The first songbird to arrive on the thawing Northern Plains each spring isn’t the meadowlark. It’s the northern pintail, a graceful duck that whistles like your favorite uncle. That is, badly. Still, it’s the sound of spring across Montana’s Hi-Line and Canada’s prairie provinces. This......
I just baked some snickerdoodles. Eat ’em while they’re hot!” It was an unsuspecting proclamation while camping on southwest Wyoming’s Green River. And yet, to my astonishment, my friendly campground neighbor strolled over from her site and presented a plate full of delicious cookies as......
Let us begin with a flight of imagination purely of my own making. Around the time of first European contact, a band of Indigenous hunters has camped out of the wind in a sheltered canyon in what is now southern Montana. Perhaps they are Crow......
Sweat dripped from my brow as I bent over the grass, trying to figure out what I was looking at. “You need to find the shiny green ones,” Melinda Bullshoe Kipp called to me. “Is this one?” I asked, holding up a blade of grass.......
Charles Punchard arrived at the headquarters of Yellowstone National Park on July 19, 1918, with a letter in his hand. Signed by Stephen T. Mather, director of the newly formed National Park Service, the letter declared that Punchard had been hired as the agency’s first-ever......
Next to the iconic Missouri River, in the small city of Great Falls, Montana, I’m crouched with a camera near a mannequin wearing a repurposed prom dress in a room overflowing with fabrics, threads, and sequins. At center is a Singer sewing machine and at......
Nestled in the green grass and tucked against the tall mountains of Montana’s Paradise Valley is Skattum Dairy Farm. There, owner and operator Lily Andersen manages a herd of roughly 55 cows while overseeing how tradition and change can exist side by side. The dairy......
Editor’s Note: Outdoorsman E. Donnall Thomas Jr. has spent a lifetime in the field, forging a close connection with his working dogs. Today, he lives with his wife, Lori Thomas, in central Montana. This piece is adapted from their latest book collaboration, A Dog for......
In every corner of Montana, ranching and farming families are caring for their land in ways that improve yields and quality while also benefiting the larger ecosystem. In many ways, conservation isn’t an act for these people. It’s a way of life, which, in some......
In its ever-expanding engagement with art in the American West, Tinworks Art is opening another pathway for artists in Bozeman. This fall, the nonprofit adds to its Ida Street property by opening the Mill Building, a historic granary that’s been renovated to add 4,200 square......
In response to severe droughts across the western U.S., an interagency collaboration has produced a new interactive web-based tool called TroutCast, which can be used to support fisheries and water management in Montana. With short-term and long-term forecasts, TroutCast helps inform proactive decision-making for conservation......
Big Sky Journal is fortunate to work with many students of the West. These writers and photographers study the land and people of the region, seeking to understand their subjects intimately. As fall promenades gracefully through the trees, they notice the subtleties of the sun’s......
Remle Colestock, head chef at Glorietta Trattoria in Jackson, Wyoming, was named a 2026 James Beard Foundation Award Semifinalist for Best Chef in the Mountain Region, encompassing Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. It was his, and the Italian restaurant’s, first time as a semifinalist......
Before I even get to the front door, I’m surrounded by creatures: a couple of farm dogs, one of them definitely smiling, and a Great Pyrenees, both eager to be petted. There are chickens milling about, and I see red Scottish Highland cattle and some......
As military officers established frontier outposts in the American West, they brought with them favorite sporting traditions from back East. If an officer’s pursuit was hunting, he had to have dogs. Greyhounds accompanied General Eugene A. Carr during his 1869 Republican River Expedition in Colorado......
No one comes to Montana’s Paradise Valley just for the birds. There are greater things that draw people to this spectacular corridor, which is the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park and stretches 52 miles from Livingston south to Gardiner. Stunning Absaroka and Gallatin mountains......
ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN STUDIOH DESIGN CONSTRUCTION MAKO CONTRACTING LIGHTING AND WINDOW SHADE SYSTEMS SAV Both hardworking professionals, the San Francisco Bay Area couple had come to feel drawn more and more to the peace and tranquility of Montana. The husband fondly recalled his own......
