there. The land is consolidated, yet as a Wilderness Study Area, it lacks permanent protection, and the need for such is increasing. That “tremendous demand” to buy a piece of Montana wilderness Blixseth observed in the ’90s has only grown as attention on Montana magnifies. This isn’t lost on the conservation world.

The Gallatin Forest Partnership, represented by GYC, The Wilderness Society and others, launched a proposal

a part-time consultant with the Forest Service, offers the reminder that altering the fate of a massive piece of ecosystem is not like switching on a light. The work is incremental.

“It takes incredible patience and persistence and time and effort to put together land agreements of this scale. It’s not done easily,” Dennee said. “And I feel like looking back, I was in the right place at the right time.”

Blixseth too, believes in serendipity.

“I think there’s a reason for just about everything,” he said.

Mira Brody is an avid explorer of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s open landscapes, and the VP of Media at Outlaw Partners.

conservationists launch the Gallatin Forest Partnership, a group aiming to protect 250,000 acres of the Gallatin and Madison ranges.

exchanges 6,110 acres of private land for 3,855 acres of national forest land in the Crazy Mountains.

Rolling Toward Yellowstone

Yellowstone’s rail history lives on through new accessible trail

By Caitlin Styrsky

The rumble of the passenger train reverberates through the mountains as dawn breaks above the lodgepole pines on a crisp morning in 1925. Early risers, bright-eyed in sharp suits and long dresses, pace the train’s observation car in anticipation. In the sleeping cars, groggy faces peer out the windows to glimpse the emerging wilderness after a starlit night spent charging through untamed country.

A century later, two women pedal cruiser bikes along a paved path as the sun rises above those same mountains. Once home to a remote railroad track that saw the journeys of many early-20th-century visitors to Yellowstone National Park, the mountains and wetlands along the South Fork of the Madison River now host the Yellowstone Shortline Trail, a 9-mile path of living history. Along the trail, remnants of old trusses from abandoned railroad bridges reveal themselves through the swirling mist that rises from the river. As the women cruise along the pavement, the whir of bike wheels mingles with the nostalgic rumble of the old passenger train—long since passed—rolling toward Yellowstone.

A RAILROAD TO YELLOWSTONE

The Oregon Short Line began the Spring Campaign every March, outfitting train engines with snow blowers and rotary plows to clear snow from the railroad tracks in preparation for the upcoming tourist season. Photo courtesy of the Yellowstone Historic Center Archives, Museum of the Yellowstone

The first passenger train arrived in West Yellowstone—a popular gateway to the first national park—on June 11, 1908. The train’s arrival heralded a new era of tourism for the park and the small, welcoming village of rough homesteads and collection of rustic lodgings at the park’s West Entrance. Throughout the next 50 years, the Oregon Short Line, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, carried passengers

from Salt Lake City to West Yellowstone each summer on rail excursions marketed as journeys to “Where the Geysers Gush.”

The first passenger train to operate on the route was the Yellowstone Special, which departed Salt Lake City at 7:30 p.m. and arrived in West Yellowstone around 6 a.m. the following morning. The train wound through the final 9 miles from Reas Pass into West Yellowstone as dawn broke, treating passengers to their first taste of Yellowstone alongside the meandering South Fork of the Madison River. Lucky observers may have spotted moose, elk or bears in the early hours.

Passengers disembarked in West Yellowstone at the striking stone depot, complete with lounges and private changing rooms, and could take refreshment in the nearby dining hall before embarking on stagecoach and—later—automobile rides into Yellowstone. The Oregon Short Line added the Yellowstone Express train in 1922, which departed Salt Lake City in the morning and arrived in West Yellowstone by midafternoon. At the height of rail travel in 1925, a total of 44,786 passengers arrived in West Yellowstone by train, which carried tourists until 1960, when rail travel declined in favor of automobiles. Union Pacific abandoned the section of rail from Ashton, Idaho, to West Yellowstone in the 1970s and removed the tracks in 1981.

In 1966, Union Pacific donated the historic depot, dining hall and other railroad buildings to the town of West Yellowstone. Today, the depot houses the Yellowstone Historic Center, where visitors can learn about the history of early travel to Yellowstone National Park and its influence on the surrounding region. The dining hall, with its tall windows and massive stone fireplace, is a popular events venue. Visitors can retrace the steps of the early

Trains arrived in West Yellowstone at the Union Pacific Depot, pictured here circa 1910s. Photo courtesy of Museum of the Yellowstone

Left: Early passengers aboard the Yellowstone Special. Photo courtesy Yellowstone Historic Center Archives, Museum of the Yellowstone This page: One of three new bridges constructed for the new trail. Photo courtesy Yellowstone Shortline Trail Project

rail travelers by following the walking tour of the Oregon Short Line Terminus Historic District along Yellowstone Avenue, marked with 21 plaques highlighting notable places and events. The original baggage building, for example, now serves as the town’s police station and the concrete-and-stone Union Pacific pylon, constructed in 1927 as a monument to commemorate the railroad’s role in bringing visitors to Yellowstone, still stands near the park boundary.

Just as the railroad buildings enjoyed new life over the years, so did the old roadbed. The pathway served as a popular playground for all-terrain vehicles in summer and snowmobiles in winter. Cyclists also loved to explore the old trail, but years of recreation took its toll, eventually breaking down the thin obsidian soil and making the path sandy and difficult to navigate. Those who frequented the trail were not ready to give it up, and with a little help from the West Yellowstone community, the trail experienced a revival.

A ROLLING, STROLLING MUSEUM

Seated at the coffee bar in Freeheel and Wheel, West Yellowstone’s 28-year-old bike and ski shop, owners Kelli Hart and Melissa Alder toyed around with an idea. Keen on seeing the place they’d each enjoyed time and again available for generations to come, they contemplated how an improved path along the old railbed would facilitate access and allow for cycling, walking and other non-motorized activities through the scenic wilderness. Inspired by the work of the Greater Yellowstone Trail—a coalition of communities aiming to connect Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks via a world-class biking loop—Hart and Alder began floating the concept for the Yellowstone Shortline Trail to the local community.

