Missoula Magazine Summer 2012

summer 2012

river runs as the

Celebrating the 20 th Anniversary of 'A River Runs Through It'

home grown

duel of the homes

experience missoula's markets

friendly rivalry over home progress

backcountry canoe

life at hand

exploring waterways in comfort & style

meet a champion handball player

art evolution missoula public art guide inside!

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letter from the editor

remember my first, and only, interview with Robert Redford – and I bet he does, too.

We were on a school bus bumping along the backroads of Whitman County, Washington, headed for an environmental show-and-tell by students at Washington State University. Redford was the money behind the effort.

The interview was routine stuff. The smoke that filled the school bus midinterview wasn’t.

Redford took charge, ordering everyone off the bus, then took off running down the road to the nearest farmhouse. Within minutes, he was back – aboard a three-wheeler with gallons of water and a bemused wheat farmer. The fire was extinguished. The Sundance Kid rode again.

And the reporter on board – I worked for the Associated Press in Spokane at the time – had a story.

Nine years went by before Redford again entered my journalistic field of vision. By then, it was 1992 and the actor was in Livingston as the director of “A River Runs Through It,” the movie version of Norman Maclean’s lovely novella.

This go-round, I wasn’t assigned to the story on the movie’s making – but rather, as time passed, to a number of stories about how the movie changed the larger world’s view of, and interest in, Missoula and fly fishing and Maclean's ever-revered Blackfoot River.

For a while, everyone wanted to come fish our waters. The fly-fishing industry reported a 60 percent increase in 1992, and another 60 percent in 1993.

“It was like the Spanish Armada going down the Blackfoot,” said Maclean’s son, John.

Then environmental groups figured out how to parlay that interest into donations and political support for cleaning up those waters, damaged after more than a century of upstream mining and smelting. And work began and was accomplished, and eventually the Armada retreated and the river seemed almost at peace.

It’s hard to believe 20 years have gone by. But they have, and in this edition of Missoula magazine, we have a thoughtful look back at the movie, the book, the aftermath and more. The reporter and photographer who covered the movie’s making for the Missoulian – Vince Devlin and Michael Gallacher – teamed up again for the restrospective.

It’ll send you back to the Blackfoot for a summer’s day.

So, too, is this edition filled with tributes to all that we here in the newsroom love about summertime in these environs: farmers markets, festivals and fairs, backcountry sojourns, a touch of nostalgia, a taste of the future.

Sherry Devlin is editor of Missoula magazine and the Missoulian newspaper.

She can be reached at (406) 523-5250 or by email at sdevlin@missoulian.com.

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bookmark it!

Go online to Missoulian.com throughout the summer for:

wildflowers!

Join Justin Grigg as he explores the mountainsides, creek bottoms and woods in search of western Montana’s colorful flora on WildflowerWalks.com.

trout!

Let Bob Meseroll guide you into the wonderful world of western Montana fly fishing on his blog, TalkingTrout.com.

politics!

Nowhere else will you find the depth and breadth of western Montana election coverage than on the Missoulian’s website. For news on races, issues and candidates, check out Elections 2012 at http://missoulian.com/elections_2012.

social networking!

On the go this summer? Keep up to date with breaking news, feature, sports and other happenings in western Montana by following the Missoulian on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and at Missoulian.com.

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missoula.com flagship magazine missoula is is thethe flagship magazine of of the the missoulian missoulian newspaper newspaper publisher john vanstrydonck publisher jim mcgowan editor sherrydevlin devlin editor sherry sales managers tara murphy halls art director kate brooke assistant art director mike lakeredpath photo editor kurt wilson photo editor kurt wilson art director mike lake advertising director kristen assistant art director meganbounds richter online director jim mcgowan sales representative jacque walawander

writers kimakimoff briggeman writers tim jennacohen cederberg betsy rob chaney gwen florio betsygadbow cohen daryl sherry devlin lori grannis gwen florio michael jamison nick lockridge bob bobmeseroll meseroll michael michaelmoore moore fritz murphy neighbor kate greg patent joe nickell bill speltz greg patent barbara theroux jodi rave

Downtown Missoula

August 25&26,2012

www.RiverCityRootsFestival.com with heaDlineRs

photographers tom bauer michael gallacher photographers tom bauer linda thompson kurt wilson michael gallacher linda thompson

graphic design kurt jesse brockmeyer wilson diann kelly mike lake graphic design diann kelly megan richter megan richter josh quick chris sawicki

advertising sales youa jacque walawander vang 406-523-5271 advertising sales jacque walawander sales assistant 523-5271 holly kuehlwein

distribution Available in more than 160 racks distribution .Available in more 160 racks in westernfor Montana, in western Montana, Missoula magazine is than a natural extension people Missoula.com magazine is athe natural extension for people who read and rely80,000 on the to who read and rely on Missoulian newspaper.

Reaching Missoulian newspaper.

Reaching 80,000 to 90,000 readers daily,recognized the Missoulianas has long 90,000 readers daily, the Missoulian has long been the been recognized as the most thorough, of newsMontana. in western Montana. most thorough, in-depth sourcein-depth of newssource in western Missoula Missoula.com magazine this award-winning coverage anotherstep, step, showing off magazine takes thistakes award-winning coverage another showing the of Missoula in words and capitalizing on By the capitalizing Missoulian’s offvery thebest very best of Missoula inphotographs. words and By photographs. presence the region and utilizing its established chain and of distribution, on the throughout Missoulian’s presence throughout the region utilizing Missoula. its com magazine and Missoula.com Web siteMissoula reach more readers in more places than any established chain of distribution, magazine and Missoula. other such publication in western Montana.in more places than any other such com website reach more readers publication in western Montana.

No part of the publication may be reprinted without permission. ©2007 Lee Enterprises, all rights reserved.

Printed in the USA. No part of the publication may be reprinted without permission.

©2012 Lee Enterprises, all rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

on the cover:

on Springer the cover: Ryan pedals along the Clark Fork River with a delivery of years after the bound releasefor of the movie “AMissoula River Runs Through It,” LeTwenty Petit Outre breads downtown restaurants.

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the Blackfoot River, where the story is set, still provides a magical experience for anglers.

cover

by Michael linda thompson cover photo photo by Gallacher

JOHN FOGERTY JUNE 15 RINGO STARR JULY 13 EARTH, WIND & FIRE JULY 19 KELLY CLARKSON & THE FRAY JULY 22 JOURNEY, PAT BENATAR & LOVERBOY JULY 29 DARIUS RUCKER AUGUST 4 SUGARLAND AUGUST 16 HEART SEPTEMBER 9

OUTD

R

SUMMER

CONCERTS

Order tickets online or call the Northern Quest box office: 509.481.6700

Lineup is subject to change. missoula magazine

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inside this issue

vol.6 no.2

missoula markets

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contents

summer 2012

all year long

in season

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the way we were

30

as the river runs

10

western montana festivals

38

home grown

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thirsty missoula

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whole hog

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missoula reads

50

backcountry canoe

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western montana getaway

56

virtual montana

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on the fly

60

duel of the homes

26

missoula cooks

68

life at hand

90

parting shot

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summer vignettes

80

climb the sublime

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It certainly changed fly-fishing, and it probably changed the state of Montana.

John Maclean, page 30

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the way we were

family vacation

1931

The six children of H.L. and Ruth Haines, and a family of friends visiting from Iowa, board the Haines’ boat, Ruth, in 1931 for a cruise on Flathead Lake. The Haines children in the photograph are Jack, Harriet, Mary, David, Don and Ken. Harry L. Haines is in the foreground.

Photograph courtesy of Bill Haines

missoula magazine

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western montana events

KURT WILSON

It will be time to put your boots on when the Missoula Stampede Rodeo comes to town on Aug. 7-12.

summer adventures by betsy cohen

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urrounded by mountains, lakes and rivers, western Montana is the ideal place for summer adventure.

But not all of our expeditions involve camping, climbing or boating gear.

In fact, you could spend every weekend having a whole different kind of outdoor fun – going not mountain to mountain or river to river, but town to town.

On any given weekend, you’ll find art shows, beer fests, concerts, rodeos, fairs, farmers markets, horse shows, car rallies, Celtic festivals, bluegrass festivals – and more.

(For a full calendar of events go to www.visitmt.com.)

The following are just a few of the standout events taking place across western Montana this summer – just to get you up, out and on the road.

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western montana events

Missoula Marathon Sunday, July 8

Celebrate the marathon’s sixth year by lining the race’s scenic route around Missoula and cheering on the runners.

This annual event has made national headlines and earned international acclaim for its beauty, its laid-back vibe and for Missoula’s welcoming community. The half marathon and the marathon attract runners from around the world, who come to run for themselves, to fundraise, to honor loved LINDA THOMPSON ones and friends, and for the sheer joy of running.

On Saturday, July 7, the marathon hosts a trade fair at Caras Park, which is also the place where runners pick up their race packets. Everyone is welcome.

The cannon blast starting the Missoula Marathon can be heard on Sunday, July 8.

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western montana events

Creamery Picnic August 3-5, Stevensville

MICHAEL GALLACHER

Stevensville’s Creamery Picnic, including the lip-smacking Montana State Barbecue Championship, is scheduled for Aug. 3-5.

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This summer marks the picnic’s 100th anniversary. To celebrate the occasion, the three-day party is filled with all kinds of family fun, including live entertainment, plenty of food and drink, a microwbrew festival, and the ever-popular Montana State Barbecue Championship.

For a full schedule of events, go to www.creamerypicnic.com.

western montana events

Western Montana Fair August 7-12 Carnival rides, cotton candy, handsome cowboys and beautiful cowgirls, goats, pigs and a ferris wheel – all that and more can be found at this old-fashioned, big-time fair in the heart of Missoula. Spend all day, or just come for the evening performances.

Either way, there’s plenty to see and do for the whole family. Among the many main attractions, professional bull riding takes place on Aug. 7-8, the PRCA Rodeo takes place on Aug. 10-12 and the demolition derby is on Aug. 12.

For full schedule of events go to www.westernmontanafair.com.

Other not-to-miss events in Whitefish this summer include:

Festival Amadeus, a weeklong classical musical festival, which takes place July 22-28. A free open air concert kicks off the festival at 6 p.m. in Depot Park. The festival features esteemed musicians Amit Peled, Alon Goldstein, Dina Weimer, Paul Coletti and Tim Fain, to name a few.

Montana Music Festival, Aug 31-Sept.

2, Whitefish. The festival lineup includes: Friday, Aug. 31, 8 p.m., The Montana Band Midnight Jam at the O’Shaughnessy Center, 1 Central Ave. Saturday, Sept. 1, 1 p.m., The Outlaws, Johnny V & the Knockouts, Kenny James Miller Band at Depot Park.

Sunday, Sept. 2, 1 p.m., Blackhawk, Montana Band Reunion Jam & Moonshine Mountain at Depot Park.

Carnival rides, cotton candy, handsome cowboys and beautiful cowgirls, goats, pigs and a ferris wheel – all that and more.

Huckleberry Days Art Festival August 10-12, Whitefish

The Huckleberry Days Art Festival is a celebration of the fabulous native purple fruit found in abundance in this region.

