One summer’s day after church, when I was in first or second grade, one of the big-hatted, blue-haired ladies of the St. Leo’s congregation asked me, within earshot of my father, what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered, without a moment’s doubt, “I want to be a hobo!”
On the last full day of Paul Maclean's life, Sunday, May 1, 1938, he had about $50 in his wallet, having cashed a two-week paycheck. He took his girlfriend, Lois Nash, twenty-nine, a redheaded Irish nurse, to an afternoon White Sox game at Comiskey Park at Thirty-Fifth and Shields.
Gut leaders were made from silkworms by making a small incision just behind the head to reveal the silk glands, then submerging the poor silkworm in a solution of salt and vinegar. The silk was slowly drawn from the silk glands, and as it was extracted the material hardened into threads.
Paul is a shadow person in my life. He has shaped my life without me being fully conscious of it. When I got into the news business, I discovered that it was exactly where I should be. I’m sure that was partly due to Paul’s example. But he was a negative example, too.
I parked along a stretch of dirt road where I could see the valley and the mountains between the trees, turned off the truck, and stepped out to silence and crisp spring air. There was something here I could not put into words, something that felt wild and uninhibited.
Home Waters is many things—a son’s exegesis of his father’s work, a memoir of a childhood spent fishing in Montana, an investigation into the death of a family member who is also the subject of a beloved novel, and, above all, a companion piece to Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It.
The lookouts played a critical part in maintaining and monitoring wildfires in the area while keeping visitors safe. Most of the lookouts in Montana are unmanned today, and many can be reached by hiking to them.
I drop my backpack in my office and start my rounds, as I call them, checking on each and every animal including fish, frogs, salamanders, snakes, ground squirrels (if they’re not hibernating), river otters, raptors, gray wolves and grizzly bears to make sure all is well.
Gold attracted people to the region, and Helena’s “main street” is a memorial to the early prospectors. Much of Last Chance Gulch is a pedestrian mall, and the turn-of-the-century architecture lining the sidewalks attracts the eye, just as the various window displays attract shoppers.
Cast was first printed in an English document as long ago as 1230, borrowed from an Old Norse verb kasta, “to throw.” This original sense carries through in our modern phrases cast the first stone, cast a net, cast the dice.
The thing most people don’t know about the Montana Department of Livestock is the DOL is a very diverse organization. Many are familiar with our law enforcement function dating back to the days of the territorial government, but we also are engaged in protecting animal and human health.
Like the Medical Clinic, all of the exhibits are intended to promote "real-life play." In the wonderfully imaginative displays children will explore a different side of Great Falls, here reimagined as the kid-sized community of "Little Falls."
Norman Maclean was not born in Montana, nor did he die here. His published work is slim, especially when compared to A.B. Guthrie or Ivan Doig. But I wager that if you asked people what piece of writing best exemplifies Montana, many would respond A River Runs Through It.
Montana is blessed with some of the darkest skies in the country, due to lack of any large light-polluting cities. Couple this with the many wildernesses and other wild and scenic set-aside areas, and one can get far away from even the light of small towns.
Call him what you will—Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or Imoiitapi, the Blackfeet name meaning “hairy man”—this being has held an important place in Native culture for centuries.
I have always been a hunter. Like many Montana boys my age, my father, like his father before him, schooled us in the teachings of the wild. Some kids spent their weekends playing sports, but my family were always sitting beside a lake, camping or adventuring the dirt roads with a small-caliber arms and a packed lunch in the back seat.
The great American writer Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, proved he knew horses nearly as well as whales when he said, "No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses." That comprehension shows itself in remarkable ways—horses will sidle up close, nuzzle you, even lovingly nip at you.
The road between Yellowstone and Glacier offers the less rushed traveler ample opportunities to discover Montana’s renowned “big sky”, its beautiful mountains, blue-ribbon trout streams, as well as its rich cultural heritage, making the drive between the two parks a much more enjoyable and enriching experience.