Former West Yellowstone resident and history enthusiast Andrea Manship was among the first to hop on board. Manship’s grandmother and father used to ride the train in the 1930s from Ogden, Utah, to West Yellowstone to visit their summer cabin. Her family, the Dumkes, had been contractors with deep ties to the early rail history of the West. She and her husband, Mike, decided to offer a two-for-one match for the initiative through the Dr. Ezekiel R. and Edna Wattis Dumke Foundation.

“We felt very close to the history of the railroad and how important that history was to the area,” Mike said.

The Yellowstone Historic Center stepped in as the fiscal sponsor for the project. The notion of an accessible trail along the abandoned roadbed fit neatly with the center’s mission to develop and maintain West Yellowstone’s historic railroad district. Staff at the historic center envisioned creating “a rolling, strolling museum” that would bring more interest and life into the district through an immersive experience along the revitalized rail corridor.

In what would turn into the biggest fundraiser in West Yellowstone’s history, the initiative raised nearly $4 million through the support of the West Yellowstone community, the matching funds of the Dumke family, foundation giving, local government grants, and the cooperation of the Custer Gallatin National Forest (which helped secure a substantial grant through the Great American Outdoors Act to pave the

Photos top to bottom: New interpretive signage at one of the pullouts along the trail. Bear sighting on the trail. Due to wildlife and environmental concerns, the trail is a non-motorized corridor and e-bikes are not allowed. Bear tracks visible on the paved trail. Photos courtesy of Yellowstone Shortline Trail Project/Melissa Adler

trail). Construction broke ground in 2021 and the project was completed in 2024.

“It was amazing,” said Hart, reflecting on seeing the trail for the first time. “Not only was it completely gratifying for me, but I also felt good about completing the project for West Yellowstone. It’s gorgeous. You’re high up in places, looking down at the river, and it’s very scenic and wild.”

After a straight stretch for the first mile south from West Yellowstone, the trail turns and follows the South Fork of the Madison River into the wilderness. Nestled in the mountains away from busy roads and highways, the path is one of the quietest rail trails in the country. Interpretive signs line the trail with information about the area’s geography, wildlife and unique rail history. The remains of trusses from the railroad bridges can be seen in places, and some visitors have even discovered plates and spikes from the old railroad ties. True to Alder and Hart’s early vision, the trail is accessible for a wide range of people to enjoy.

Like the railroad track before it, the paved trail lies dormant each winter. While snowmobilers and cross-country skiers break their own trails, no formal maintenance takes place, and the path remains isolated and quiet, awaiting the activity of spring.

THE TRAIL AHEAD

A formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Yellowstone Shortline Trail is scheduled for Train Day, June 11, 2025. Plans for benches along the trail and other donor recognition pieces are in the works for the year ahead. The trail is poised to become a popular tourist attraction. It serves as an extension of the town’s robust railroad history, and an outdoor alternative for area visitors seeking a respite from the summer crowds in Yellowstone National Park.

Hart and Alder envision the trail becoming integral to the local community. Early discussions with stakeholders have yielded a pitch for developing a new greenbelt connecting the trailhead on Iris Street at the edge of town to the historic railroad district along Yellowstone Avenue. The new greenbelt would provide an area for outdoor recreation and historical appreciation future generations of the West Yellowstone community can enjoy.

REDISCOVERING THE SHORTLINE ROUTE

Trail Start: Near the corner of Iris St. and Obsidian Ave. in West Yellowstone, Montana.

Trail Length: 8.8 miles one way (17.6 out and back)

Grade: Maximum 1%

Cross Slope: 0%

Trail Width: 10 feet

Surface Type: Paved asphalt with no obstacles E-bikes are not allowed.

Visit yellowstoneshortlinetrail.org for more information.

To engage the area’s youngest members with the future plans for open greenspace, the West Yellowstone School held an art initiative last spring in which students depicted their vision for the greenbelt through drawings, sculptures and other artistic media.

Hart and Alder hope to put an endowment together to cover long-term maintenance for the trail and create a lasting legacy that celebrates the community’s unique history.

“This project has been lots of stops and starts,” Alder said. “It takes the right people in the right place at the right time to make it happen. That amount of support shows that people want it and that it’s valuable for the community.”

Hart agreed, “And it’s just right out our back door. It’s for everybody.”

Caitlin Styrsky is a writer and researcher based in West Yellowstone, Montana, where she developed an appreciation for local history and the earliest visitors to Yellowstone National Park. Her regional interest pieces have appeared in Mountain Outlaw and Explore Big Sky. When she isn’t writing, you can find her exploring the great outdoors or curled up with a good book.

Explorers stroll and bike along the future site of the trail in September 2020. Photo courtesy Yellowstone Shortline Trail Project

Words by James McKew | Illustration by Halle Hauer

Editor’s Note: The following story is a fictionalized telling of the Washburn-Doane Expedition of 1870, a privately funded quest into Yellowstone’s wilds led by Gen. Henry D. Washburn. This account was informed by journal entries, newspaper clippings, and illustrations produced during the expedition, among other historical records.

Prologue: Bridger’s dragon

Virginia City, Montana 1866

Jim Bridger was a fabricator of stories.

That was Nathaniel Langford’s assessment after their chance meeting on Main Street in Virginia City, Montana.

Bridger’s story of water shooting into the sky reminded Langford of something like dragon’s breath spewing from a hole in the earth, and the rumblings underground were what exactly—the dragon’s feet stomping around in caverns? Silly. The story sounded like a manufactured lie. Perhaps Bridger’s brain was pickled in bad whiskey, or maybe he’d spent too much time in the company of dead mountain men. The Yellowstone Lake region was too high for crops; prospectors hadn’t struck the motherlode; and Blackfeet Indians protected it as their hunting grounds. Everywhere in the West, things were blooming. Everywhere that is, except Yellowstone. And yet, Langford found himself curiously drawn to see the place. Maybe Jim Bridger wasn’t completely full of it.

The exPediTion Begins

Fort Ellis, Montana Territory August 22, 1870

On a blustering August day, a motley crew of men set out from Fort Ellis—a military outpost established for the protection of settlers in the Montana Territory—to explore the area around Yellowstone Lake. The expeditioners included two lawyers, two tax collectors, an embezzler, a freight hauler, a senator’s son, a well-dressed jackass, and a military escort from the Army’s 2nd Cavalry. The expedition was not scientific, nor was it of military importance. But it did include the collective brain trust of the Montana Territory, who paid their own expenses to ride into the frontier where the scales of fortune and danger tipped precariously in their hands.