Held in downtown Whitefish at Depot Park, this three-day annual event features arts and crafts, a bake-off contest, beer garden and lots of family fun. Restaurants offer signature huckleberry drinks, entrees and desserts in honor of the grizzly bear’s favorite summertime treat.

All the fun takes place Friday from noon to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m..

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thirsty misosula “It kind of brings me back to when I first started bartending and hearing a lot of old-time bartenders talk about old-school, crafted cocktails,” says Seamus Hammond, owner of Missoula’s James Bar, of the Moscow mule cocktail.

drink story

copper cheers by jenna cederberg

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n search of a cocktail that’s crisper than glacier water melted by the summer sun?

Go find yourself a Moscow mule.

The classic old-school cocktail combines ginger beer, vodka and fresh lime, and it’s fast becoming a staple around Missoula because of its ability to frost the fingerprints right off the signature copper mug it comes in.

“It’s unique and I think it gets people back to a different age, where glassware was really, really important,” said Seamus Hammond, owner of James Bar in downtown Missoula.

James Bar has become the go-to venue for those wishing to get their Moscow mule fix. The bar has about 26 copper mugs, and those have been hard to snag lately as the Moscow mule has become more popular.

But back in the 1940s, gin and bourbon ruled the cocktail roost.

That was until a down-on-his-luck vodka distributor sat down

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photo by michael gallacher

at the Cock N Bull bar in Hollywood and struck up a conversation with the owner, who just happened to have plenty of ginger beer he couldn’t seem to give away.

Together with the help of a copper mine heiress, they concocted one of the most delicious marketing schemes in history. “(The vodka distiller) had one of the first Polaroid cameras in America, and he would take shots of the drink to show at every other bar. ‘Hey, this other bar is selling ginger beer,’ ” Hammond said. “Then vodka, from that point on, just took off and it’s still responsible for the vodka craze we’re experiencing today.”

Hammond’s bartenders keep the James Bar’s Moscow mule classic by keeping it simple.

“We do two ounces of vodka, the rest ginger beer with a fresh lime squeeze,” he said. “It kind of brings me back to when I first started bartending and hearing a lot of old-time bartenders talk about old-school, crafted cocktails.”

thirsty misosula

moscow mule the classic, fresh cocktail

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vodka

ginger beer

ot only did vodka get a boost, Cock N Bull remains the go-to ginger beer for Moscow mules. It has the recipe for the drink right on its label.

But it’s not the only brand in town. Worden’s Market actually sells eight brands of ginger beer.

There’s actually no alcohol in ginger beer, which is brewed with ginger and no sugar.

“It’s not sugar water, it’s actually made with ginger,” said Worden’s brewmeister Mark Thomsen.

In his opinion, the ginger gives the drink its fresh and crisp qualities, while the copper mug and vodka dress it up nicely.

“That’s what the whole mixed-drink thing is all about, the panache and putting it together,” he said.

The novelty of the copper mug has spread with the popularity of the drink.

fresh lime

copper mug

KrisCo Liquor owner Jacque Thomas started stocking cooper mugs she gets from Butte because demand got so high in the past six months. The mugs sell for around $21, but are flying off the shelves along with Thomas’ stock of Cock N Bull ginger beer.

“There is this resurgence of classic cocktails and I hope it continues,” Hammond said.

Whatever the next fad brings, the Moscow mule will always be there to keep things cool.

Jenna Cederberg is a Missoulian reporter. She can be reached at (406) 523-5241 or by email at jcederberg@missoulian.com.

Michael Gallacher is a Missoulian photographer. He can be reached at (406) 523-5270 or by email at mgallacher@missoulian.com.

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missoula reads

literary landscape by barbara theroux

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photo by michael gallacher

hether you are a “local” or a visitor, remember to prepare for your adventures by reading histories, guidebooks and, of course, the weather to be able to enjoy your time in the out-of-doors. This summer there are new publications and new editions of old favorites to update your travels throughout the state.

“Moon Montana” by Judy Jewell and Bill McRae Seasoned travel writers Judy Jewell and W.C. McRae share the best ways to experience all that Montana has to offer, from the wilderness of Yellowstone to the rolling prairies of the state’s eastern region. McRae and Jewell lead travelers to the highlights of the Big Sky Country with trip ideas such as “A Lewis and Clark Expedition” and “Fishing Southwest Montana.”

Complete with tips for cross-country skiing at Glacier National Park, observing elk at Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, and finding the best watering holes in Missoula, “Moon Montana” gives travelers the tools they need to create a more personal and memorable experience.

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missoula reads

“Moon Spotlight Missoula & Northwestern Montana” This 80-page compact guide is also

by Judy Jewell and Bill McRae. It covers the best of Montana’s northwestern region, including Missoula, the Bitterroot Valley, and Flathead Lake.

This lightweight guide is packed with recommendations on entertainment, shopping, recreation, accommodations, food, and transportation, making navigating this lake- and forest-filled region of Montana uncomplicated and enjoyable.

“Scenic Routes & Byways Montana”

by S. A. Snyder

Pack up the car and enjoy gorgeous drives through some of the most spectacular scenery the area has to offer. “Scenic Routes & Byways Montana” features nearly 25 separate drives through the Treasure State, from the breathtaking Beartooth Highway to the rugged rangelands and red-tinted badlands of eastern Montana. Inside you’ll find: a route map for each drive; in-depth descriptions of attractions; optional side trips to museums, parks, and landmarks; tips on lodging, camping, dining, travel services, and best driving seasons.

“Day Hikes in the Beartooth Mountains” by Robert Stone

The beautiful Beartooth Mountains are home to glaciers, deep canyons, streams, waterfalls, over a thousand lakes, abundant wildlife, protected wilderness areas, national forests, and North America’s largest alpine tundra region. Now in its fifth edition, “Day Hikes in the Beartooth Mountains” includes an extensive collection of hikes within this mountain range bordering Yellowstone National Park.

The 123 hikes featured in this book range from 10,000-foot plateaus and peaks to treks along the Yellowstone River.

The hikes lie within a 120-mile radius of Red Lodge, an active resort and ski town.

A range of scenery and hike lengths are included, from relaxing creekside strolls to all-day, top-of-the-world outings. All hikes can be completed during the day.

Map sources and references are listed for extending the hikes.

“Hiking the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness” by Scott Steinberg

The SelwayBitterroot Wilderness is a vast domain that encompasses over 2,000

square miles of rugged Idaho and Montana backcountry. In this completely revised and updated guidebook, detailed hike narratives, extensive introductory material, and accurate maps guide you to the rushing waterfalls, rustic lookouts, high peaks, and steaming hot springs scattered throughout this wilderness complex.

With over 70 hikes covering access points in both Idaho and Montana, this definitive guidebook describes 600 miles of hikes in detail and provides cursory descriptions of another 300 miles of backcountry routes covering all or portions of six Forest Service ranger districts in four national forests.

“Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone Country” by Marc S. Hendrix

Although it’s also known for wolves, bison, and stunning scenery, Yellowstone National Park was established as the world’s first national park in 1872 largely because of its geological wonders. In “Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone Country,” author and geologist Marc Hendrix takes you to over 20 sites in the park and surrounding region that illustrate the deep-time story of Yellowstone Country, from its early existence as a seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago to an earthquake swarm in 2008 that caused some folks to wonder if the Yellowstone Volcano was going to blow its top again.

Day Hikes with Dogs: Western Montana”

by Wendy Pierce, Becky Warren and their dogs Longtime Montana residents, hikers, and dog lovers Wendy Pierce and Becky Warren feature 55 hikes in this comprehensive guide to western Montana. The trails are rated easy to strenuous, with maps and photos included for each route. The authors include information not easily gleaned from a map, including how easy it is for a dog to get to water from the trail, where to keep your dog under control, and where it’s OK to let him or her roam free.

Their beloved dogs also wrote “notes” about each hike, including observations about squirrels, swimming holes, horse poo, and how easy or difficult the hike was for each age and breed.

Hikes in wilderness areas, hikes close to urban areas, dog parks in cities, and good places to release pent-up energy from too much time in the car are all described. With this much information in one easy-to-use source, there’s no excuse – time to get out hiking!

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missoula reads

“Montana Waterfalls” by Larry

and Nathan Johnson

This one-of-a-kind book describes how to find more than 50 spectacular waterfalls in Montana. From thundering drops to vibrant cascades, each waterfall is clearly described with photos, maps, directions, and helpful information on nearby camping, hiking, geology, and history. Some of the waterfalls can be driven to; some are an easy walk from a parking area; and some require hiking or bushwhacking.

Each one was hand-picked by the authors, who spent seven years searching for the best waterfalls in the state, from known attractions to hidden wilderness marvels they found on their own. Now you can use “Montana Waterfalls” to make your own discoveries and see, hear, and enjoy some of the most beautiful phenomena in nature.

“Montana Before History: 11,000 Years of HunterGatherers in the Rockies and Plains” by Douglas

H. MacDonald

Dig into Montana’s past with this guide to the state’s best archaeological sites. A cache north of Livingston, the oldest known evidence of humans in Montana, was left by mammoth hunters more than 11,000 years ago. Their cultural descendants survived in Montana until modern times, hunting game and gathering roots and berries.

“Montana Before History,” organized

continued on page 86

“4x4 Routes of Western Montana”

by Willie and Jeanne Worthy

Join the authors as they travel on a variety of roads, from easy enjoyable outings to roads that will challenge your driving skills. Over 40 routes with turn-by-turn directions, mileage and GPS coordinates will guide you along interesting primitive motorized routes of western Montana. Explore old mining areas, poke around old buildings, enjoy magnificent views, and visit high elevation mountain lakes as you learn about the histories of early settlements and geology of the routes.

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western montana getaway

Blodgett Canyon Overlook offers breathtaking views like this one. It’s a nice reward for a relatively short hike that begins at Canyon Creek west of Hamilton. Along the way, hikers are enticed by views of the Canyon Creek drainage, the Sapphire Mountains and the Bitterroot Valley.

happy trails

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inding detailed information on favorable hiking trails in western Montana is like asking for directions to Alaska.

Most folks can point you in the right direction, but it’s tough to glean any specifics.

Maybe it’s best to get your facts from someone with tender feet. A Montana transplant perhaps, sent to this land to untangle the mysteries of mountain hiking.

Take, for example, yours truly – an Iowa transplant who has endured some of the trial and error you’re hoping to avoid. A man who once drove his wife and 12-year-old daughter an hour out of town to find a trail that would make a mountain goat turn back.

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Part of the problem in inquiring about prime hiking spots is the question itself.

Before asking, you want to consider the hiking résumé of the individual fielding the question.

If you’re new to the game, you won’t want to frequent the same places favored by a rock climber whose idea of fun is holding on by his fingertips to the side of a jagged wall. You don’t want to take advice from one of these gung-ho backpackers, either – guys who aren’t satisfied unless they’re 20 miles in.

You’re looking for someone with basic information you can use. Someone like me, a careful cragsman who lived in Montana a couple years before realizing that trailhead wasn’t a term to describe someone who

story and photo by bill speltz hikes too much.

What many of us want is a place to make breathtaking discoveries and still be back to the car in 90 minutes. A spot where we might take Mom and Dad to show them the splendor of the Treasure State without having to carry them back to the minivan.

