Summer 2000

I am not a fly fisherman. Lacking a true affinity for political correctness, I am not a fly fisherwoman either. But I do like to fly-fish. It is therapy and yet it is madness, like an addiction. The lure of the river runs…

Climbing in Gallatin Canyon. Easing over a small roof, I mantle up onto an ice cream sandwich-sized ledge, some 300 feet above the Gallatin River. It's our fourth pitch, and I stand quickly, hips tight to the rock, and…

Exuberance meets caution in the roiling snowmelt of southwest Montana. The river was huge. Swollen and discolored from the previous night's rainfall, it looked like a swirling sea of chocolate milk. As I stepped into the…

Bozeman's most famous trail run. Through the fog they come, through the early morning mist: 200 loping crusaders, steely-eyed and sweat-soaked, rushing forward like a herd of wild horses—side-stepping boulders, hurdling…

I intended to mow the lawn. I really did. Not that I felt any real need to, but I’d seen someone else doing it, so I thought what the heck, I might as well do it too.But by the time I got around to it, weeks later,…

By the skin of his teeth.In the summer of 1806, not long after passing through the Gallatin Valley, the Lewis & Clark expedition came across a small camp on the Missouri River belonging to a pair of fur-traders from…

Hiking Montana's mountain trails is enjoyment in and of itself, but when you add the thrill of birding, it takes on a whole new level of wonder and excitement – like turning a lazy, late-afternoon river float into a safari…