The men spent the first 15 days of their trip contemplating the natural wonders between Tower Falls and Yellowstone Lake. Their journals were loaded with details of sulfuric pools, thundering falls and a lake that seemed to change from a silent mirror to a raging sea and back again with biblical speed. As September befell them, the expedition reached the southerlymost tip of their journey. The event was marked by the entrance into a labyrinth of deadfall so dense it was nearly impossible for a saddle horse to pass between two trees without becoming trapped. By two o’clock in the afternoon, all nineteen members were scattered across the hillside, each seeking their own paths through the maze.

From where Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane stood, the trees stacked in his vision like one uninterrupted wall of pine bark. Flies buzzed around him. Blasphemous curses erupted from deep in the forest. No one checked their profanity. A dog named Booby trotted out of the woods, winked at the lieutenant, and promptly disappeared. The lieutenant dropped onto a log, reigns in hand. He tuned his ears to count each noise in the woods in an attempt to keep track of where the men were.

“Penny for your thoughts?” a voice asked from behind.

Doane jumped at the intrusion.

Langford somehow snuck up on him without a twig breaking. Nat, a businessman who often dressed accordingly, was down to shirtsleeves. A scrape on his right forearm left blood and sweat caked to his body hair. Just the day before, these two had climbed a mountain to get a better look at Yellowstone Lake.

Reaching the snow-covered peak, Langford had sketched the lakeshore on a piece of paper. It wasn’t perfectly scaled, but a dang sight better than the Raynolds Expedition Map of 1860. Langford dropped down on the log next to Doane.

“How’s the pain?” Langford asked, his gaze falling on Doane’s bandaged hand.

Five days earlier, Langford had performed emergency surgery on Doane’s thumb by sticking a knife all the way to the bone to relieve the swelling in his pitiful hand. Doane now walked around with the cleanest dirty shirt they could find as a bandage.

Doane eyed the woods. “Something is telling me we are not alone.” Langford passed Doane a canteen, and his gaze shifted from the hand to Doane’s face. Doane had red, sweaty splotches that circled his eyes like an ugly party mask. Either infection gave him a fever, or something deeper was troubling him.

“A hundred miles from home,” Doane said, “the last thing we need is one of them gone missing, then another and another like some goddamn water drip-drippin’ off a fishing pole. The Blackfeet are hereabouts.” With the reservation newly established and the treaty already rearing its face as a ploy, animosity was building between settlers and the land’s original inhabitants. “They would like nothing better than to pick us off one at a time.”

While the lieutenant and Langford conversed, one other expedition member, Truman Everts, was a quarter mile south at a complete standstill. Everts was a slight man with small, rounded shoulders. His chin came to a point. His eyes pulled close together, giving him a hawkish look. On top of all that, he was the assessor of the Internal Revenue for the Montana Territory. Everts’ forehead was smeared black from sweat and dirt. At 54 years old, his eyesight had degenerated to the point where he saw the world entirely out of focus.

Everts somehow managed to get his reins around the horse’s tail, and the animal rimfired, kicking and pawing to free himself. He was frothy and chewed the bit. Everts tried reasoning with the beast, but his patience was running thin. He wanted to yell for help, but two nights earlier, he had overheard soldiers on guard duty referring to him as “grand-pappy.” Their tone suggested something less than admiration. He needed to figure this out for himself.

Everts gently touched the horse’s muzzle. “Easy now,” he

said. “You and I are going to be all in one piece soon enough, I assure you.” And with that, he backed the animal away from the pines. They stood looking at each other, and he chanced an inspection of the horse’s rear shoes. Lifting the left hoof, he discovered the shoe was missing half its nails and hung loose. This wasn’t good and could tear apart the hoof if not remedied quickly. Everts had no hammer and no spare nails. He bit down on his lips so he wouldn’t spook the horse with a frustrated cry. Almost on cue, a torrent of curses rose from the far side of the woods. Everts nodded in complete agreement. Farther out still, a sarcastic voice proclaimed loudly, “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.” The words were familiar, a line that Everts remembered from a poem. There was silence, then a frustrated snickering grew, increasing in volume until a crazed hysteria spread across the mountain. Everts couldn’t resist. He wiped tears from his eyes and found himself forgetting his problems. The weight fell off him like a man who suddenly found forgiveness in religion.

Everts removed the horseshoe, filled a cupped hand with water, and rubbed it on the horse’s muzzle. Shadows played in his periphery. Tingles ran up his exhausted legs, the kind he felt when alone on a midnight road. His hand brushed the heel of a Colt revolver strapped to his hip. He considered touching it off and crying for rescue. But did he really want that kind of attention? Being lost for a night was better than hearing “grandpappy” again. His head felt one tick shy of panic when he threw a leg over the horse and touched his heels to its belly. The horse

sought the path of least resistance, and that meant wandering left and downhill. An hour later, night engulfed him.

Missing day 1

Five miles south of the expedition September 10, 1870

Everts’ shoulder hurt from where he had slept on his side. His breath steamed in the gray, sunless morning. Sitting up, he went through a saddle bag and came up with some hardtack and two strips of salt pork. After a few minutes of guessing which way north was, he mounted up. An hour later, he rode into a burn with a fresh day ahead of him and sunshine on his back. He stopped at the far edge of the burn, slipped down, and unbuttoned his trousers. With hands on hips, he urinated and watched a blue jay land on a limb not more than five feet from his head.

From the shadows, a hawk arrowed through the pines and snatched the unsuspecting jay off the limb without changing its flight path. Everts saw this and said to the horse, “Did you see that, boy? That was an incredible feat of—”

His horse chose that moment to spook.

With ears up, the big bay turned sharply to the left. Hooves furrowed the undergrowth. In the fury that unfolded, deadwood and cannon bone switched places. The horse’s head stretched forward. It aimed straight for a wall of trees on the far side of the burn. Reaching the trees, it hooked left and paralleled the woods. Saddlebags flapped. Reins danced. The horse spun a hard right and plunged deep into the trees.

Gripping his falling trousers, Everts sprinted after the horse. He hurled himself over decomposing logs with the fading adrenaline of a man way past his prime. Knee bones hammered together. His heart swelled, and he was sure it would burst from under his shirt. He reached the forest opening in time to

hear limbs snapping somewhere on the next ridge.

