Tucked into the cozy down sleeping bag in my vintage 1977 Toyota Chinook micro-camper, I yawned, rolled over, and pondered morning coffee. My awakening consciousness was startled by loud clawing outside the camper. I looked out the open window. A grizzly bear’s moist snout was...
Summertime foot traffic blooms in the historic downtown district of Sheridan, Wyoming. Known for its rodeo culture, idyllic atmosphere, street dances, and proximity to the Bighorn Mountains, Sheridan has quietly secured its reputation as a popular mountain town with true Western flair. I’m visiting on 3rd...
The food at Teton Valley Lodge has to be phenomenal. Anything less and guests would stay out fly fishing until nightfall. Based near Driggs, Idaho, the lodge’s guides assist guests on three Blue Ribbon fisheries — the South Fork and Henry’s Fork of the Snake...
Undervaluing creeks seems a perennially popular ailment among fly fishers. Leave ’em to their losses, I say: All the more water and fish for me. Clearly, I don’t suffer from their dysfunction of insight. My first fly-caught fish, a subcompact coastal cutthroat trout, happened on a...
Standing at my window on New Year’s Day — holding a steaming cup and watching the snow in the sliver of light cut by a streetlight across the way — I feel like I’m in one of those holiday coffee commercials. Christmas has come and...
In the fall of 1991, I received a call from Robert Redford’s personal assistant: “Bob is extremely grateful for what you did for him yesterday and asked if he could return the favor,” she said. Seriously? I thought. Robert Redford is granting me a favor? Without...
It’s a cold, rainy off-season night in Jackson, Wyoming. There aren’t many tourists around town, and a lot of businesses are closed for a few-week break, but when I walk into the Silver Dollar Bar & Grill at The Wort Hotel, I’m enveloped by warmth...
Although it was late June, the thermometer in my brother’s truck read 32 degrees Fahrenheit when we reached the trailhead around 8 o’clock in the morning. Such cold on a summer day could have dampened our spirits, but we were excited to see no other...
Under a vast and infinite sky, north-central Montana stretches out before me like another world. It is a place swept clean by time itself — an ancient seabed where the waves have long since gone, leaving only an ocean of grass and wind. Traveling across...
Pale Morning Dun in June streamwater run Clouds pass above the gorge darkpined, steepsided down the rocksmooth flow and valleyshadows shifting turn darkwater bright as gold Pale Morning Dun the Rainbows wait deep down in darkgreen pool beside the slick beyond the rock greyspeckled flags that hold and flutter in the brook The hatch is on Pale Morning Dun Emergers...