“We need to move quickly,” my husband, Jack, urged, tethering our horses to the trunk of a fir tree as the dawn’s golden fingers grasped the darkness. “Take only your gun and a small pack. We’ve got a stiff climb.” Jack and I sprinted up......
“When you take a close look at history, not all women who came West brought their grandmother’s iris bulbs and settled into a little house on the prairie,” says artist Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey. “A lot of them were broke, alone, and out of options. Some......
She repeated it like a mantra: “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” Jeannette Rankin dedicated her life to making the world a better place. She advocated for better working conditions and labor rights, women’s suffrage, restricting child labor,......
It was down in Horse Prairie where elk hid in the timber, and our bellies laughed on Ellis Peak. We will drink the sun all the way back to the Stage Stop. Enjoy brown bottles with broken ranch hands, whose path is cut in heifers,......
The Northern Rockies remain a treasure trove for artistic talent, with many new and emerging artists hitting their stride. Here are a few artists catching our attention. Amanda Markel Sculptor Amanda Markel takes the fluidity of paint and translates it to bronze. Through the idea......
Growing up in Billings, Meghan Spielman and her sister were encouraged to explore every kind of art. They took classes at the Yellowstone Art Museum, studied watercolor painting during the summers, and were rarely told there was a right or wrong way to create. Today,......
Montana artist Mike Barlow is enamored with his subject matter. Like many artists, Barlow can be shy when talking about aesthetics. Serious artists, after all, are in the business of making art and are happy to leave judgment regarding its merits to philosophers. But when......
For Brooke Wetzel, experiences in the great outdoors inform her creativity. “We spent a lot of time outside and on the rivers,” she says of her childhood. “It’s where my love of nature came from. I’m a mountain girl. I’ve spent my life in the......
For many viewers, the first thing that emerges when observing a Kenneth Yarus painting isn’t the sheer scale of the mountains, the glint of glacial water, or the depth of the alpine sky. It’s how the piece makes a viewer feel — an emotional resonance.......
In a scene pulsing with tense energy, two bison bulls, each weighing as much as a ton, battle for primacy. Amid the clouds of dust they’re kicking up, one of them launches himself from the ground, hindquarters powerfully pushing, forelegs airborne, head and horns lowered.......
It’s a Saturday afternoon in Red Lodge, Montana, and I’m on my fourth cup of coffee as I take my seat in a small room above Black Canyon Bistro. Three songwriters — Montana’s Lena Rich and Tom Catmull, along with Nashville’s Tai Shan — tune......
If you believe, as Picasso did, that “the purpose of art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls,” or, like Kurt Vonnegut, that art is “a very human way of making life more bearable,” or, as Mary Oliver wrote, that “art......
For the last century, a quintessential Montana artist might have been known for creating traditional images of the wide-open, beautiful vistas and rugged terrain that define the region. Walk into an area gallery, and you’re likely to find oil paintings and watercolors of “big picture”......
In September 1892, artist Henry Herman “H.H.” Cross set up a studio at Marcus Daly’s Montana Hotel in Anaconda. There, Cross spent six months creating paintings of Daly’s racehorses, and on January 16, 1893, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the hotel was “the Mecca......
Crow Fair, known as the Tipi Capital of the World, is an unmatched cultural gathering in Crow Agency, Montana. The sheer volume of attendees speaks to the event’s popularity and is a testament to the resilience of the Crow (Apsáalooke) people. This year marks the......
Architecture Miller Roodell Architects Construction Benchmark Group Interior Design Design Associates Landscape Architecture Field Studio Landscape Architects When a couple asked Miller Roodell Architects and Design Associates to compose a final estate for gathering their multi-generational family, they had more than just the architecture in......
They never knew their locomotive engine had hit a bear that night. Up in the cab, amid all the engine noise and random conversation, Slug and Dillon droned down the rails, in the dark, westbound on Burlington Northern freight number 766. They didn’t feel so......