The horse was gone.

Everts collapsed. He coughed and wheezed. His hand slipped to his hip—he wanted to fire a warning shot—but found only empty leather. He had put the gun in the saddle bag for safekeeping that morning.

Without protection, conveyance, or companions, death would come for him soon enough.

He took inventory and found two small knives in his pants pocket. Attached to his belt was a pair of opera glasses that he somehow hadn’t dropped during his sprint.

He heard a whisper in the woods and realized it was his own voice, beseeching the almighty for protection and cursing the animal in the same breath.

Missing day 5

Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone Lake September 10-15, 1870

Sam Hauser and Langford lit bonfires on mountain tops, the smoke purposely thickened in the hope that Mister Everts would find his way to the rendezvous point by the lake. Riders had patrolled the beaches and retraced their routes, looking for him. No footprints, no dead body. They postponed the search. An early snowstorm had moved in, bringing two feet of fresh powder to the Continental Divide.

The expedition leaders—Washburn, Hedges, Hauser, Gillette, Stickney, and Trumbull—all found places inside the big Army tent where they read books or updated their journals. Smoke hung thick from the ceiling. Men coughed. The packers played cards. The cooks, two young Black boys, Newt and Jonny, kept the fires stoked and pots of coffee full. The place stank of perspiration, smoke, and tobacco.

Langford stood by the flap door and stared blankly at something beyond the timber. Snow piled up on a pyramid of cut wood near the door. A smoldering cigar was tucked in the corner of his mouth, and a tin cup of cold coffee hung off his fingertips. His thoughts circled around the dwindling supply in the larder, their missing companion, and the deepening snow. Damn, if it wasn’t going south in a hurry.

“I know where Mister Everts ran off to,” said Jake Smith, a newly bankrupt hide tanner who had somehow talked his way into the expedition. He wore a black overcoat that showed not a single smudge of dirt, nor tear, nor missing button. He wore a clean white shirt and gray striped trousers with a tight crease down each leg. His boots were polished. His mustache was waxed and symmetrical. Presently, he sat on his bedroll and used his left index finger to twirl a flat-brimmed hat that looked like it came out of the box that very morning. In his right hand, he cupped a silver flask. Tucked in his jawline was a plug of leaf tobacco, and when he spoke, his mouth opened like a deflated circle. Some in the party took to calling him “trout-mouth.”

Mister Reynolds, one of the packers, put down his cards to look at the man. Jake spat on the ground and said, “I reckon he done got lonely and decided to get for himself a momma grizzly to curl up to.” That same packer thought about what he just heard, groaned, and turned back to his cards.

Jake continued, “What with his bad eyes and all, one of them might be alright if’n you can get her to stand you for long. It might not be all that bad, come to think of it. She might even take to shavin’ that hairy lip off if’n for the right gentleman caller.” Langford drank down the last of his cold coffee. He hated Smith, hated his smugness and careless words. Old Mister Everts was out there going toe-to-toe with the snow while Smith made him the butt of a joke.

Alive and very much alone, Everts was eleven miles southeast of the expedition. He felt good, considering, and huddled under a pine bow shelter in the middle of a steaming sulfur hot spring. He had lost all sense of the hours with the continuous snowfall. He marked time by cutting a line on a stick for each night that passed. Food for the time being consisted of roots he dug up from thistle bushes.

“Soon as it breaks,” Everts said to the empty space in front of him, “I am heading out.” He was talking to Lieutenant Isaac Strain, USN, a man who had led an expedition into South

America and afterward wrote about it. Strain had died in 1857 of malaria. He was a tall man with shoulder-length hair. He wore only pants and suspenders. His skin was pocked with boils and open sores. He sat cross-legged inside Everts’ tiny shelter and listened intently.

“If the company is camped at the lake, I will find them,” Everts said.

“What about Washburn?” Strain asked. “How long will he wait for you?”

Everts’ chin pruned. “I would give him three days, five at the most, before moving on.” He looked at his date stick and saw five notches.

Sulfuric acid had eaten the leather off Everts’ boots and put holes in his trousers. He could no longer feel his toes. The earth, it seemed, was redeeming what it had lent him at birth. His very existence was measured one snowflake at a time.

Missing day 9

West Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone Lake

September 18, 1870

The soldiers broke camp at 9 a.m. Packers worked to balance the loads on the mules. Breakfast was served standing up, and a general optimism buzzed in camp. They could not wait another day without exhausting their food supplies. Missing man or not, they had to move on. A sign was nailed to a tree that detailed the expedition’s next move and where Everts could find them. The group split up. Warren Gillette, who had experience with Indians, took Private Moore and Private Williamson with him to backtrack their route to Bozeman in search of Everts.

Lieutenant Doane and the expedition continued northwest toward the headwaters of the Madison.



Meanwhile, Everts limped his way toward Yellowstone Lake. If he didn’t find the expedition at the lake, he would continue to the Madison River. He had a plan. He held his head a little higher that morning and wondered what day of the week it was, maybe Saturday or Sunday? He thought about church and walking there in the morning.

An out-of-tune piano launched into the first few bars of a familiar hymn, and Everts joined in.

“Amazing grace … how sweet … the sound … that …” He sang off-key and ran out of breath. He stopped frequently to ask forgiveness for his sins. On his feet, he wore moccasins made from leather he’d stripped from his defunct riding boots. He had burns on his hip from falling through the crust into boiling water. His linen shirt hung in rags. He had open sores on his buttocks from the sulfur. With a tree branch propped under an arm, he leveraged some of the weight off his toes that had turned black from frostbite.

Missing day 10

Confluence of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers

September 19, 1870

A day after leaving Yellowstone Lake, the expedition reached the confluence of the Gibbon River and Firehole River. They camped in the meadow, a known location where civilization

was within a day’s ride. Above all other concerns was their lost friend Truman Everts.

Fresh trout was served for supper. Newt and Jonny went upstream in the afternoon and came back with huckleberries, baked them into biscuits for dessert. The men around the fire looked older, their skin stretched tight as rawhide. Langford steered the conversation to what they’d seen in the last month. He went around the group, letting everyone share their insights. This campfire discussion would eventually lead to the area becoming a national park.

