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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.

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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?”

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Flicker Egg on the banks of the Stillwater River, Nye Montana

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.

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Two Rivers Detention Facility, Hardin MT (photo courtesy city of Hardin)

Welcome to Montanamo Bay: Hardin Montana continues its campaign to become Gitmo North

Al-Jazeera? Yes, that network. The local news gave it all the shock-value of an invasion of the Taliban. In reality, the crew was two white dudes — one from D.C., one from Canada. It looked more like the invasion of the Nordic News Network. Not since Dick Cheney and his fishing guide swooped down in a Blackhawk helicopter to fish the nearby Bighorn have two white dudes garnered so much attention in Hardin.

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As if I needed anymore evidence that life is like high school

Congressman Denny Rehberg (Montana’s sole Representative) is making much of his “cutting-edge” social networking props, including Twitter and Facebook. How is this man supposed to be in any kind of realistic command of our state’s representation while he is still mired this deeply in his own infancy?

Is he so lost in his own navel-gazing delusions that he believes snarky and petulant comments pass as leadership?

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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.

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Sheep Shearing Video

Sheep Shearing Video

Ewe 17a gets a haircut Fromberg, Montana style.

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Armed and Dangerous

The first time I was arrested was on my dead father’s 52nd birthday.

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At the End of An American Metaphor: Santa Monica Pier, Route 66

Santa Monica Pier, the terminus of Main Street America, Route 66. A washed-up dead seal bobs in and out of the incoming waves, drawing the attention of beachcombers lazily walking this strip of sand at the edge of America, this resting place of the American Dream of westward expansion.

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Stillwater River, inside the A-B boundary, on the trail to Sioux Charley

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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The Shear Delight of Wool

17a, a pregnant Romney, ambles into the chute and stops. Her fleece corkscrews out from her body sending out shoots of thick wool in all directions. Grace, my ten-year old daughter, buries her hands deep into the wooly fleece and smiles. She runs off to find Anabel Lombard, the ewe’s owner, to have her to hold 17a’s fleece once it’s sheared. Grace has never chosen a fleece before. She goes with her intuition; with the way her hands feel buried into the ewe’s wool, with the way the ewe stops, tilts her head back, and looks up at this girl leaning over the railing, as though asking to be chosen.

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