Four apple trees, boughs planed, hover shoulder-height above the ground, trunks twisted, coiled like dancers at the moment of a pivot. If these trees were to move, make their turns, reread the grooves creasing their bark, their red fruit would fly off into the dark......
Life’s splendor is all around, from the luminous quality of light during a Rocky Mountain sunset, to the magnificent stance of a grizzly bear lumbering along a hillside, to the transcending moment of triumph when a wild trout hooks onto a fly. These are the......
After seven years of dedicated work and fundraising, Rudy Autio [1926–2007] is now remembered through a newly remade steel version of his 1966 sculpture known as Signal. The new piece stands at the entrance of the University of Montana’s Miller Hall in Missoula, where Autio,......
Interior designer William Peace has left his mark on homes across the West. With a soulful and timeless approach, he creates spaces that tell a story and reflect a connection back to the land. The founder and principal of Peace Design based in Bozeman and......
Studio Cohab, a design firm in Bozeman, focuses on creating innovative, sustainable spaces, including cohousing developments designed to encourage connection and community living. Their work is guided by the belief that housing plays a vital role in people’s well-being, and that thoughtful design can create......
Under a bluebird sky in early spring, Jim Dolan stands amid a grove of bright red “phone booths” outside his Belgrade, Montana sculpture studio. Over the coming months, he’s planting them throughout the state beside quiet country roads, in wheat fields, in places where they......
Yellowstone National Park Written by Max Humphrey, with photography by Aaron Kraft Yellowstone National Park by Max Humphrey is a reimagined take on a travel guide for one of America’s most recognizable national parks. In this new release, Humphrey, an interior designer and author of......
Museums, galleries, and curated art events celebrating the artists of the Northern Rockies offer an intimate glimpse at life in the American West. Here are some upcoming calendar highlights: Ongoing Through August 23 Bison-tennial: From Colonization to Rematriation National Museum of Wildlife Art | Jackson,......
“I hardly know myself / and this has always been true,” says the speaker in the poem “Evening Song.” Former Montana Poet Laureate Tami Haaland’s new collection of poetry, If I Had Said Beauty (Lost Horse Press, $20), is a deep and thoughtful investigation into......
June in Montana is billowing clouds swelling across a sky that’s met by the spine of the mountains and a bed of verdant greens. The varied hues of plants harmoniously blend into a rich landscape of forests and meadows, mountains and plains. Defined by the......
Winding up a sage-covered hill just outside of Jackson, Wyoming, the National Museum of Wildlife Art offers a profound way to connect with art and the wildlife that inspires it. Spread out over a ¾-mile trail, 42 sculptures sit on the hill overlooking the National......
The boat launch on the northwest corner of Flathead Lake near Somers, Montana is a relatively quiet place. It’s quieter yet beneath a ceiling of heavy clouds and the kind of stillness that is to be expected once the throngs of lake lovers have turned......
Editor’s Note: Professor Daniel G. Block wrote his wilderness memoir at the end of his life in the late 2010s, and the unpublished manuscript was found in a box nearly a decade later by his grandson, Zach Block. Zach worked with a Montana historian and......
Montana Backcountry Discovery Route The Montana Backcountry Discovery Route documentary highlights the completion of the nonprofit Backcountry Discovery Routes’ (BDR) 23rd off-highway motorcycle route, which is the final portion of the Western BDR system, showcasing the immense beauty of Montana. Canvassing nearly 900 trail miles......
Kat Porco is reminiscent. She describes a warm June evening, the first summer after she and her husband, Mike, opened One Legged Magpie, an upscale restaurant and bar in downtown Red Lodge, Montana. Upstairs, a group of women were rehearsing for the town’s first drag......
Hairpin turns, pristine alpine lakes, abundant wildflowers, and endless views of the rugged Montana and Wyoming wilderness — these are some of the defining features of the Beartooth Highway, a 68-mile stretch of enchanted tarmac that transports travelers into another world. Jaw-dropping awe is all......