Two Miles East of Old Faithful

Everts’ skin was covered in dirt. His fingernails were black and chipped away. With the opera glasses propped on a knee, he could scarcely make out the discolored shapes of cliffs rising on the far side of the valley. In his delusional mind, next to Everts’ sat a cleric dressed in a black wool overcoat with a black silk vest and white linen shirt. On his head, he wore a black felt hat with the brim fashionably scrolled up on all sides. He told Everts, “Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and scaling those rocks is madness.”

Everts’ feed bag of thistle root was long since empty. He had come twenty miles in six days and was tempted to lie down, let nature take its course.

“Your power of endurance will carry you through,” the man said. “I will accompany you. Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself, and God will help you.”

Everts rolled his eyes at the thought of going back the way he’d come. Freedom was within sight, just beyond the cliffs. But his feet refused to take another step. Everts cried without a shred of dignity. When he pulled himself together, the cleric was gone. On blistered feet, Everts hobbled back in the direction of Yellowstone Lake.

ePilogue

Truman Everts was found on the side of a cliff near the present-day town of Gardiner, Montana, thirty-seven days after he disappeared. He weighed ninety pounds. His last known meal was thistle roots he had gathered weeks before. He survived wild animal encounters, starvation, forest fires, second-degree burns, and specters that held court in his mind. A banquet was held in his honor in Helena some months later.

In January of 1871, Nathaniel Langford spent the month on the lecture circuit promoting the idea of a national park to attendees in Washington D.C. and in New York City. In January and February of 1872, the U.S. Senate and House approved the bill and on March 1, President Grant signed it into law, creating Yellowstone National Park.

James McKew is an American outdoorsman and writer who lives in Colorado.

Halle Hauer is an illustrator and designer based in Bozeman, Montana. She runs Studio 2 Skip, a creative studio specializing in branding, packaging, and hand-drawn illustration. When she’s not at her desk, she’s usually mountain biking, rock climbing, or skiing somewhere in the Montana backcountry.

Of SmOkE & Big SkY

FEATURED OUTLAW

In a dark forest of characters, Michael Keaton finds levity at home in Montana

By Toby Thompson

Cowboys and Indians encircle Michael Keaton. Not real cowpokes, Native people or even actors, but ones in the overlarge, direct-pigment photographs of artist Audrey Hall. It’s the September opening of her show “Of Pitch and Bone” at Old Main Gallery in Bozeman, Montana. Keaton nods toward a blackand-white print of a speckled horse against a clouded Montana sky. “Don’t tell Audrey,” he says, “but unknowingly I bought one similar by Robert Osborn— for my new house.” Osborn is a Montana photographer, and the house to which

Keaton refers is a restoration of one that burned nearly to the ground in 2023. His property is 1,500 acres of ranchland on a private stretch of river, an hour-and-ahalf east of Bozeman. He does not like to say where.

“People are so weird and crazy now,” he explains.

He has made this drive to support Hall, whom he’s known for 36 years, and looks hip-Western in fresh jeans, a light shirt, tan jacket and white sneakers. Though he’s starred in three movies this year—Knox Goes Away; Mr. Goodrich; and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,

the Tim Burton vehicle which earned $451,000,000, more than 1989’s Batman or 1992’s Batman Returns, in which Keaton starred—and though in two weeks he will host Saturday Night Live for the third time, no one here pays him much attention. This is, after all, Big Sky Country—the land of Yellowstone, A River Runs Through It, Rancho Deluxe, and other film classics.

Regarding Hollywood, Keaton, as a granddad and family man, describes himself socially as “the most boring show-business person.” Yet in Montana, he’s not only social, but an avid bird hunter, angler, hiker and horseman. His Fourth of July parties are eagerly attended and he’s a frequenter of restaurants and bars. He’s fit. At 73, a recent New York Times article described him as “whippet-slim.” Though his hair is sparse, and crows-feet line his cheeks, he might pass for a smoke-cured 40-year-old.

Smoke is on his mind. The Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles have not yet ignited, but the memory of last September’s ranch house fire is fresh. “We were asleep,” he says, of himself and Marni Turner, his partner of some years. “The porch’s propane grill exploded. It was scary.” As his fishing pal Tom McGuane recalls, “It was rolling fire coming down the corridors. Michael, Marni and the dog were lucky to get out alive.”

“I heard something blow up,” Keaton recalls, “which was my tank. We got out, and the fire department—16 miles up the road—arrived quickly. Have you ever lifted a fire hose?” He mimes the effort. “They’re heavy. I grabbed one and yanked its lever back.” He crouches. “I was spraying downstairs, and the fire guys were on the second floor. I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I might hurt them,’ and quit.” His expression is fraught. “I wonder whether I have PTSD. I’ll smell smoke or see a fire where it doesn’t belong, and there’s that little shot of adrenaline up your spine.”

Left: Keaton plays with his grandson at a Fourth of July celebration at his Montana home. Photo by Audrey Hall

Previous page: Actor Michael Keaton enjoys Montana with his dog. Photo by Victoria Will/Getty Images

A grin. “But you know, a week afterward I went to the firehouse and said, ‘I want to join. I want to volunteer.’ They looked at me and said, ‘You can’t.’ I said, ‘Why not, it’s a volunteer fire department?’ They said, ‘Yes, but you don’t live in town. You live in the county.’”

He straightens. “I tried. It was the least I could do.”

MONTHS LATER, IN EARLY DECEMBER,

he kicks back in Livingston’s Murray Hotel Bar, readying himself for several days of bird shooting. “It’s been a really exceptional year for birds,” he tells me. “And Hungarian partridge are so hard to hit, I love shooting them. There’s a covey in the fields by my house.”

Wearing a silky black puffer, a ventilated ball cap, and nursing a whiskey, he’s of little notice to the barflies. The Murray is where art meets roughneck Montana. Here, director Sam Peckinpah fired shots through the ceiling, actor Peter Fonda—off his Harley—quaffed martinis, and guitarist John Mayer partied with Katy Perry. Keaton sits at a corner table, reminiscing about his life here since the early 1980s, and of his childhood in rural Pennsylvania.

“We had this old farmhouse in Forest Grove, outside Pittsburgh, which my parents crowded us into,” he says. “We were seven kids, four brothers and three sisters. My mother’s dad had been a puddler in the steel mills—he shoveled molten steel, which was hot, hard work—and my dad came from country people. He never graduated high school. He earned his GED and became a civil engineer and surveyor. He liked to hunt so we lived in the country.” Keaton swirls his drink. “That farmhouse burned too. I remember not feeling sad but blown away by those flames—so dramatic, shooting up into the sky. It was stimulating to a little kid. What made me feel sad later was how much I loved that house.”