If that sounds like you, I’ve got a great spot.

Just west of Hamilton there’s a place called Blodgett Canyon. Radical climbers who wear half gloves and carry a lot of rope will tell you it’s an awesome place to “hang.”

But that’s just part of the appeal of this expansive area, which is situated at the doorway of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

western montana getaway

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hose seeking a more moderate adventure need to try a short hike that starts at the Canyon Creek trailhead and ends at Blodgett Overlook. The payoff is priceless – a steep dropoff on the canyon’s south wall.

“I like how you’ve got a lot of really pretty vistas along the way and as you look into the valley it’s beautiful,” offered Deb Gale, who serves as the Bitterroot National Forest’s program lead for trails. “Then of course where you end is pretty spectacular.

most memorable experience of her stay.

Certainly there was nothing that compared when it came to photo opportunities.

The three-mile trail leads north up Romney Ridge. Amazing views are available almost all the way. Featured are the peaks surrounding Blodgett Canyon, the Canyon Creek drainage, the Sapphire Mountains to the east, the Bitterroot Valley and the town of Hamilton below.

All of these views are at your disposal for a minimal climb in elevation (about

falling to your doom. Keep your loved ones and pets close and you’ll be fine.

“It’s a great place to go for just a day hike or just an afternoon of walking,” Gale said. “It seems like you’re never on that trail without seeing people with dogs.

“Even though parts of it go through burn areas, we don’t have a lot of problems keeping the trail open.”

The Canyon Creek trailhead is less than an hour’s drive from Missoula and just minutes from Hamilton. When you’re

Blodgett is best known for its towering faces of chossy Bitterroot granite. Just remember that when you reach the end of this trail, those towering faces make for a mighty scary dropoff.

“You’ll see mountain goats occasionally, a number of pretty songbirds and red-tailed hawks. It varies. That’s what’s real nice as you walk the switchbacks.

And there’s a lot of wildflowers.”

There’s nothing particularly demanding about the hike. My wife, kids and a German foreign exchange student we hosted made the trek and it may have been the

540 feet). For those who prefer to pace themselves, benches are provided at various lookout points.

Blodgett is best known for its towering faces of chossy Bitterroot granite. Just remember that when you reach the end of this trail, those towering faces make for a mighty scary dropoff.

There’s no fencing to prevent you from

finished hiking, I suggest heading to Hamilton for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at Coffee Cup Cafe. The decor and service is a step back in time and the people are every bit as friendly as you’d expect.

Bill Speltz is a Missoulian sportswriter.

He can be reached at (406) 523-5255 or by email at bspeltz@missoulian.com.

missoula magazine

21

on the fly

fly into summer by bob meseroll

pmd Comparadun: A compara-dun is a good pattern for the pale morning dun hatch.

S

ome people use a calendar to mark the passage of time.

I prefer to divide my summer up into insect hatches.

I’ll grant you, it’s not as precise as a Swiss watch, but the bugs provide what’s most important to me for the warm-weather months: What the trout are chowing on.

Once the salmonflies give way to the green drakes, I know it’s time to get my Father’s Day card in the mail and figure out where I’m going to watch the final round of the U.S. Open.

When the golden stones really get cranked up, it’s time to get the grill cleaned, buy some burgers and sedate the dog for the upcoming fireworks.

When those little tricos start floating around above the water, it’s time to think about getting out to the fair to watch the rodeo.

And when the big mahogany duns and grey drakes come floating down the rivers like the Spanish Armada, pads will be crunching on football fields in every little town in the Treasure State.

S

almonflies mark the beginning of summer for many western Montana anglers. They’re not present in all four rivers that are the subject of this story (Bitterroot, Clark Fork, Blackfoot and Rock Creek), but it’s not hard to figure out where they are: Follow the first pickup trailing a drift boat you see.

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photos by michael gallacher

Salmon Fly: The bigger the better when casting salmonflies to ravenous trout.

Rusty Spinner: Don’t neglect the rusty spinner fall at last light.

Rock Creek and the Blackfoot are renowned for their salmonflies and they’re also present in the East and West forks of the Bitterroot. There are isolated pockets of the big orange stoneflies on the Clark Fork, but not enough to mention.

“It’s big bugs, it’s like chucking a bird out there almost,” said guide Taylor Scott of the Missoulian Angler Fly Shop, who lists the salmonfly hatch as his favorite of the summer. “You’ve got bigger fish than normal coming up eating what’s like a big hot dog for them.

“A lot of times it’s during high water or when high water is coming down, like on Rock Creek or the West Fork of the Bitterroot. You have fish coming from water you wouldn’t even think there’s fish there, it’s moving so fast. They’ll come out of what seems like nowhere to grab these big orange bugs on top of the water.

“There’s days where you’ll be driving back and your windshield will be covered with salmonfly guts.”

There’s a colorful image, but you get Scott’s point: The big bugs are thick. So go ahead and match the hatch.

“Big and ugly,” Scott suggested. “Some guys fish them up to size 4. Just throw them to the banks, get them under the willows.

I’ll typically throw around 2X leader.”

But once the hatch has been going for a while and the fish begin to wise up, Scott suggests going a different route.

“The nice thing is around that time of year they get pounded pretty hard with the

salmonfly patterns, but you’ve got yellow sallies hatching at that time of year, you have golden stones coming out and you have green drakes,” Scott said. “A lot of times they’ll start to get picky because everybody in Montana starts throwing salmonflies at them. If you throw them a golden stone or a yellow sally – something they haven’t seen – a lot of times that will be a better producer during the salmonfly hatch than the actual salmonfly.”

And he goes one step further: Tie your own bugs.

“They know shop patterns when they see them,” Scott said. “The guys who tie their own flies really have the upper hand in all fly fishing because they can make their own pattern, something that looks different than other patterns out there that people buy in the shop. I think that’s a big key, for people to start tying their own flies, especially with all the pressure we have on the rivers.

“You’re a fish and you’re down there and boat after boat goes by and flies are being swung over your head all day – they get smart, people don’t give fish enough credit, they definitely get smart.”

T

he mid-summer staples are caddis flies, along with pale morning and pale evening duns, as far as aquatic insects go.

As the weather heats up, so will fishing with terrestrials like ants, grasshoppers, beetles and spruce moths.

When Jim Cox, co-owner of the

Soft Hackle: A soft hackle can elicit violent strikes from trout feeding on caddis.

Kingfisher Fly Shop, can tear himself away from his beloved streamers for a few minutes, you’ll likely find him fishing the evening caddis hatch.

“I do like the caddis and swinging soft hackles right at twilight,” Cox said, referring to an old-school tactic that dates to the earliest days of fly fishing. “That’s probably my favorite summer thing. When you’re swinging them, the hits are like miniature steelhead stuff – they’re violent.

The hits are like streamers, which is why I like them.

“I like that whole limited visibility time of day where you know it’s a big fish, but you don’t know how big until you get them into the bank.

For my money, there’s no better time to be in the water than the last couple of hours before total darkness.”

“The bats are coming out, the nighthawks are flying around – it’s good stuff,” Cox said.

And if you want more than just a couple of hours of action before dark, get to the river at about dinner time and fish the pale evening duns. They can provide nice action up until the caddis start dancing around the river.

Once the fish stop sipping and start splashing, you’ll know they’ve switched from the mayflies to the caddis flies. As dark grows near, though, don’t assume all the fish will still be smacking the caddis.

It’s about that time that the rusty mayfly spinners will fall to the water. missoula magazine

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on the fly “That’s a fairly common deal, where you’ll have fish keying on what amounts to the secondary hatch,” Cox said. “Kind of like when you go up on the Bitterroot and the fatties are chowing neumoras instead of the skwalas.

“When they’re eating the spinners, they’re generally much more delicate rises.

The caddis stuff is a violent feeding session.

You’ll see noses poking up in between the splashy rises and that’s an indicator that at least some of those fish are looking for the spinners.”

With the exception of pale morning duns on rare overcast or rainy days in the heat of summer, mid-day hatches can be sparse. That’s a good time to go to terrestrials.

“It’s hard to discount slopping a big hopper pattern, casting with one arm and smoking your cigar with the other,” Cox said. “It doesn’t matter where it lands because they’re going to move 10 feet to eat it. That’s pretty good, too.”

Cox suggests ants and bees as good alternatives to hoppers, but he flat-out raves about the spruce moths.

“They look like little white moths,” Cox said of the bug that can be imitated with a size 10 or 12 elk-hair caddis, the lighter in color the better. “The best spruce moth fishing I’ve seen was last year. The stuff that was going on on the Blackfoot last year was unbelievable.”

T

ricos, the tiny black-bodied, whitewinged mayflies, provide a nice segue

from late summer into fall fishing.

While they can begin hatching as early as late July, they’re more typically an August hatch that can extend into October, depending on weather and water conditions.

The sheer volume of flies is impressive, as is the feeding frenzy that ensues when the spinners hit the water.

The trico hatch suffered through Missoula and beyond with the removal of the Milltown Dam, but it seemed to be recovering last summer, at least in spots.

“The stuff that happened with the dam really whacked it through town,” Cox said.

“It’s come around, not so much through town, but down lower in particular.”

As the nights grow colder and the days shorter, bigger bugs return in the form of mahogany duns and grey drakes. If you catch it just right, you can spend a full day in the water fishing tricos in the morning and the bigger bugs and spinners up until dark.

Gradually, the tricos will peter out and the window for dry-fly fishing shrinks.

When that happens, I know it’s time to put the snow tires on the car.

Bob Meseroll is sports editor of the Missoulian and an avid fly-fisherman. He can be reached at (406) 523-5265, by email at bmeseroll@missoulian.com or on his blog, TroutTalk.com. Michael Gallacher is a Missoulian photographer. He can be reached at (406) 523-5270 or by email at mgallacher@missoulian.com.

Green Drake: The green drake hatch is another opportunity to cast large flies to willing fish.

PMD Cripple: If the fish don’t want your pale morning dun compara-dun, try a cripple.

Spent Partridge Caddis: The spent partridge caddis can be an excellent choice when light begins to fade.

Summer-fall insect hatches summer/fall insect hatches For Bitterroot, Clark Blackfoot Rock Creek for Bitteroot, Clark Fork,Fork, Blackfoot rivers &rivers Rock and Creek Salmonflies Blue-winged olives Grey drakes Caddis Yellow sallies Green drakes Golden stoneflies Tricos Sulphurs Hecuba mayflies Pale morning duns Mahogany duns Terrestrials

June

July

August

September

October

Hatch time Hatch times are approximate; water and weather conditions can alter insect emergence.

Not all hatches listed occur on all four rivers (salmonflies, for instance, are found mainly on the East and West forks of the Bitterroot River, Rock Creek and the Blackfoot River).

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missoula magazine

Golden Stone: The half-down golden stone is an excellent all-around fly that will also imitate a hopper.

Spruce Moth: A light-colored elk-hair caddis will work for imitating a spruce moth.

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25

missoula cooks

fresh flavor by greg patent

photos by tom bauer

H

ot weather and salads are a natural marriage. When it’s hot, that old phrase, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen,” applies.

