Awakening at 3 a.m. to jingling keys and the unmistakable ripping of Velcro from the unfastening of a bullet-resistant vest was always a peaceful predawn ritual for me. It was so much better than the silence that prevailed through the darkest part of the night.

"This land is forever protected and stands today as a shining example of what a small group of dedicated Montanans can accomplish."

Dr. Pisberg is our family doctor, and sometimes I wonder about him. Mostly, I wonder if he can account for his whereabouts from 1933-1945 or so. Like any true sadist, he also knows that words can hurt much worse than sticks and stones or reflex hammers and tongue depressors.

Abandoned lines have been having a bit of a renaissance—not as thoroughfares for trains, but as multi-use trails for pedestrians, cyclists, equestrians, and cross-country skiers. 

The Off the Beaten Path series has been steering travelers toward the good stuff for decades, and the Montana volume is now in its eleventh edition, freshly revised by Missoula writer and DM contributor Ednor Therriault. Readers of this magazine. know Therriault as a connoisseur of the strange corner and the unmarked turnoff

The war between the Thunder Birds and the Water Monsters involved ranged warfare; they fired missiles at one another which the Sioux called kangi tame, or the blackened remains of lightning bolts.

Joe was raised along Post Creek, north of Saint Ignatius, bordering historic Fort Connah on the Flathead Reservation. He was the great-grandson of Angus McDonald, a Scottish fur trapper who settled in the Mission Valley and established Fort Connah in 1846

Over breakfast, we chatted about the days of Lewis and Clark, and although he didn’t have any wild stories like Frank, he told of how he enjoys living off the beaten path and giving guests a glimpse into the life of Montana in the early 1900s. 

During my years among mountain goats, studying their lives and capturing their images on film beginning in the 1970s in Montana, lightning seemed to follow me like a faithful companion. Several times I shed my camera and lenses, spotting scope and tripod, and sprinted for cover.

Harmonville is also a town where magical, impossible things can happen without anyone seeming to notice, like when Costner fires his six-shooter 16 times without reloading, and no one declares it a miracle.

Topographically, Wibaux County is mostly prairie, but not plain in the dull sense. The land rolls, breaks, drops, and cuts into coulees and badlands formations. The website Peak Visor lists eleven "mountains" in Wibaux County. Note that the tallest of these "mountains" is less than 3,100 feet, and the most prominent rises only 443 feet above the valley floor.

The bustle of city life hasn’t yet knocked at the door of this community. Harnessed to its past, Willow Creek’s main purpose is denoted by its roads leading out of town through the pastureland—to ranches and farms.

The blast is unthinkable, impossible to understand in human terms. Still, there are some who are far enough away that they have a moment to try. They can see a flash that overtakes the horizon, and then for a moment, they see a black streak rising into space. The scale of it is enormous beyond reckoning.

As Montana's response to the national "Good Roads" movement of the 1920s, Highway 200 gained popularity, along with Highway 89, as the border-to-border travel corridor for tourists bent on exploring the state by motor vehicles. The aim of the Good Roads initiative was to connect isolated rural communities and promote social and economic vitality.

Subtlety wasn't part of Craney's playbook. But he also understood that Montana was a unique market for advertisers, whether in radio or television, as he recalled to an interviewer in 1977: "It is a high cost market and one that is difficult to get national advertisers to come into…because there just aren't the people in Montana to make it a market."

Many, about to embark on the wilderness, therefore chose to seek lodging in Livingston. H. F. Sanders wrote in his three-volume History of Montana (1913) that visitors "will usually find themselves directed to the Grabow Hotel, one of the finest hostelries in the state..."

I suddenly felt a wildfire in my eyes. Town leaders had brought tear gas to America's birthday party. It did not go over well.

"I don't know how much I can improve playing Billings 16 times," Montana forward and current Golden State Warriors Assistant Coach Terry Stotts told the Kansas City Star at the time. "Basically I'm playing against Marlon Redmond 16 times. He knows my moves. He knows I'm going to fake and turn. I know he's going to drill it."

After leaving the Air Force he became the flight team director for Air Force One, one of the most prestigious assignments in the military. Raynor was in charge of the detail that flew President Kennedy's Boeing 707 to Dallas on that fateful November day in 1963. Air Force One returned to Washington the next day carrying JFK's body while Lyndon Johnson was aboard, being sworn in as President.

These have been selected from the 1983 Federated Church Cook Book (Harlowtown, Montana) on the basis of their culinary daring, and in the earnest hopes that their rediscovery will prompt no less than a full-scale revival of midcentury cuisine right here in our fair state.