The ranch house that burned recently had been built in the early ’90s and though modest in scale was designed so tastefully that, in 1997, it made the cover of Architectural Digest. A second house, a log homesteader’s cabin moved and reconfigured by Keaton in the mid-1980s, shared the site. It still does, the view from both houses stretching to the Absaroka Mountains.

I have known Keaton since 1989, the summer of Batman the movie of that year and one that made Keaton a superstar. He was moderately well-known for Night Shift, Mr. Mom, Beetlejuice [One] and Clean and Sober. But after Batman, his face blanketed billboards and the covers of most national magazines. That season, Keaton did not bask in Los Angeles’s or New York’s adoration. He camped by a river on the streamside acreage of his remote property. Drinking in local saloons, the cowpokes called him Bat.

I met him that August at Peter Fonda’s house in Paradise Valley over supper—an impromptu meal served at the kitchen table by Fonda’s wife Becky. The conversation was inconsequential, but I recall thinking, I’m bookended by superheroes: Fonda, who played a comic-book figure, Captain America, in the motorcycle epic Easy Rider, and Keaton as Batman. Arguably, each character defined the pop-art sensibilities of its era.

Keaton discourages questions about Batman and how it

Built in the early ’90s, Keaton’s original home in Montana was featured in Architectural Digest in 1997— including on the cover. This house has since burned. Spread courtesy of Architectural Digest

might have scrambled his life. He told Playboy in 1992, “I’m so tired of this f***ing question. I can’t stand it. Look, anytime you’re in a hit, it changes your life….” And here, of 2014’s Birdman (about an ex-superhero star making a comeback), a film that earned him a Golden Globe award for Best Actor and an Oscar Best Actor nomination, “When a movie makes a lot of money or you get critical praise, that has mileage.” He hesitates. “But you don’t take just any role. I like to use the baseball analogy. If you’re a good hitter, you wait for your pitch.”

He’s working out the budgeting for two new films, one in which he’ll star and one in which he’ll star and direct. He’s directed several films and as he notes, “I still can do the leading man thing, but I’m in a tiny percentile for my age. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last.” Directing can last, as can hunting and fishing in Montana. His immediate focus is on fine-tuning the completion of his house here. “It’s done, but I’m building a gym, and there are still little things that aren’t [on] a punch list.”

Born Michael Douglas (in Hollywood, there already was a Michael Douglas), he was the youngest in his family, and as his brother George told me, “Mike was an outdoors kid all the way. And he loved to play with cowboy and Indian figurines. They were so real to him.”

“I was in love with the West,” Keaton says. “I was glued to the little black-and-white television we had. Anything having to do with the West: horses, cowboys, the mountains, and hunting and fishing. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Later, he’d take brown Hershey Bar wrappers and paste them to his cheeks as sideburns—“to imitate Elvis Presley,” his brother remembered. “Mike always had a great imagination.” Keaton spent two years at Kent State, tried acting and loved it. In Pittsburgh, he worked for Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood at a public television station, did standup comedy and acted in plays. But it wasn’t until he was 21 and spent a summer teaching drama on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona that he decided to commit his life to art. The West afforded him an epiphany.

As he told Playboy, “That summer, I got totally blown away walking around those mesas and the desert … I wasn’t ready for the amount of physical space out there. I arrived late in the afternoon, and by the time we got to the school, it was dark—and the sky had lit up … I was overwhelmed and noticed that my heart was beating a lot faster … all the usual stimuli were gone.” He discovered, “I had nowhere to go except

inside myself … I had to follow my heart.”

He says, “Arizona changed my life. It was mind-blowing and stunningly beautiful. When I got back to Pittsburgh, I knew what I was going to do: quit school and write or be an actor. It couldn’t have been clearer.”

George Douglas told me, “Mike is a very determined guy. He always says, ‘I’ll figure it out.’ I tell him, ‘That’s what we’ll put on your tombstone: I’ll figure it out.’”

Keaton’s first professional stop was weekends in New York, where he studied theater and did standup comedy. But a friend in Los Angeles convinced him to try that city, and he decamped. He performed standup a few years, acted in TV sitcoms and awaited success.

He pushes aside his drink. “But you don’t care about that Hollywood bulls**t, do you? We’re talking Montana.”

A server approaches—a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt reading WISDOM (a town in the Big Hole Valley). She recognizes Keaton without acknowledging the fact. After ordering supper, he asks how many shifts she’s worked today and whether she likes horses. Two shifts, and yes, she does. He asks about the possibility of her caring for his horses next year, as his current handler may leave for college.

“I’d love that,” she says, and gives him her info.

He is in no way flirting, yet it’s obvious that women appreciate him. I’m reminded of an evening in the mid-1990s when, returning to my room at the Murray Hotel, I found a note from Keaton saying he was at the Livingston Bar & Grille and to fall by if I were around. I found him seated with a pleasant-looking brunette whose name I didn’t catch. We chatted, and I asked what work she did.

“I’m in a television series called Friends,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. This was Courteney Cox.

She and Keaton dated for several years. She became a fixture at parties and the cutting horse events in which Keaton competed. Always congenial, she was just another megastar presence in Sweetgrass and Park counties.

A decade later, Keaton and his son, Sean Douglas (now a Grammy-nominated and an ACM and CMA Award-winning songwriter in Los Angeles) visited my girlfriend and me at her house in Santiago, Chile, while en route to a fishing extravaganza in Patagonia. Michael fidgeted on the patio as a uniformed maid served slippery, unfingerable hor d’oeuvres and his fishing-trip host described the helicopter flight they’d take from a yacht to a river where they’d stalk brown trout “that have

Keaton on the set of Birdman on June 1, 2013, in New York City.

Photo by Michael Stewart/Getty Images

never seen a fly.” Keaton has fished with world-class anglers, but this was the only moment I’d seen him edgy. It wasn’t the angling host. Perhaps it was the unfingerable hor d’oeuvres.