Most salads don’t require any cooking, but a few do ask that you spend a few minutes at the stove.

The hazelnuts in the Hazelnut and Zucchini Salad need the heat of the oven to toast. But you can do this in the morning while it’s cool. The zucchini needs to be grilled, but a few minutes on the stovetop in a grill pan will do the trick, or fire up your outdoor grill and cook your whole dinner al fresco.

The broccolini and beans for the salad take only minutes to blanch; but again, you can do this in the morning and refrigerate the vegetables until you’re ready to put the salad together.

The salad of mixed vegetables requires no cooking of any kind, so you can prep the vegetables at your convenience and dress the salad when you want to eat it.

I encourage you to shop at local farmers markets for your vegetables. They are the freshest you’ll be able to buy short of growing your own, and they’ll have the best flavor.

And do feel free to add or subtract vegetables according to availability and your tastes. For instance, escarole makes a fine substitute for Romaine lettuce in the mixed vegetable salad. Strive for texture and taste balance, and always adjust the dressings according to what pleases you. In the Mixed Vegetable Salad, if you’d like to add some fruit, feel free to add some diced peeled peaches, cut melon, or strawberries.

Greg Patent is a columnist for the Missoulian and Missoula Magazine. You can visit his blog at www.thebakingwizard.com, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

This mixed vegetable salad of fennel, carrot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and Romaine has crunch and juiciness that tells you summer is here. For a main dish, just add any cooked grain of your choice or cold roast chicken cut into bite-size pieces.

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missoula cooks

zucchini & hazelnut appetizer salad with ricotta salata ingredients ¼ to ½ cup hazelnuts 1 pound small zucchini (about 4) 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided Salt and pepper 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar 1 cup basil leaves (1 ounce by weight), torn if large ¼ pound mixed baby salad greens 2 ounces arugula Dressing 1 tablespoon hazelnut oil 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard Salt and pepper, to taste 2 ounces shaved ricotta salata or Parmesan cheese

makes 4 servings

Crunchy toasted hazelnuts and grilled young zucchini star in this appetizer salad.

Ricotta salata, a firm, dry, salted form if ricotta adds an extra note of salty cheesiness. If not available, substitute slices of Parmesan cheese.

directions

To toast hazelnuts, put them on a baking sheet into a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes, until they small fragrant and look golden brown. Put the hazelnuts into a kitchen towel, wrap the nuts in the towel, and rub vigorously to remove most of the hazelnut skins.

Don’t be concerned if nuts have lost all their skin. When cool, put the hazelnuts into a zip-top bag, and crush gently with a meat pounder to chop coarsely.

Preheat a grill to high, or use a stove-top grill pan.

Cut the zucchini on an angle into 3/8-inch-thick slices.

Toss in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and This makes a great appetizer to salt and pepper to taste. Grill on both sides just to make serve with grilled fish or roast grill marks and partially cook the zucchini, about 2 to chicken. The ricotta salata adds 3 minutes total. Return zucchini to the bowl, and when a welcome hit of salt. cool, add the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salad greens, and arugula.

To make the dressing, whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl, adding salt and pepper to taste. Pour over salad, toss well, and taste. Adjust seasoning as necessary. Divide among salad plates and garnish with the cheese shavings.

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missoula cooks

broccolini, green beans & red bell pepper salad with sesame dressing makes 4 servings

ingredients Salad 2 bunches broccolini ½ pound green beans, stemmed and tipped 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into thin strips 1 bunch Italian parsley, leaves only 2 to 3 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted in a skillet Dressing ¼ cup tahini (stir well to make it smooth) 3 tablespoons water 1 garlic clove, minced ½ teaspoon tamari soy 1 ½ teaspoons honey, agave nectar, or brown sugar 1 tablespoon cider vinegar 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil ¼ teaspoon salt

Broccolini, Green Beans, and Red Bell Pepper Salad with Sesame Dressing. This refreshing and hearty salad is a blending of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors.

Crusty garlic bread is a nice go-with.

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missoula magazine

This salad combines flavors of the Middle East and Italy. The dressing from the former, and the salad from the latter, with little tweaks of flavor from other parts of the world. Try to find broccolini with thin main stems, as they will be the most tender. Thick stems (1/2-inch or so, will need to be peeled).

directions

Whisk all dressing ingredients in a medium bowl until smooth and pourable. You want it creamy but not too thick to dress the vegetables. Adjust the consistency if necessary with small additions of water and red wine vinegar. Taste and readjust seasoning.

For the salad, bring a large skillet with an inch or so of lightly salted water to the boil. Cut about ½-inch off the ends of the broccolini. Break off the smaller stalks and peel the thicker stalks with a paring knife. Cut broccolini into 2-inch lengths. Add to the boiling water and cook 3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to a large bowl of cold water to stop the cooking.

When completely cool, drain well on paper towels.

Cut the green beans into 2-inch lengths and add to the boiling water. Cook until crisp tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to a large bowl of cold water to stop the cooking. When completely cool, drain well on paper towels.

To assemble the salad, combine the broccolini, beans, red bell pepper, and parsley leaves in a salad bowl. Whisk the dressing, pour over the vegetables, and toss gently to coat well.

Divide the salad among 4 salad plates, sprinkle with the toasted sesame seeds, and serve.

mixed vegetable salad makes 4 generous servings There’s no cooking for this salad, just the freshest vegetables and a tarragon-flavored dressing you shake up in a jar. Buy the largest fennel you can find because you’ll often have to discard the thick outer layers. If really large bulbs (weighing close to 1 pound) are not available, buy 2 smaller bulbs.

Save the fronds and use some of the leaves to sprinkle over the salad. The fronds themselves are excellent in a vegetable broth.

ingredients Salad 1 large fennel bulb, any bruised outer layers removed, remaining bulb cut into thin slivers (about 2 cups prepared) 1 large carrot, peeled and sliced thin on an angle 1 English cucumber, peeled and diced 20 cherry tomatoes, halved ½ cup chopped fennel frond leaves Romaine lettuce, enough for 4 cups sliced or torn into 1-inch pieces

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Dressing 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh tarragon leaves 1 shallot, minced 1 clove garlic, minced ¼ teaspoon salt Few grindings of black pepper 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar 2 teaspoon lemon zest 1 tablespoon lemon juice 4 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce Drops of Tabasco, to taste

directions

Prepare the vegetables, except the frond leaves, and put them into a large salad bowl. Have the chopped frond leaves ready separately.

Put all the dressing ingredients into a screw-cap jar and shake vigorously to emulsify.

Add dressing to the vegetables and toss thoroughly. Sprinkle with the fennel fronds and serve.

NOTE: For a main course, you can add 1 cup cooked quinoa, farro, kamut, or other cooked grain of choice. missoula magazine

29

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.

Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

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missoula magazine

Celebrating the 20 th Anniversary of 'A Ri ver Runs T hroug h It ' by vince devlin

photos by michael gallacher and kurt wilson

missoula magazine

31

many people who have read them, the opening and closing lines of Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” are among the most beautiful words ever strung together.

Robert Redford knew it, and as he turned the novella into cinema back in 1991, there was no question the director would open, and close, with the voice of a narrator repeating Maclean’s words.

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing,” the narrator would begin.

Some 120 minutes later, when actors Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt were done portraying Norman and his family on film, the narrator would finish the story while a lone old man stood in a river on a Montana evening, casting his fly into a stream on screen: “(But when I am alone) in the halflight of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

The narrator pauses a good 10 seconds before repeating Maclean’s last line: “I am haunted by waters.”

T

here was only one problem.

“Redford had a hell of a time finding somebody who could say it the way he wanted it done,” says Norman’s son, John Maclean. “Have you ever read the words out loud? It flows so easily, but he couldn’t get anyone to do it just the way he wanted. Finally, he recorded it and said, ‘Play this back and tell them to do it like this.’ ” Still, none of the old men – it had to be an old man’s voice – got it quite the way the director wanted it done.

Then, John Maclean says, someone on the crew pointed out something to Redford.

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missoula magazine

John Maclean works at the writing desk in the Seeley Lake cabin that his grandfather, the Rev. John Maclean, built and the place where his father, Norman Maclean, wrote “A River Runs Through It,” in longhand. missoula magazine

33

Re-creating Missoula at the turn of the 20th century was no easy task for director Robert Redford. Attention to detail in the clothing and staging of the movie was abandoned when Redford chose Livingston to play Missoula in the film, and the Gallatin and Boulder rivers replaced the Blackfoot due to extensive logging scars on the famed river. Bottom right: Director Robert Redford and actor Craig Sheffer talk shop during a lull in filming on the set of “A River Runs Through It” in LIvingston in the summer of 1991.

“Bob, you did it,” they said. “You’ve already got it the way you want it – it’s right here on tape.”

Which is how Robert Redford came to narrate his own movie.

This is the 20th anniversary of the film version of “A River Runs Through It,” and its impact – on both fly-fishing and Montana – was immediate.

The fly-fishing industry saw a whopping 60 percent increase in 1992, the year the movie came out, and grew by another 60 percent in 1993.

“There have been a lot of movies centered on a variety of activities over the years,” says guide Paul Roos of Lincoln, a former owner of North Fork Crossing Lodge on the North Fork of the Blackfoot, “but I don’t know too many that had an impact like this one had.”

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missoula magazine

In other words, people who loved “Tin Cup” didn’t necessarily rush out and buy golf clubs after it came out.

“That’s right,” Roos says. “People who saw ‘Seabiscuit’ didn’t start going to horse races either.”

But after “A River Runs Through It” was released, anglers both veteran and rookie descended on Montana in droves to fish both the rivers in southwestern Montana where “River” was filmed, and the Blackfoot where the story was set. They fanned out to even more, putting greatly increased pressures on several Montana fisheries.

Others who may or may not have taken up fly-fishing were still drawn to the state by the beauty of the film, which won Philippe Rousselot an Academy Award for cinematography.

“It’s been one of the most impactful films, as far as driving

tourism goes, as there’s ever been,” Sten Iversen, manager of the Montana Film Office, said 15 years after “River” came out.

It drew not just tourists, but people moving to the state, and not everyone was pleased with the influx.

In fact, when Redford returned to Montana in 1998 to make “The Horse Whisperer” a couple of valleys east of where “River” was shot, the closing credits about where it was filmed were intentionally vague.

“He decided he didn’t want to pinpoint where we filmed because he wanted to protect the seclusion of that special place,” film publicist Kathy Orloff said. “He was hurt when he was criticized for the attention ‘River Runs Through It’ brought to the state.”

“I

t certainly changed fly-fishing, and it probably changed the state of Montana,” John Maclean says.

“Most people ask what my Dad would have thought of the movie,” he goes on, “and I think he would have been of several different minds.”

Norman Maclean, who died in 1990, would have had an initial reaction to the movie and its effects, his son says, and likely a different one down the road.

“Some of it would have horrified him,” John Maclean says.

“The Blackfoot became almost un-fishable after it came out – there was a cavalcade of boats after the movie. It was like the Spanish Armada going down the Blackfoot.”

But today, he says, the fishing on the Blackfoot “is as good as it’s been in my lifetime. It’s not as good as it was at the start missoula magazine

35

A portrait of the Rev. John Maclean hangs in the Seeley Lake cabin that he began building in 1922.

