The Montana Heritage Project
The Meagher County Poor Farm sits on the western edge of White Sulphur Springs, Montana. You turn off beside the once-grand old Ringling house and follow a winding gravel road until you come to what,…
Category: Montana Assays
Powerless – Unmanageable
The Brethren of my youth defined themselves by “no’s.” No smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no taking the lord’s name in vain. No attachment to worldly goods or fun that might lead to sex before…
Night Lights
After the first times I needed to pee at three in the morning at the Walter family’s primitive North Fork of the Flathead property, I learned what the rest of the family already knew. I…
Empty – Full
My British friends Jean and Bryan arrived in Montana on the remnant Amtrak passenger train, the Empire Builder, on a summer Saturday evening. The 48 hour trek west had been strange enough. Traveling in regular…
Montana Assays – An Introduction
I have made you an assayer and tester among my peopleThat you may know and assay their waysThey are bronze and iron, and they act corruptlyThe bellows blow fiercely, and the lead is consumed by…
Lives Lost
On a day of incomparable gleaming airy early-spring loveliness, Harlowton said goodbye to Gene Leary.* He was one of central Montana’s especially kind, thoughtful, contributing native sons: a service station owner, a community leader, a…
What Survives
I am not native. I arrived in Montana more than forty years ago, on an early June day. I came on the strength of one shattered dream, new enthusiasms that were just beginning to cook,…
A Hunger for Ceremony
I’d been in Montana just six months. Largely still on my mid-career honeymoon. Albeit with a decent number of irritants: no correcting Selectrics in the office; a staff that considered attendance optional; a boss whose…
They Call the Wind Mariah
Give me wind. Maybe not the howling gale that keeps Great Falls listing to the east. Maybe not the bully gusts that stiff-arm semis off the road. Maybe not fire winds, the ominous, searing furnace…
Mountain Ash
I watch my neighbor Mary’s mountain ash tree like a hawk. Or more accurately, like a magpie, a robin, a cedar waxwing, though I’m not scouting a meal. Rather leaning into the elusive magic of…