One January my wife and I set out to traverse the Absaroka-Beartooth on skis. It wouldn’t be our first trip to do so, and it wouldn’t be the last, but I hope that it remains the coldest. We’d take a new route and be out for five days. I like seeing the mountains this way. In winter, the wild no … Read More
The Edge of Wilderness
Yesterday I stood on top of Livingston Peak. It is a prominent marker for the river town of Livingston, Montana and its population of 7,500 people. It is the ample chest of what’s affably known as the Sleeping Giant, a series of foothills and mountains that dominate the vista from Main Street and almost anywhere else in town. At 9,313-feet … Read More
What I Have Learned: Working with Crow Students
Excerpts: “They understood Nature as the essence of the Great mystery, which guides and breathes life into all things. For Indian people, the land was full of spirit, full of energy.” Gregory Cajete Ph. D. Look to the Mountain – an ecology of indigenous education The significance of wilderness in respect to indigenous youth is probably as diverse as the … Read More
Fly-Fishing Confidential
During the dog days of summer in Livingston, Montana, at the Murray Bar in the evening, there is a faint air of shared chagrin. As one of the fishing guides, you’re easily identified, a sunglass tan line, shaggy hair protruding from a baseball cap. The clients – “sports,” as we call them – stand out as well: overweight, sunburned, new Columbia fishing … Read More
Note From a Wilderness Steward: From the Shining Mountains
Essay by David Kallenbach; Art: etching by Ivan Kosorok; Excerpt: Meriwether Lewis, July 4th, 1805: “the Mountains to the N. W. & W. of us are still entirely covered are white and glitter with the reflection of the sun. I do not beleive that the clouds which prevail at this season of the year reach the summits of those … Read More
Poetry of the Beartooth Mountains
Excerpts: Just above Red Lodge there lies a million acres of Gothic mountains, milky blue glacial tarns, vast rolling alps, and the chosen environment of Russian poets, playwrights, and composers: the tundra, with its myriad wildflowers, its speckled moss, its mottled lichens. The Beartooths are the backbone of Yellowstone, cousins of the Wind River Range. They are the sleeping giant of … Read More
Tracks – Human Migrations
Excerpts: We have been preceded. I sense that this trail, an easy way from the valley of the Clark Fork into the high country, was first walked not long after the glaciers receded. Ice patch archeology supports my intuition. Ancient hunters followed big horn sheep into this terrain 10,000 years ago. They may have sought more than meat, horns, and … Read More
Working the Wilderness
Essay by John Clayton; Art: “Beartooth East Rosebud”, by Monte Dolack; Article originally published in High Desert Journal, April 2017; I came for the scenery. I signed up as a trail maintenance volunteer in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness north of Yellowstone National Park because it gave me five days among blooming wildflowers, burbling streams, and evergreens swaying gently in the wind. … Read More
High Altitude Archeology
Article originally published in the Billings Gazette, May 18, 2017; Highland Americans: Archaeologist Uncovering Ancient Peoples’ Widespread Use of Mountains; A small group of archaeologists are blazing a path into places like Wyoming’s Wind River Range, the Tetons and Montana’s Beartooth Plateau, rewriting the understanding of prehistoric people’s use of what are now high elevation wilderness areas. “We really need … Read More
Old Mail Route
Essay by Brett French; Art: “Mountains” by Courtney Blazon; Article originally published in the Billings Gazette, March 24, 2010; In the late 1800s, hardy mail carriers lashed snowshoes onto their feet to haul mail from the old mining town of Nye City up the Stillwater River drainage to the miners of Cooke City about 40 miles away. Or did they? … Read More
From Red Lodge to Reed Point to Cooke City: The Human Connections
Forthcoming essays include: History of the establishment of the AB Wilderness – Ed Kemmick History of the AB Wilderness Foundation – Native Voices – Francine Spang-Willis, Northern Cheyenne Native Voices – Shane Doyle, Crow Native Voices – Crow Youth Mountaineering/exploration of the AB – Joe Josephson Ranger Tales – Hank Rate Camp Senia Illuminates Montana’s Dude-Ranching Heritage Mining history – … Read More