The Properties of This Plant Border on the Miraculous BY JULIA SWIFT Let me tell you about a minor miracle. While hurriedly working at a flat top stove recently, I foolishly placed my finger, below the knuckle, on a burner set at medium high. Yeeeooowww, and a few loud four-letter words immediately flew from my mouth as the rice and curry sauce I had been trying to scoop … [Read more...]

Tree Rings, Fountain Pens, and the Story of a Forest BY SHAWN REGAN When Dave Wager fells a tree, he gets a glimpse into the past. As we trudge through a forest in the mountains of western Montana, the extent of this history becomes apparent. Surrounding us is a tall stand of ponderosa pines, their thick, red bark attesting to their age, which Wager estimates to be 300 … [Read more...]

Finding Memories in the Ashes of the Pine Creek Fire BY PAT HILL The Pine Creek Fire devastated parts of the small community of Pine Creek while leaving others unscathed, and at Pine Creek Lodge, the storied Cabin Number Two was the only real structural casualty of the blaze. Cabin Number Two will now join Cabin Number One, taken out by a wayward driver a few years ago, in … [Read more...]

A Mountain Man Appears on Video, Reaching Across Time BY DAVID S. LEWIS Yesterday, today was tomorrow, and tomorrow, today will be yesterday. And so it goes. The future becomes the present and the present the past—while the only thing that’s real is now, this moment, which just slipped through the hourglass and became the past, as we move into another future, and there’s … [Read more...]

Preserved for Posterity, at Age 89, One Year Before His Death BY PAT HILL Andrew Garcia arrived on the scene in Montana as the days of the Old West were in their final decades, yet he embraced the West fully and became one its most legendary and colorful personalities. The adventures he recorded in manuscript form were eventually published as the popular book Tough Trip … [Read more...]