"Then, he couldn’t find a publisher. One famously turned it down by telling Maclean his stories had 'too many trees' in them."

of the 20th century when my father fished it, and it never will be.

But millions of dollars were poured into restoring the river and its tributaries because of the movie.”

Redford’s film probably also helped galvanize opponents to a proposed gold mine that could have further eroded the Blackfoot’s quality.

They were successful in stopping it.

H

owever, the decline of the Blackfoot had started before “River” was made into a film, because of logging, mining and agriculture. In fact, Redford took one look at it and went off to audition other rivers to play the Blackfoot.

The upper Yellowstone, Gallatin and Boulder Rivers were chosen. Nearby Livingston became Missoula, further disgruntling local fans of the book who thought it a sacrilege to take the story of a Missoula family across the Continental Divide, to a town 226 miles away and to rivers that didn’t even wind up in the same ocean as the Blackfoot, to film it.

After the movie was released, many were mollified by one line in the movie.

Sheffer, playing Norman, starts the sentence and Pitt, as

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missoula magazine

Norman’s brother Paul, quickly joins in. Missoula crowds who packed theaters when the movie first came out cheered when they heard it.

“The world is full of bastards,” the brothers say, “the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana!”

Roos’ involvement with the film ended when Redford abandoned the Blackfoot as a filming site.

“They were no longer interested in me, nor I in them,” he says, but he and his wife were still invited to the world premiere in Bozeman in 1992.

“I was astounded at how well I liked it,” Roos says. “I didn’t think I would.”

Despite the effect it had on fly-fishing, “A River Runs Through It” is not a movie about fly-fishing. It’s a tragic story involving a father and his sons who bonded most, and best, while chasing trout on the Blackfoot.

“It was pretty real,” Roos says of the fly-fishing scenes.

“The one where the big fish pulls Paul into the drink – I’ve had

continued on page 88

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home 38

missoula magazine

grown

e

very Saturday from early May until late October, ceramic artist Glenn Parks takes up residence in his summer home along Pine Street in downtown Missoula.

Parks’ neighbors on those summer mornings include a natural rock sculptor, a local photographer and a hula-hoop maker. His guests are hundreds of curious shoppers.

The Missoula artist has been a vendor at the Missoula Saturday Market for the past 14 seasons, ever since the arts and crafts market moved to its Pine Street location. He is just one of hundreds of vendors who set up shop on downtown streets each Saturday from early May through October to greet shoppers face-to-face with products that are grown, crafted or cooked close to home.

Three Saturday markets – the Missoula Farmers Market, the Missoula Saturday Market and the Clark Fork River Market – offer hours of opportunities to snap up a piece of produce or artwork from a local vendor. A newer market, the Carousel Sunday Market and Festival, is a place for families to gather each Sunday near A Carousel for Missoula.

Parks’ art of the old Missoula peace sign has become a market staple, and perhaps one tiny symbol that can represent the tradition that is the Saturday markets. Parks has created a host of products, from stickers to magnets to earrings and notecards, all adorned with the same rogue peace sign painted atop a defunct microwave reflector panel in Missoula’s North Hills. The sign was removed from its hill years ago.

Missoula's markets offer a variety of local arts, food and unique experiences. by jenna cederberg

photos by michael gallacher, tom bauer and linda thompson

missoula magazine

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" T he markets have created a true neighborhood of goods that connect the community."

“Since I introduced the Missoula peace sign project, people have stopped and shared countless conversations of what their memories of the peace sign were.

People from around the world relate to the peace sign concept,” Parks said. “There’s a lot of conversation over that particular subject.”

The markets have created a true neighborhood of goods that connect the community. It’s that human interaction, concentrated around the expansive selection of local products, that defines the Missoula markets for Parks: “People are just down on Saturday morning to have a good, Missoula experience.”

Missoula Farmers Market: Runs Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon and

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missoula magazine

Tuesdays from 5:30 to 7 p.m. May 5 through Oct. 27 along East Alder Street.

Local huckleberries. Local tomatoes.

Dixon melons. Theses are a few of the colorful, flavorful and highly sought-after icons of the Missoula Farmers Market.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, it’s the place that allows the Garden City to live up to its nickname.

“I think it’s a Missoula treasure,” said Lou Ann Crowley, a longtime Farmers Market board member.

Mavis McKelvey and Chinwon Reinhardt helped officially establish the first market through a Missoula city ordinance on June 7, 1972. They wanted a place for backyard gardeners to sell some of their leftovers, Crowley said.

Now, several vendors make a living off the business they do at the market. The

Missoula Farmers Market includes more than 100 vendors this year.

“To see the bounty of what we have in Missoula is incredible. ... It kind of takes care of all the senses, sight, smell; you get to meet people, talk to people and you go away feeling renewed,” Crowley said.

Current vendor and market board president Lynn McCamant says what keeps people coming back is that vendors always choose quality over quantity. McCamant and her husband, Tom, run Forbidden Fruit Orchard in Paradise. They sell cherries and apricots. Their Forbidden Fruit peaches are snapped up like gold when they hit the stands later in the summer.

The focus of the Missoula Farmers Market is produce and always will be, McCamant said. But this year a meat vendor was added, as was a prepared food

court.

Nowadays, shoppers can fill their entire grocery lists on Saturdays and get “refills” when the market opens for a few hours on Tuesdays.

The demand created by the Farmers Market helped launch the Saturday market phenomenon in downtown Missoula.

Now, people can spend an entire morning shopping locally at the three markets. And other markets away from downtown, such as the Orchard Homes markets held on Thursdays, provide even more options.

“It’s almost like if you could look at it visually, it has all these offshoots of benefits. Everything goes back into the Missoula economy,” Crowley said. “We are called the Garden City. We’re going back to our roots, and giving people the opportunity to be able to come and enjoy the markets. ... I think that's a wonderful thing that’s happened.”

Missoula Saturday Market: Runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 5 through Oct. 20 along East Pine Street.

The Missoula Saturday Market is a place where Montana made crafts are king.

For the past 12 years, the Saturday Market has offered artists a place to sell

"We’re going back to our roots, and giving people the opportunity to be able to come and enjoy the markets."

missoula magazine

41

" It’s a very, very valuable thing to be able to know where your food is coming from." their stuff and connect with the crowds that come to see and buy their work.

“If you’re a craft artist in western Montana, that’s going to be the place you go to visit with people about your work. There’s not going to be a lot more opportunities. Artists take it pretty seriously,” said Parks, whose art business is Green Portfolio.

Most artists with booths at the market have been preparing for a number of months to have their work ready for the first market. While there’s no produce at the Saturday Market, every kind of material you can think of is used to make the products there.

Old sweaters turned into hats, T-shirts turned into purses. New products pop up each week, Parks said.

“We invite guest artists to participate every single week,” Parks said. “We do that because we have market space available.

We want to encourage new artists to exhibit when we have the space.”

Whoever is strolling the aisle past Parks’ Saturday home, they are the ones who make the market what it is, he said: “That’s the vibe, the people. It’s a sense people are just there to see what’s happening downtown.”

Clark Fork River Market: Runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 5 through Oct. 27 in the parking lot east of the Higgins Avenue Bridge.

An offshoot in many ways from the overflow of the Missoula Farmers Market,

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missoula magazine

the Clark Fork River Market has blossomed into an equally successful Saturday market.

The market next to the river enters its eighth season in 2012 and boasts up to 130 vendors during peak growing season.

And all that the market offers is local.

“We don’t accept vendors that are east of the Continental Divide,” market manager Franco Salazar said.

Along with its fresh produce, the River Market has become known for its local meat and cheese selection. This year, Salazar has widened the aisles to accommodate the crowds that show up each Saturday. Shoppers can pick up morel mushrooms or fresh bison meat.

“The full shopping experience is what

we’re working toward,” Salazar said.

Live music always accompanies the experience at the Clark Fork River Market, and Salazar often invites area nonprofits to come interact with shoppers.

Most importantly, though, is the interaction between farmers and shoppers.

Vendors want their customers to be a part of the farming community. That’s a crucial part of helping to preserve local agriculture, Salazar said.

“Part of the requirement is (that) the person who is the farmer or chef, that person has to be on-site,” said Salazar.

Vendors form friendships and relationships with customers; it’s a very, very valuable thing to be able to know where your food is

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“The full shopping experience is what we’re working toward.”

coming from – not only that but form a relationship with that person.”

Carousel Sunday Market and Festival: Runs Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. from June 10 through Sept. 16 in the parking lot just east of A Carousel for Missoula.

It wasn’t until three years ago that Sunday, too, played host to a market in downtown Missoula.

The Carousel Sunday Market and Festival was established in conjunction with A Carousel for Missoula.

“We wanted to bring people down here on Sundays and also to give those (Saturday) vendors another opportunity to sell their produce,” said Theresa Cox, executive director of the carousel.

The music from the carousel keeps the mood light at the Sunday market. Market manager Janet Metcalf said a unique focus of the market is on the festival portion.

“We try to cater more to families and are more of a mixed market,” Metcalf said. “We have produce, crafts and prepared foods.”

While parents browse vendors’ booths, kids can ride a real miniature pony, then hop over to the carousel.

Metcalf encourages University of Montana students to sign up to be a part of the live music circuit there. Along with produce and craft vendors, there are plenty of baked goods at the Sunday market. Cox recommends trying the homemade baklava.

Metcalf has been working to get the word out about the festival this year and hopes the roomy, friendly atmosphere will continue to draw in people.

The popularity of the Saturday markets sometimes means they are crowded. The Sunday market, however, is roomy and relaxed, Metcalf said.

“I just think Missoulians are social animals,” Metcalf said. “And they like their routine. We’re kind of trying to make it people’s Sunday routine.”

Jenna Cederberg is a Missoulian reporter. She can be reached at (406) 523-5241 or by email at jcederberg@missoulian.com.

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by nick lockridge

illustration by josh quick

pig roast

T

he secret to a successful pig roast isn’t in the sauce – or marinade, as barbecue purists call it – it’s in the company you keep.

That’s because roasting a whole hog can take anywhere from 12 to 24 hours depending on the size of the pig and the temperature at which it is cooked.

“It’s good to have somebody with you,” says Cameron Williams, who’s pulled more than a few overnighters, all in the name of slow-cooked pork. “That way you don’t lose your mind just sitting there by yourself.”

Sleep deprivation, exhaustion and over-indulgence – both of meat and beverages – are likely side effects of hosting a pig roast.

“It’s a chore all right,” says Ray Watson, who’s been

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roasting critters for nearly half his 72 years. “But it’s enjoyable, especially when everything sets up right. Then you just sit there and watch it cook.”

And cook.

And cook.

And cook.

“After a while,” Williams says, “it’s almost like the smoker is your only friend.”

Perhaps that’s why folks go crazy over good barbecue.

T

here’s more than one way to roast a pig – the most popular methods being open-pit, buried (luau style) or in a smoker – and each gets awfully specific awfully fast, Williams says, no matter if you’re using wood, propane or some

other type of heat source.

“Basically,” he says, “you’re just cooking it at a very low temperature for a very long time.”

