Wrangling With Teenagers

Montana Preservation They were looking for a fight – those mining company executives and disdainful forest supervisors. The subdivision developers, the highway engineers, the power company managers, and, of course, the university presidents. Many were…

The Late Baby – The Surprise Kid

Montana Preservation It was always going to be tricky—adopting the State Historic Preservation Office into the Montana Historical Society’s established family. But needed. For a decade the Parks Division of the Department of Fish and…

The Last Library

Don’t count them out. Or think them made redundant by Google. They are damn pure magic. Portals into time travel. Archetypes of standing stone circles, temples, pantheons of all the gods we’ve worshipped over time….

The Incomparable Old Red Barn

I’ve lived for 40 years in breathtaking landscapes. Where, from our deck at the Land, the Backbone of the World—40 miles of the Rocky Mountains—stretches into infinity. Where night after night, my home range—the Big…

The Paper Route

I was just home from watching my 87 year old mother die. For her, that meant the blessing of peace after months of fear and unease. The cruel additives to her illness. For me, that…

Amen

It seems the notices come weekly now As one class mate after another dies. The news relayed by a faithful Bullpup Who’s lived his life in McPherson. Or hers. A pillar now of the community,…

Who’s In Blue

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man…

Fish Out of Water

If I had any doubts, the jig was up the afternoon that our Regional Park Managers quarterly meeting morphed into a Missouri River float trip. We had assembled in moderately rustic facilities at the Beartooth…