Not What I Was Thinking When I Left
When I got in the car to head down to Yellowstone the other day, I was hoping to catch some of the tail end of the fall color season. And the Paradise Valley looked to be at its peak as we drove through it on the way.
Once we got to the park, however, it was apparent that most of the aspens had already changed colors and lost their leaves.
I was going to whiff, as a former editor of mine puts it. In Yellowstone. In fall.
We drove all over looking for a picture and finally stopped by the Lamar River to regroup. I decided to be still and see and lo and behold, pictures came to me. It shows me that it’s not circumstances that cause a whiff, it’s preconceived notions and inflexibility.
Sad Passing
I was sad to learn of the passing of Elouise Cobell yesterday. She died of cancer in Great Falls on Sunday just six months after I made this picture of her in her office in Browning. She was 65.
For those of you unfamiliar with her story, she sued the federal government on behalf of American Indians’ royalty claims, and won a record $3.4 billion settlement.
I remember her talking about taking care of others, not about taking care of herself.
She was a tenacious fighter for justice for a people long unrepresented and exploited. I admire her still.
Old School
That’s Dick Huttinga and two of his Percheron draft horses, Mac and Mitch, drawing a side delivery hay rake through a field south of Bozeman recently. Dick and his brother-in-law Larry Thomas like to use draft horses and old farming equipment to do work. They let me take pictures while Dick was raking hay and while they were harvesting oats and then threshing the oats while using Al Lien’s 1940 John Deere tractor, complete with flywheel starter. “Jesus Christ, we go to a lot of work just to have fun for a couple of days,” Lien said.
This is a personal project of mine. I’m planning to check back in with Dick and Larry. There’s something about those big horses. I don’t know what it is.
Holland Lake
I’ve been meaning to spend some time up at Holland Lake in the Swan Valley for quite a while and I finally made it last week. It was cold and it was raining, but I had a great time. What a beautiful place.
I was told the area has been set aside to be free from further development so it should remain much as it is today.
Picabia Quote
My friend and career coach, Ian Summers, gave me this quote from Francis Picabia to illustrate as an exercise. My friend and neighbor Jerry helped me out as a model.
Trashion has a new name
Welcome to the 2011 Junk 2 Funk show, held annually at Montana State University to raise money for Engineers Without Borders. The show used be called “Trashion,” but the goal is the same: help EWB help some people in Africa have clean water.
Entrants have to make costumes out of garbage and the results Saturday night were amazing.
Elk Park
The last few Falls, my friend Ernie has invited me up to his family ranch in Elk Park and I’m always happy to go. It’s a neat place with huge granite boulders and lithe aspen trees sprouting together out of the hilly ground surrounding the old house.
It’s simple and straight-forward. Pure, almost. And my spirit is always renewed when I return.
Sharp (sorry) book
This knife is made of Damascus steel in an extremely laborious process by Josh Smith of Frenchtown. Josh is a young man world-renowned as a maker of knives and swords — a centuries-old craft.
My buddy Al Kesselheim wrote a profile of Josh for a past issue of Montana Quarterly and Josh’s story will be one of the chapters in the book Al and I are publishing with Jane Freeburg’s Companion Press in the spring. We’re calling the book Montana: Real Place, Real People and we’re real proud of it. More to come….
Montana pets
Montana isn’t just horses and herding dogs. My friends Jack, 12, and Lily, 9, have an assortment of pets in addition to their two cats. There’s Spock the Jackson’s chameleon, Houdini the milk snake, plus some hissing cockroaches and an assortment of frogs.
Pettengill Creek
Over Labor Day weekend, Rena, Katie and I went camping along Pettengill Creek in the Beaverhead National Forest outside of Butte. The creek is named for George Pettengill, whose grave is nearby. Pettengill is alleged to have been a “fugitive from a love gone sour” and to have spent the last 40 years of his life living in the woods, his only friends the horses he fed by hand. He was nicknamed the “wild man of the mountains” and was an antisocial, but admired bachelor homesteader who lived in these mountains and wandered the woods along this creek in the late 1800s.
Thomas Lee True West 