Both Williams and Watson use custom-built smokers attached to trailers for easy transportation, and suggest cooking the pork at an average of 250 degrees.

“Some use a little higher temperature, which brings down your cooking time, and some people do it with even lower temperatures, which is kind of in the scarier zone of doing things,” says Williams, who opened up Burns St. Bistro with three of his friends in April. “You may be doing it for too long and you’re going to dry everything out. Because once you get over that 24-hour period then you’re really just looking at a lot of time on the heat, where all the moisture is getting sucked out.”

Roasting a whole hog is a delicate balancing act. Unlike a steak, which cooks at a lower internal temperature, a full pig requires higher temperatures, but not too high or the outside will cook much faster than the inside. That’s why a longer, consistent roast at an internal temperature of 190-200 degrees is best.

“It takes that temperature to get the connective tissue to break down,” Williams says. “Then the meat is usually fall-apart tender.”

The other keys to success are having a good thermometer, a good injector and a good game plan.

“Do some research,” Williams says. “Because you’re going to want to inject it to keep a lot of moisture inside the pig.”

Williams suggests cruising the Internet for ideas on marinades, rubs and presentation styles. Even if they don’t give away their best techniques, online barbecuers like to brag about their cooking, he says, and a novice can learn a lot, especially when it comes to things like quantities for recipes.

Williams also suggests having more than one thermometer, in case one breaks, and investing in a good injector, which can cost $30, as opposed to a flimsy one. Or get a “serious one,” like the kind that connects to a 5-gallon bucket, for a little bit more money.

“It’s like a big pump,” he says. “It just fills it up like a balloon. That’s what a lot of the pros do. They pump almost a gallon of marinade into these whole hogs, so that they’re dripping out.”

W

atson injects a mixture of lemon and garlic juice into his hogs. But he also places pans underneath the pig to catch the drippings, then uses that for basting.

Aside from that, a pig roast – or a smoke, as it’s typically called – is a trial-and-error enterprise.

That’s why Watson now focuses more on beef and turkeys, although he’s doing a big pig roast this summer for a relative’s wedding.

His biggest beef with smoking the whole hog is the rate of return.

“You lose too much weight in the head, the feet and all the bones,” Watson says. “The head alone probably weighs 30-40 pounds. If you get a 100-pound pig, you might only get 40-60 pounds of meat.”

Both Watson and Williams say 100-120 pounds is ideal for whole hog cooking, unless you’re doing a below-ground roast like a luau. Those usually require a larger swine. There are several meatpacking houses in Montana where hogs can be purchased, as well as farm-to-market operations that deliver.

Finding the hog is easy, Watson says. It’s the prep work that gets exhausting.

Tying the pig to the spit or pinning it inside a cradle, typically made of fencing, before hanging it over the heat source can be time-consuming. It gets more difficult the fancier the presentation, like “racer style,” which is the hog with the apple in its mouth.

“You gotta do all that the night before,” Watson says. “But you still have to keep it cool. Then, when it’s on, you gotta keep the heat to it, or it’ll sour pretty easy.”

The Butte native has seen just about every mishap a person can imagine when it comes to pig parties: spoiled meat because the heat source died, fire engines blaring into the night because an anxious tavern owner dumped a still-frozen pig in a vat of hot oil, and the occasional angry homeowner.

“People don’t like you burning their grass,” Watson says.

But that was back when he used to do open-pit roasts and he needed to spread the coals so the grease had somewhere to drip.

A lot has changed, he says.

“I used to use only briquettes,” Watson laughs, “but that’s back when dinosaurs were running around.”

B

riquettes are still popular in the Southeast, where smoking pigs originated, but they do require more attention.

“You can leave for a couple minutes, and have a few beers,” Watson said, “but you just gotta watch it.”

That’s where good company comes in – or in some cases sleeping shifts – to help you pass the time.

“It’s a trial-and-error deal,” Watson says “But the first time you do it, and the meat comes out. ... Mmm, it’s pretty good.”

There’s a pretty big learning curve when it comes to perfecting your pork, especially for a small business.

Because of food and air quality standards, the health department forces Williams to do most of his smoking outside the county at private parties and competitions.

Even though he’s been smoking hogs for more than five years, Williams says he’s a slow learner. But that’s OK in slow cooking.

“I wouldn’t even say I was doing it five years ago, because I was doing it so poorly,” he says. “Four years ago is when I began to learn the craft and the nuances of it.”

Along with Lagan Todd, Walker Hunter and Jason McMackin, the other owners of Burns St. Bistro, the trade is coming along smoothly now.

Williams and Todd went to the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs last summer and entered their Masters of the BBQ Challenge, a Kansas City Barbecue Society-sponsored event. It was the duo’s first actual barbecue competition. They were named Grand Champion as well as first in beef and first in chicken.

There are plenty more barbecues coming up this summer.

The Big Sky BBQ Festival at Big Sky Brewing Co. is June 30, followed by the Northside of Missoula’s annual Fourth of July pig roast. Hunter believes the open-pit event has been going on for at least 15 years.

“It’s a Northside tradition,” Hunter said. “There are no invitations, but everyone is welcome.”

The more the merrier, right?

Nick Lockridge is a Missoulian sportswriter. He can be reached at (406) 523-5298 or by email at nlockridge@missoulian.com.

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c k c ba

y r t n u o

story and photos by rob chaney

Canoes giveth with one paddle, and with

the other they taketh away.

I’ve cooked some of my finest backcountry dinners on canoe camping trips, serving steaks with port wine reduction and morel mushrooms, followed by ice cream, on deserted islands. It’s a canoe – you can bring ice to the boonies.

The only time I ever watched my entire family nearly swallowed by a single catastrophe was on a canoe trip. It’s a canoe – the inanimate, aquatic version of a temperamental pack mule.

Sometimes I’ve been served by both paddles on the same voyage. In the office, to err is human and to really foul things up requires a computer. Going fubar outdoors, it helps to have a canoe.

A big float trip on the Blackfoot River nailed home that lesson less than five minutes from the put-in. As a flotilla of rafts bumped away from the Roundup Bridge beach, my overloaded Coleman 17-footer half-filled with water on the first rock. It capsized on the second, and then wedged itself against my leg on the third. While small children and picnic

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coolers went whizzing into whitewater, my daughter helped my wife onto a boulder. My brother needed 10 minutes to pry the boat off my shin.

The short story is we all got rescued. The long story involved my brother and me sinking three more times before we finally worked out a maneuver that went around rocks instead of into them. That only took about five hours of unrelenting teachable moments on the way to Whitaker Bridge.

So why ever get in a canoe again? Because like a mule, it makes so much more possible in the backcountry. Montana’s rivers and lakes penetrate many wonderful places, and a well-trained canoe will take you there.

Some say that’s why we invented backpacks, or for the tenderfeet, SUVs. Canoes offer the best of both.

Canoes take away most of the blisters, freeze-dried cardboard dinners and other sacrifices demanded by backpacking adventures. Instead of weighing gear by the tens of pounds, you can pile 100 or more in an appropriate boat without the gas exhaust.

Cast-iron Dutch ovens? Folding chairs?

Roomy tents? Ice? See above.

Canoes permit a level of backcountry comfort so even young campers can reach deep into the woods for adventure.

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“Late in the day, we start talking

about rivers – where do we want to go?” said Tim Hall of Missoula’s Sports Exchange. “I’ve always wanted to do the Marias. That’s one on my bucket list.”

Montana’s Smith River attracts so many floating campers, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks requires permits for the prime season dates. But other rivers – the Missouri, Madison and Flathead come to mind – offer long-distance adventures with little or no advance arrangements needed.

That’s because Montana law allows recreational access to any river between the high water marks. In other words – any island on any river is a free campground.

If that’s too spontaneous, the state also comes equipped with dozens of FWP fishing access sites. While not all of these allow camping, many do or are close enough to an outhouse and picnic table to ease the transition from full-on car-camping. Many lakes feature state parks, with hidden unofficial campsites

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on the far shore.

And unlike car-camping, canoes go for miles through gently shifting scenery.

Granted, sometimes they also go for miles along interstate freeways (e.g. the Clark Fork River). The balancing act never goes away.

“If

you’re thinking family camping, what you’re looking at is flat water to learn some skills,” said John Anderson, the boat buyer for the Trailhead store in Missoula. “People have survived the Blackfoot for years, but I wouldn’t say they had an easy time of it.”

Western Montana lakes like Rainy, Como and Holter border U.S. Forest Service land where boaters can find good places to explore or spend the night. They lack the rapids, rocks and snags that make river travel a trickier prospect. And they usually simplify the route planning. For most lakes, you put in and take out at the same ramp.

But don’t take them for granted. A lake paddler’s biggest worry comes in the afternoon, when mountain winds typically pick up. A leisurely lunch on Alva Lake’s scenic island can turn into an afternoon soaking struggle as you battle through the whitecaps.

That’s especially true of larger bodies like Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park’s Lake McDonald. Boat rental companies in the park often posted unofficial lookouts in the afternoons in case their clients found themselves blown far from home.

Anderson recalled one trip from Wild Horse Island to Rocky Point on Flathead Lake when the wind churned the water. It was hard enough to keep the canoe level in the waves, but he also had an excitable black Labrador dog on board.

“He liked to switch sides of the boat,” Anderson said. “Then you have the boat tipping to one side and then the other, and the person in the bow doesn’t see it coming.”

Carve out some extra time for canoe camping. Because the boats haul far more gear than a backpack holds, there’s lots of time to relax in watery isolation.

Stepping

up to rivers is like graduating from overnight backpacking to multi-day excursions. The equipment and basic requirements don’t change, but the skill and risk go up.

The Clark Fork, Missouri and mainstem Flathead rivers all offer long reaches of relatively easy water where novices can build confidence and skill.

The Bitterroot River draws lots of boats too, but has a nasty tendency to litter its banks with downed trees that can tip or trap a paddler.

“There are certain rivers I wouldn’t do, unless I’d done it less than a couple weeks before,” Hall said. “In the early season, I’m really afraid of the Bitterroot, but in late season, it’s great.

“I always seek advice first. Call a fly-fishing shop, or a raft company or a ranger station. Ask about any known hazards, channel changes, things like that.”

Several companies make river maps that show locations of rapids, boat ramps, and other features. But even the missoula magazine

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Even in calm water, life jackets and other safety precautions remain essential. Most canoeing accidents happen at the beginning or end of an otherwise successful voyage.

And unlike car-camping, canoes go for miles through gently shifting scenery.

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Destina tion: MISSOU LA!

best map won’t cure the disorienting nature of river travel. For example, a recent trip from Beck Hill to Jens Landing on the Clark Fork takes just seven minutes by car on Interstate 90.

The same journey on the water lasted seven hours.

Rapids really put a boater to the test. The same Class II wave trains that inner-tubers love to bump through on the North Fork of the Flathead will tumble an intermediate canoeist, depositing new treasures for the eddy divers to find on clean-up days.

Here again, the trade-offs stack up. A kayak runs rapids better than a canoe, but carries far less gear. A raft hauls the gear in comfort, but often requires a trailer. The canoe delivers convenience and capacity at the expense of security.

That makes it one of those decisions you can solve with money or brains.

