The cottonwood leaves, like teenagers, can’t sleep. They rattle nervously and drop to the ground or simply hang in the breeze waiting for someone to blow through and lift them away.
“Mad Money” Indeed: CNBC’s Jim Cramer, High Priest of Death
If we have learned anything from the past year, we should have learned that we are plagued by a kind of dark age, an age of ignorance, an age of economic illiteracy…
We rely on the priests and the prophets who have unmediated access to the gods of commerce. They translate the dense, opaque, confusing world to the rest of us. And they wield enormous power. They are often referred to in otherworldly, nearly priestly terms. Warren Buffet is interchangeably the “Sage of Omaha” and the “Oracle of Omaha.”

Crane Songs
From out in the fields I hear what has become a familiar spring sound, a loud rattling karooooo-oooooo of a family of sandhill cranes. A sound unique to this season, one that reaches out from primal history:

In Celebration of Spring (and weekends…and public lands)
One of the best times of the year to be in Montana. The heat and crowds haven’t descended. The world is green. The mountains are starting to give up their captive snows. Just goofing off with my camera (and the girls) on a hike in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Such an Uncomfortable Place to Hang Your Ass
When we were kids growing up in the Bible Belt, my mother used to threaten to wash our mouths out with soap if we told dirty jokes. Like a lot of kids in that era, in that place, my older brother and I used to try and juke her out by using off-color biblical references that involved the hint of slightly naughty words.
my brother: “Hey punk, who was the the most flexible man in the Bible?”

A Small Natural Grave
This Northern Flicker egg dropped at our feet while we goofing around with intertubes on the Stillwater River this Memorial Day. It seemed a fitting natural elegiac moment for a day given to remembering the dead.
Wolf Kill, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Winter Count #2)
He wasn’t very large by bull moose standards, with a fairly small set of antlers. He didn’t look healthy in fact. He was standing ankle-deep in the river, watching us, not moving, almost unsteady on his legs. Something about the way he was standing didn’t seem “right.” Of all the animals I do not want to tangle with, a bull moose, particularly a sick one, ranks near the top.

Sioux Charley Trail, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Winter Count #1)
4:30 A.M. Pitch black. Deep winter. Nothing but darkness and cold. Jack Ballard and I are making time up the trail before first light for an end-of-the-season deer hunt. The light from my headlamp swings back and forth, making me dizzy. I turn it off and move silently up the canyon. We’re aiming for a spot about three miles up and across the river…Out of nowhere it hits us — a howl comes straight out of the darkness.
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Police Room 619, September 12 September 12, 2009
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African Sausage August 10, 2009
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Ten Most Influential Books March 30, 2010
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Sioux Charley Trail, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Winter Count #1) March 7, 2009
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Sheep Shearing Video April 8, 2009
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Welcome to Montanamo Bay: Hardin Montana continues its campaign to become Gitmo North May 14, 2009
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Magic City Hen video & Expo this Saturday September 16, 2011
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Some Dreamers Along the Golden Line September 15, 2011
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The Mind Eraser March 3, 2011
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Bright Edges of the Earth December 21, 2010
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Acceptable Blasphemies: Reflections on Opening Day October 27, 2010
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Welcoming Autumn September 23, 2010
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Brad Johnson: Annabel. well, I wouldn't say either sara or i ar...
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annabel: I thought I might be getting a photo display of Bu...
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Seth Gilcreast: Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog...
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Lera Beile: wonderful post...
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About This Site
140 miles east of cool is both a place and a space.
As a place, 140 miles east of cool is where I live–exactly 140 miles east of Bozeman, Montana in the “Magic City” of Billings, MT.
As a space, 140 miles east of cool lies at the margins of the metaphorical epicenters of the amenity west: places like Bozeman, Aspen, and Boulder.