“I remember that trip,” Keaton says. “The helicopter flew the rafts out to be blown up first. So we wouldn’t have to wait.” He tilts his head. “My dad belonged to a club in Pennsylvania that was nothing like that.” As he wrote in the 2012 anthology Astream: American Writers on Fly Fishing, “Membership of the Montour Run Sportsman’s Club was made up of mill workers, railroad men, mechanics, farmers, and numbers runners. Italians, Poles, Germans— sons of immigrants. Men in hats, white short-sleeve shirts, who smoked cigars, drank beer, and swore.” Keaton’s people were not readily present in Patagonia— but their ilk was in Montana.

By the mid-1980s, having established a career in Los Angeles, he focused on Montana through his passion for angling. “I’d read these fly-fishing magazines and this was the Mecca.”

After his first trip, in the early 1980s, “I was cooked, I was done. I had to be here.” He adds, “The Big Hole River was where I mostly fished. I could get a 7:30 a.m. flight in Burbank and be on the Big Hole by 1:30 in the afternoon. I’d fish until dark.”

“I was in love wiTH THe West. I was glued to THe little bLAckand-white television we had. AnyTHing having to do wiTH THe

West: horses, cowboys, THe mountains, and hunting and fishing. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

By 1989, he’d finalized a divorce from his wife, Caroline McWilliams, also an actor, and was navigating the fame ignited by Batman. Sean then was 6, a boy who “plain fished” with his dad and who later, at Keaton’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, would remember Keaton’s fixation upon angling, saying, “I’ve seen you go from eating flies in Beetlejuice, to fly fishing, and fly tying, and fly research … it’s a fly obsession!”

–Michael Keaton

Keaton chuckled at the ceremony but knew angling and his increased celebrity could be dicey. One evening, after a day on the river, he stopped at a bar and noticed a man glaring at him menacingly. Keaton finished his drink. The man still glared. Keaton remembers, “I walked over and said, ‘Why are you staring at me?’ He didn’t answer so I knocked his hat off, stepped back and fell across the legs of a woman who was seated. I left.”

“Why was he glaring?”

“Because I’m an actor?”

“Maybe he was a Beetlejuice fan.”

Keaton laughs. But he’s careful, having actively supported Democratic candidates in recent elections. His Instagram

videos, pre-election, were insistently anti-Trump and Musk. In October he told his 1 million followers, many of them blue-collar, that “They don’t really respect you. They laugh at you behind your back. They think you’re stupid. They don’t want to hang out with you. They have nothing in common with you. They’re not your bros.”

He’s thoughtful after recalling the memory from the bar but regains equilibrium. Angling jaunts to Chile and New Zealand are planned, and, there is always fishing in Montana.

“People who don’t fish can’t get it,” he says, “They don’t understand what happens to you. How present you are.”

I’m reminded of a day fishing on Keaton’s stretch of river, an August afternoon closing to evening as I’d switch from hoppers to whatever fly best imitates the hatch, a trout taking that fly, its fight through the riffles, its handling and release and the hike back across an expanse of yard, to the porch light waiting.

“The thing about fishing,” Keaton says, “is that you don’t have a choice except to be in the moment. It’s like riding a cutting horse. It’s that combination of being totally focused and totally at mercy. The thing I love about fly fishing more than anything is that … and I’ve never been a fish counter—I hate those expressions like ‘ripping lips’ … they’re just little f***ing fish! They’re not hurting anyone.” A head shake. “I always look at it as a game. They’re all instinct, and we’re barely instinct. For a person who’s competitive, I know they’ll always win. I’ll never win.

Ironically, I accept that.”

He feels comparably about cutting, a quasi-rodeo event that requires horse and rider to separate a cow from its herd and prevent it from returning. Cutting started for Keaton during the 1980s through Tom McGuane—who is not only a celebrated author but a member of the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame. “I tell everybody,’ I wish I’d never gotten on a cutting horse and I wish I’d never caught a steelhead,’” Keaton says. “Because, with cutting, suddenly it’s 10 years later, and you’re in some shitty motel in northern California or Nevada, some dusty place, and you might win a saddle or $200.” He no longer competes. “I don’t think I ever won as much as $1,000. But when the event is happening, it’s so fun. Thrilling, such a rush! And your teammate is an animal.”

It’s not just sport that Keaton enjoys in Montana. It’s the

THAT SEASON, KEATON DID NOT BASK IN LOS ANGELES’S OR NEW YORK’S ADORATION. HE CAMPED BY A RIVER ON THE stREAMSIDE ACREAGE OF HIS REMOTE PROPERTY. DRINKING IN LOCAL SALOONS, THE COWPOKES CALLED HIM BAT.

Keaton basks in a Montana landscape. Photo by Victoria Will/Getty Images

relaxation he feels before its mountain vistas and sagebrush spaces. He keeps a truck at the Bozeman airport and “Driving home, there’s a spot on I-90,” he says, “where I’ll exhale and go ah.” L.A. has been relinquished, but “You know how it is. You’re relaxed but your brain picks up.”

Hard work is involved in fashioning a dramatic character, and the award-winning roles in which Keaton has starred were, in part, thought through in Montana. That work includes Birdman, which earned not just Keaton’s Oscar nomination for Best Actor, but ones for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography. An Academy Award was won by its director, Alejandro Iñárritu. Add to the list Spotlight, which took the Academy Award for Best Picture, then count his hipster role as an ATF agent in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, and another role as a CNN news producer in Live from Baghdad, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe … and dozens more. In 2021, he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor for his role in the Hulu series, Dopesick. There, he played a West Virginia physician addicted to OxyContin. In an emotional acceptance speech for the SAG award, he dedicated it to his nephew, a casualty of drug use. “This is for my nephew, Michael, and my sister Pam. I lost Michael to drugs, and it hurts.”

A movie envisioned by Keaton in Montana (and partly filmed there) was Alejandro Iñárritu’s 2015 effort, The Revenant—his follow-up to Birdman. Keaton bought the 2002 survival and revenge novel of the same name by Michael Punke in a Livingston bookstore and thought, “Holy sh**, this is a movie.” He tried to obtain its film rights, “but somebody else already had them. It’s hard to get Westerns done. My friend, Alejandro did though.” He pauses. “And to this day, that is truly one of my favorite movies.” Keaton no doubt would have led in and possibly directed it. The Iñárritu film earned three Golden Globe awards and 12 Academy Award nominations in 2015. Iñárritu won Best Director, and the film’s star, Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Actor. While scouting locations, DiCaprio had stayed at the Murray.

and illness.” Despite the complexity of Wayne’s character, Keaton reportedly turned down a $15 million offer to star in a third film in the series, Batman Forever.