Spend a lot, and you can outfit the whole clan in kayaks with ultra-light gear. Or afford a frame raft and trailer and the storage space that requires.

Or you can invest in your skills with

a paddle. Beyond the basic “J” and “L” strokes that turn a canoe right and left, there are side-slip and ferrying maneuvers that can make the river work for you. Experience eventually builds into knowledge boaters call “reading the water” – knowing the tricks of eddies and wave trains, sweepers and keeper rapids. There are kneeling and even standing paddling positions that allow a boater greater control or power in the right situations.

Finding a class to learn these tricks can be difficult. A couple of books that have kept currency in the canoeing world are Bill Mason’s “The Path of the Paddle” and “Paddle Your Own Canoe”

by Gary McGuffin.

To get a sense of the value of canoecamping, check out Bozeman author Alan Kesselheim’s latest memoir of raising his three children on summer-long canoe adventures: “Let Them Paddle.” His description of a

Yellowstone River run from Gardiner to the North Dakota border offers the following: “Just pack and go: Way easier than most family vacations. Even without much preparation, you could pick up supplies in towns and mosey downstream, taking it as it comes.

You can do the whole thing for a couple hundred dollars. And yet, how many people have paddled the entire Yellowstone River? Thousands of Americans have taken cruises to Antarctica, tens of thousands every year spend their vacation wad going to Disneyland or Las Vegas, but I doubt that one hundred have paddled the Yellowstone.”

Rob Chaney is a reporter for the Missoulian. He can be reached at (406) 523-5382 or by email at rchaney@missoulian.com.

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missoula magazine

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by rob chaney

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photos by kurt wilson

W

e all know what Montana looks like from a car window. But how does it look through a touch screen?

Millions of tourists tap into apps like TripAdvisor and Yelp on their way to Big Sky Country. But once they’ve reached the Land of Limited Cell Coverage, digital assistance takes a little more planning.

“You don’t want to be tied to a cell phone on a river or hiking trail,” said Thurston Elfstorm, the Montana Office of Tourism’s head of interactive marketing (or as he calls it: “web monkey”). “People should start looking for someplace to eat or sleep when they’re actually someplace that has cell service.”

Montana still hasn’t penetrated the plush travel realms of mrandmrssmith.com or oyster.com – websites recommended by the New York Times for

finding the swankiest spas and boutique hotels. That doesn’t mean app developers haven’t tailored their software to the state’s amenities.

Virginia City and Nevada City’s free app provides links to the Alder Gulch Railroad’s ticket information and the show listings for the Virginia City Players melodrama theater. The Montana and Wyoming Hot Springs ($7.99) app hunts down “roadside soaks, spiritual retreats, commercial spas and natural springs in the deep wilderness.”

The best Montana apps feature things that don’t advertise themselves. Peak.ar turns your iPhone camera into a mountain identification guide, using the phone’s GPS connection to put names on the summits spiking the horizon. It’s free for phones, while AR Mtn. USA charges $2.99 for an iPad version.

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Audubon Guides provides a multimedia reference guide for birds, mammals, trees and wildflowers ($14.99). Birders rave about its birdsong library that helps identify the ones you can hear but can’t see. It also networks users who feed in sightings, recommendations for nearby sanctuaries and journal updates.

S

ome apps skirt the edge between novelty and uselessness. A freebie called Montana Plate Finder decodes the state’s traditional license plates, where the first number refers to the county where the driver resides (Missoula is 4). Unfortunately, fewer and fewer Montana plates use that system because our plethora of nontraditional plate options all use a more abstract letter-

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number combination that doesn’t refer to the county.

R

ead the fine print on app descriptions to see how Internet-dependent they are.

Geology MT ($6.99) bills itself as a self-contained reference with geological maps, 33,000 named features, fire and weather history, 10,000 mineral resources, active mines, earthquake plate zones and main aquifers.

It’s also good to know how often the app updates its information. That’s not just its software, but the restaurant menu features, showtimes, special offers and other day-to-day details travelers need.

John Frandsen of Whitefish’s Old Town Creative has been working on an app for Whitefish that has what he calls

front-door and back-door access.

“In Whitefish, visitors often want to know where’s the city beach, the nearest public restroom, the post office,” Frandsen said. “They’re mundane questions, but things you can’t find with Google Places. This allows a destination to have complete control over the specific content they want.

So a restaurant can put information into the app, update and manage that themselves. The traveler accesses the restaurant to see what they have.”

The Whitefish Montana app has been released for Android phones and will come to iPhones later this year. Another project nearing completion is Travel Montana’s Get Lost program.

Get Lost already has a place in the App Store as a quarterly magazine featuring Montana amenities. But

"...Once they’ve reached the Land of Limited Cell Coverage, digital assistance takes a little more planning."

Elfstorm said a new version due out this summer will let travelers search for services by categories, upload their recommendations and share tips, journal entries and photos of things they like.

“Now you can find things with the Get Lost mobile site, so if you like a place where you just grabbed a beer and burger, you can add that to the Get Lost database,” Elfstorm said.

“It’s taking a while, but people in the travel space are still getting their arms around the technology.”

Rob Chaney is a reporter for the Missoulian. He can be reached at (406) 523-5382 or by email at rchaney@missoulian.com.

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Michael Gallacher

For Lynette and Cliff LePiane, the restoration of the family home in Missoula was a nostalgic journey. Lynette’s great-grandparents married in the home and she grew up there.

duel of the homes by gwen florio

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photos by tom bauer and michael gallacher

Tom Bauer

Jamie Kosena and her husband did some of the work themselves on their new home so that they could afford the features they wanted.

E

xcept for an overhead light, which we’ll get to later, the two houses are nothing alike.

One is a century old and looks it, stripped down to the original narrow clapboard siding and filled up with period tchotckes.

The other is six months young, its interior as minimalist and gleaming as the stainless countertops.

But for months, the homes shared a

history, as the Missoula city employees who own them – and whose desks are within hollering distance of one another – waged a friendly rivalry over their progress.

“We teased each other when one would do something the other hadn’t reached,” said Jamie Kosena, whose new home was finished in time for Thanksgiving dinner last year – just a couple of weeks before renovations were completed on Lynette LePiane’s house.

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“We were moral support for one another. On frustrating days, on teary days, we’d be there for each other.” ~ Lynette LePiane

“She started a month before me,” retorted LePiane.

LePiane’s great-grandparents were married in the house, and she herself grew up there, and inherited it when her mother died in 2009. Her challenge: to restore the house to its original turnof-the-century grace, but with modern conveniences. Closets, for one. And a television room for her husband, Cliff.

“I struggled with my obligations to my great-grandparents and to my mom,” LePiane said. At every turn, there were

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ghosts. At many, there were tears.

“Those poor guys,” LePiane said of McMahon Builders and the other contractors who worked on the house. “I cried and cried.”

Kosena didn’t have the emotional baggage, but finances demanded that she and her husband do a lot of the work themselves in order to achieve their dream house. Kosena probably expended as much sweat as LePiane did tears.

The result for each?

“I love my house,” Kosena said.

Repeatedly.

Ditto, LePiane said. Ditto.

W

hen Lynette and Cliff LePiane decided to move into the house after her mother’s death, the historic lines were hidden beneath a layer of green stucco. Even indoors, features that survived weren’t always desirable.

Take the green-and-white checked linoleum in the kitchen. Tactfully put, it was very much a product of its time.

Michael Gallacher

A courtesy photo provided by LePiane of the green stuccoed house before construction speaks to the daunting task the couple took on. Many of the original interior features were preserved. The living room/dining room area is a step back in time. The porcelain clawfoot tub in the master bathroom and the double-drain farmhouse sink were restored to their former glory. The original porch supports now adorn each side of the upstairs staircase.

It had to go. But it was also a part of Lynette LePiane’s childhood. More tears – followed by a perfect solution.

A small strip of the linoleum was saved and now serves as the floor to a master bedroom closet.

On the other hand, the original porch supports hidden by the stucco were lovely, but no longer sound. They ended up in the attic, adorning the top of a staircase. Other features were salvageable. The kitchen’s porcelain double-drain farmhouse sink was

restored to its former glory; likewise with the clawfoot tub in the master bath.

The kitchen was expanded to include an island and small dining area, “but the front room and dining room are exactly how they were,” LePiane said – right down to the old-fashioned pushbutton light switches, a gift from McMahon and electrician Tom Garland after the LePianes decided they couldn’t afford them.

Those same builders – the ones who also provided the LePianes with extra

storage off the kitchen – “were really, really respectful of my emotional attachment to the home,” she said.

That said, LePiane counsels patience for anyone undertaking a remodeling project. That advice is set down in a thick ringed binder that contains many of the 11,000 (you read that right) photos LePiane took during the work on the house, along with the contact information and thank-yous to all the contractors who worked on it.

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said. “But if you do have your heart set on something, make sure everyone knows – and be ready to compromise.

Money matters. For instance, your heart might be set on a Jacuzzi, but you’d rather have a toilet.”

K

osena got her Jacuzzi.

She and her husband had a plan when they set out to build a home – to do part of the work themselves, so they could afford all the features they wanted. “I was the budget Nazi,” Kosena confessed.

That meant buying a piece of slate

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that was the perfect color for the bathroom vanity, never mind that it had a minuscule crack; opting for a shower curtain instead of doors; getting – at a sidewalk sale – a huge black piece of granite for the kitchen island, with enough left over for a guest room vanity, and going to Home ReSource for the front door. “It had holes and half the glass was gone, but it was a solid oak door,” Kosena said.

A rocking chair/conversation piece in the living room features a seat and back woven from leather belts. The couple found it in a consignment store.

Such savings allowed for the tub, as well as a gas fireplace in the living room.

Overall, what they wanted for their first home together was as much about feel as style.

“We wanted something very open,” Kosena said – and indeed, the house seems surprisingly more spacious than its 1,700 square feet, thanks in part of nine-foot ceilings, tall windows and an impressive lack of clutter.

“I’m a bit of a freak” about order, Kosena admitted. “Actually, we all are.” Proof – her middle-school-age

tom bauer

LEFT Instead of rain gutter downspouts, Kosena used chains to let water trickle down.

RIGHT A potentially dark entryway in Kosena’s home was brightened by a second-hand oak door, a side light and a transom. A stained glass light fixture completed the entry.

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“ We wanted something very open.” ~ Jamie Kosena

TOP: Kosena credits her husband and their contractor for a successful project.

BOTTOM: Kosena’s kitchen features both stainless steel and granite countertops.

TOM BAUER

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son’s neat-as-a-pin room.

The home’s materials aid in the task. The stainless steel countertops – including one atop the washer and dryer that makes for easy ironing, sorting and folding, shine up fast and are as practical as they are beautiful, making hot pads unnecessary.

The floor is circle-sawn fir, whose finish masks scratches.

Like LePiane, Kosena ended up with extra storage space – in her case, a pantry and closet.

“He was just very innovative,” she said of builder Doug Kimmel. “And clearly, he has a wife.”

The couple solved the issue of a potentially dark front hallway by putting a pane of reeded glass beside the front door, and a transom over the door. But they needed a little more light.

A stained glass lamp, framed by the transom, was the solution.