He explained to Entertainment Weekly, “I said to them, ‘This is a really interesting character with a dual personality’ … but when somebody says to you, ‘Does it have to be so dark?’... I thought, are we talking about the same character?”

The dark seriousness of his roles has been important to Keaton. As has their social consciousness. Bruce Wayne “still functions as a major force in society,” Keaton says, and the newsman, Walter “Robby” Robinson, in Spotlight, helps to uncover rampant sexual abuse among Boston’s clergy. In Worth, Keaton plays Kenneth Feinberg, who seeks compensation for the families of 9/11 victims. And in Dopesick, his character, Dr. Samuel Finnix, testifies in court against the drug behemoth, Purdue Pharma. Even Daryl Poynter, in Clean and Sober, advocates for sobriety.

“People who don’t fish can’t get it. TH ey don’t understand what happens to you.

How present you are.”

–Michael Keaton

Another role Keaton most certainly would have pondered as he fished Montana in the late ’80s, was the development of Bruce Wayne in Batman and Batman Returns. He told Playboy, “My take on Bruce Wayne: He’s essentially depressed and a little nuts, real dark and a couple of steps off,” but he’s powerful because he has money and because he saw his parents killed, which sent him into serious introspection

In his SAG acceptance speech for Dopesick, Keaton added, “I’m so fortunate to do what I do, and so fortunate I have a job where I can be part of a production … that actually can spawn thought, conversation, actual change. I take pride in holding those people accountable for the victims of this opioid crisis.”

Directors and fellow stars hold him in high regard. Tim Burton told Esquire in 2014, “He’s a master improviser … that time with Michael, working on Beetlejuice and Batman, that was the most profoundly creative time in my career … I miss it.”

Samuel L. Jackson, who has acted with Keaton in several films, said to Esquire, “Batman and Beetlejuice are very different from one another. That’s a passage from darkness to light. Beetlejuice is dark, man. That’s some dark sh**. And it’s funny. But Michael brought gravitas to it.”

Iñárritu added, “He can … handle comedy and empathy, and with a profound depth to both.” Jackson said, “He’s just a very cool dude. Michael Keaton can talk about anything with anybody.”

The conversations I’ve had with him have ranged from fishing to politics to art and literature to the history of Montana to tales of backstage Hollywood. They have taken place in Chile and New York, but most congenially at his ranch or in the bars and restaurants of Park and Sweetgrass counties. I’ve watched him teach his 3-year-old grandson, River, how to hop on stones across a creek, Michael crossing then hopping back, crossing then hopping, until River learned it. I’ve seen him trade hilarious stories with novelist Carl Hiaasen at a dinner for 12 by the Yellowstone River, then sat beside him at Pine Creek Lodge as we listened to

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell serenade an outdoor audience that included Jeff Bridges and John Mayer. I’ve sat with him on the Fourth of July at a table of celebrants including the McGuanes, Tom and Meridith Brokaw, composer Dave Grusin and his wife Nan Newton, Gretel Erlich and her husband Neal Conan, as well as Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, each loving the companionship of friends and the surroundings of a private fishing club. I’ve stood with Marni and Michael, watching a rodeo parade in Livingston then dancing with Marni to a band in Main Street. I’ve watched Michael enjoy countless weddings, memorials and musical evenings at Audrey Hall’s ranch in Paradise Valley. I’ve never seen him discontent.

Back at the Murray, we’re speaking of films and how he must return to work. I praise his ability to disappear inside a character and his performance in 2023’s Knox Goes Away, about a contract killer who gradually succumbs to dementia. It’s a dark, deathly performance and I tell him, “I thought, ‘I know Michael, but I don’t know this guy.’”

He brightens. “Yeah, that’s great. Oh thanks, I love to hear that. Because it’s so hard to do.” Pausing. “It’s why I don’t grant that many interviews. The more you’re exposed and the more people know about you, the less they’re gonna buy into the character you play.”

“I felt similarly about your disappearance into the physician character in Dopesick.”

“Good.” He finishes his drink. “People will forget about

you anyway,” he says. “It’s not just Hollywood. You assume people still think about you and they don’t. Nobody’s thinking about you. They’re thinking about themselves. Which they should.”

Our server has us in mind and she approaches to ask if everything’s okay. “Thanks, yeah,” Keaton says. “How about one more drink, but a short one? I’ve got a long drive ahead.”

Postscript: A month later Keaton and Marni are evacuated from their Santa Monica home, in the wake of the Los Angeles fires. Messages come: “house still standing/ kinda surrounded/ in a hotel for now/ not sure when I get back in/ historic and devastating and sad/ at least I’m alive and have a house (so far).” Though that house does not burn, Keaton emails from his January fishing trip: “I’m in New Zealand right now. I have to go back to L.A. to deal with fire issues.” Dealing is better than digging out. This fire fails to nab him.

Toby Thompson is the author of six books of nonfiction, including Positively Main Street, his biography of Bob Dylan, and Riding the Rough String: Reflections on the American West. He has written for publications as varied as Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Outside, and Men’s Journal. His first job, in 1959, was as a ranch hand outside of West Yellowstone, Montana. He is a part-time resident of Livingston, and is an emeritus professor of English at Penn State University.

Keaton and his son, Sean Douglas, lace up their wading boots in Montana.

Photo by Andy Anderson

Mary Howard, CRPC®

FURIOUS

Step into the world of SUE the T. rex to uncover the mysteries about the life of this fearsome fossil.

Come between two titans with full-scale casts of SUE and T. rex’s nemesis, Triceratops. Experience a unique multimedia show transporting you to the Cretaceous forest alongside SUE. Learn how the fossil was unearthed, and how scientists continue to make discoveries about SUE, the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever discovered.

SUE: The T. rex Experience was organized by the Field Museum and is part of the Griffin Dinosaur Experience, made possible by generous support from Kenneth C. Griffin.

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LAST LIGHT

A hiker and his dog drink in the vast, starry night sky before heading inside the Webb Mountain Fire Lookout in the Kootenai National Forest, Montana—home for the night.

Photo by Terry Musgrove.