Later, as Kosena and LePiane compared notes on the progress of their homes, LePiane realized she and

Cliff had bought the same lamp for his TV room.

That was a coincidence. The rain chains weren’t.

“I stole them from her,” LePiane said of the chains that some people use instead of downspouts. She took one look at Kosena’s and now her home has them, too.

T

he couples had something in common far more important that accent pieces.

Each worked well – indeed, joyfully – as a team. Both Kosena and LePiane gave credit to their husbands for the homes’ décor, choosing materials and colors that would do a decorator proud.

“It was just so much fun,” Kosena said, of even the grunt work that she and her husband did together. “I loved working with him so much.”

And each couple couldn’t say enough good things about their builders and contractors. In fact, said LePiane, who threw “lunch Fridays”

for the workers during the months of the project, she actually misses them being around.

Throughout it all, Kosena and LePiane wore a path between each other’s desks.

“We were moral support” for one another, LePiane said. “On frustrating days, on teary days, we’d be there for each other.”

As for their respective projects, “it turns out that we have completely opposite same tastes,” LePiane said.

“If that makes sense.”

Seeing both houses, it makes perfect sense.

Gwen Florio is a Missoulian reporter.

She can be reached at (406) 523-5268 or by email at gflorio@missoulian.com.

Tom Bauer and Michael Gallacher are Missoulian photographers. They can be reached at (406) 523-5270 or by email at tbauer@missoulian.com and mgallacher@missoulian.com.

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One man's passion for a sport has kept him active for more than 6 decades 68

missoula magazine

AT by fritz neighbor

photos by tom bauer

T

om Lewis grew up in the Midwest, California and Oregon and has lived all over the map, including a brief, harrying time in Korea.

But from the first time he set foot in Montana, in 1993, he’s considered it home.

“I took time off for two years spent in Las Vegas and Arizona,” he noted. “It was a mistake, moving away from here.”

Now that he’s back, he isn’t ever going to leave – well, he will for a week in late June, for the National Handball Tournament in Fountain Valley, Calif. He’ll meet up with old friends, and stay with a granddaughter.

Lewis is 81 years old, you see, and he plays on two artificial knees. But he can’t stop playing handball; it keeps him young. In Missoula, there may be no better ambassador for the sport.

Tom Lewis plays handball with Bob Gensemer at Missoula's Peak Racquet Club. At 81, Lewis is still going strong on the court and playing in tournaments.

“I

started playing when I was 13, in Southern California, against a one-wall court,” he said.

“My mom used to get on me for not coming home from school.”

Soon after, though, his family moved to Oregon, and Lewis’ handball habit went away. He graduated high school in 1950, then did a stint in the armed forces.

“I was going to get drafted so I joined the Air

" The secret of his marriage is the same key to his chosen sport: respect." missoula magazine

69

Lewis began playing handball as a teenager, and despite knee replacement surgery he’s a regular on the courts.

Force,” he said. “I was sent to Korea, and spent a year in the combat zone.”

Dodging sniper fire and watching bubble helicopters land at nearby MASH units gave way to a short stay in Wisconsin because his wife was from there.

It took until 1954 for him to get back to California, and onto a handball court.

This time, the court had four walls.

He’s had to step away from the game from time to time, but he’s been hooked ever since. It is a major reason he’s healthy and happy and wise.

“Handball’s been a lot of it,” he said.

“It’s a great sport. Basically, handball is just a great camaraderie sport that keeps you in good health.

“As long as your heart stays strong and

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your wheels stay on.”

T

hat’s not to say it is easy. Handball is tough to master and the domain of the ambidextrous. Being able to fire shots with either hand is compulsory.

“When you play well, you feel good,” Lewis said. “When you play bad, you feel bad. You can have days like today” – this was after Lewis played with friends in early May – “where you feel like you hit the ball just perfect, every shot.

“But the other day, I couldn’t hit the ball. Then you go home feeling terrible.”

And then you come back.

“For him, he makes it clear it’s about much more than playing,” said Andy Tucknott, a local player who has twice won Montana’s men’s open handball

championship. “It’s about having a beer afterward and getting to know people.”

Lewis first knew Tucknott when the latter was a racquetball player, at the old Courthouse Sports and Fitness in Missoula. He saw an excellent player who could be even better at handball.

Lewis was right.

“What brought me to the game was the Tuesday Night Crew that (Jeff) Jamison used to run over at the Courthouse,” Tucknott said. “And because Tommy was only about 70 years old then, he kept me coming back.

Because he beat the first time, and beat me the second time. I had to keep coming back.

“It was sort of a chorus for me. All the guys say the same thing: ‘Once you start

playing handball, you never go back to racquetball.’ Which is true. Especially in Missoula, it is so true.”

W

hen Lewis got back into the game around age 23, he rose up the ranks in Southern California. He wasn’t a world champ or even a state champ, but he was good.

“I’ve had a lot of second places,” he says, “though my partner and I, Don Schmidt, won the (Missoula) city championship in January. B Division.”

He smiles.

“I’ve had a lot of seconds and thirds and did-not-finishes just because of lack of skill,” he said.

“The guy’s always smiling,” Tucknott said. “And feeling good and making other people feel good. Then you find out things about him – his age, his travels, what handball has done for him and the people he’s met. He’s a very cool guy.”

For 20 years starting in 1957, Lewis was a welder. Twice he owned his own business.

“Then I got smart and went to school,” he said.

He went to UCLA, “just to get a general education and get a certificate to teach welding,” he said.

He kept his business going while teaching high-schoolers in California.

The experience kept him looking to the horizon.

“That’s when I found out teaching wasn’t my profession,” he said.

In 1977, he applied for a job at McDonnell Douglas – and got it. He was accepted into the aerospace giant’s twoyear engineering program and came out as an engineer scientist.

“Two of us did a two-year program and got certified as propulsion engineers,” he said. “I worked on those MD-80s that fly out of here for Allegiant.”

He also worked on the B-1B bomber.

“As you go through life and you get older and older, it’s almost all education,” Lewis said. “Everything you learn is stuck in you someplace. The good part is when you can get it out.”

I

t was also in the late 1970s that Lewis started getting into the ground floor of handball – the courts themselves.

Naturally handy, he subcontracted to build courts for a company called Frampton out of Cincinnati.

“Their panels were the most expensive, but the best,” he said.

He’s sitting inside Missoula’s Peak missoula magazine

71

jump

Lewis and his wife Barbara, married for 60 years, retired to the Bitterroot Valley in 1992.

Racquet Club as he says this, and nods toward the racquetball/handball courts.

“I was surprised the floors up here are $6,000 to $7,000 each,” he said. “I used to get them done in California for $800 apiece. Stripes and everything.”

By 1980, he was out of court-building and a full-fledged McDonnell Douglas engineer. Lewis retired in 1992, and soon he and his wife of now 60 years, Barbara, took a trip to Montana to visit a friend in the Bitterroot Valley.

“I stayed five days,” he said. “Then I came back in November and bought a house.”

It took time to fix up, but by 1994 it was squared away. That renovation was one of his few breaks from handball.

He says the secret of his marriage – he and Barbara have a son, David, and daughter, Shannon, who are in their

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50s – is the same key to his chosen sport: respect.

“We don’t argue,” he said. “We have mutual respect for each other. I give my wife credit, because she’s stayed with me all this time.”

I

n 2009, just two years after getting knee replacement surgery, Lewis went to the national handball tournament in Portland, Ore. It was most memorable for him for the number of Irish players here.

“They had women and children playing from Ireland,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to play any of the women from Ireland. They were that good. They must teach handball in school there.”

Lewis had to play in the age-70 bracket with a dozen or so other players.

He finished third.

At this year’s nationals, June 26-July 1, he hopes to play in the age-80 bracket.

He hopes to find the same camaraderie he finds here. It’s part of the reason he’ll only leave the state for a week at a time.

“People in Montana are just different,” he said. “More friendly. You don’t have as many confrontations about anything.

“Fresh air, the mountains and the people.”

And the handball.

Missoulian sportswriter Fritz Neighbor is terrible at court sports but loves writing about them. He can be reached at 523-5247 at the Missoulian. Tom Bauer is a Missoulian photographer. He can be reached at 523-5270 or by email at tbauer@missoulian.com.

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Storey by KIM BRIGGEMAN Photographs by KURT WILSON

Everyone looks forward to summer in western Montana, but it’s also a good time to look back on days gone by. Here are three memorable moments from seasons’ past, one each from June, July and August.

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memories of summer 3 vignettes from missoula's past by kim briggeman

June 15, 1883 The first train crossed the Marent Trestle north of Missoula in Evaro Canyon.

Missoulians excited about the approach of the Northern Pacific gathered near the base of the trestle to celebrate. In an era of sometimes frantic rail construction, the Marent Trestle was the highest wooden railroad bridge in the world – 226 feet. It required more than 800,000 board feet of lumber to build the span, which was longer than three football fields.

Completion of the Marent and nearby O’Keefe trestles were major milestones in the Northern Pacific’s progress. Some 150 men spent six months on them while rail-laying crews to the east and west were averaging 1½ miles a day.

The tracks reached Missoula on June 23. On Aug. 23, the final spike was driven at Independence Creek between Drummond and Garrison, connecting the 2,045-mile road between Lake Superior and Puget Sound.

The wooden Marent Trestle was replaced by a longer steel one during the winter of 1884-85. The spot became a favorite picnic area for Missoulians, according to Lenora Koelbel’s “Missoula the Way It Was.” By 1900, the Northern Pacific’s main line was rerouted through the Clark Fork Valley, bypassing the Evaro gulches and chopping off some 100 miles. kurt wilson

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Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick1907. Library of Congress

Aug. 6, 1895

M

ark Twain got lost and then arrested in Missoula.

Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, accompanied by his wife and daughter, was at the end of a five-stop Montana swing during a yearlong lecture tour.

The famed writer and humorist spoke

at the Barnett Opera House the previous night. Officers from Fort Missoula had invited Twain to the fort for lunch and to review the troops. He rose early to walk out to the fort ahead of the rest of his entourage, who rode in mule-drawn army ambulances. But Twain took the wrong road and went five or six miles out of his way.

He was hiking back to town when he

spotted the ambulance carrying Maj. James Pond, the tour manager, on its way to the fort. Twain ran across several fields and jumped in with Pond.

“He was tired – too tired to express disgust – and sat quietly inside the ambulance until we drove up to headquarters,” Pond reported.

As Twain stepped to the ground he was met by a sergeant from the 25th Infantry, made up of black troops known as Buffalo Soldiers.

“Are you Mark Twain?”

“I am.”

“I have orders to arrest and take you to the guardhouse.”

“All right,” Twain replied.

He let himself be led across the parade grounds without protest. The fort commander hurried to rescue the famous prisoner and asked Twain’s pardon for the practical joke. Twain praised the arresting sergeant for his discipline, but refused a ride to headquarters.

“Thanks, I prefer freedom, if you don’t mind,” he said.

The visitors were entertained by the 30-piece fort band and watched the soldiers drill. Then it was back to town and the Northern Pacific depot, where they caught the 2:30 to Spokane.

Missoula. Circa 1922. Library of Congress

July 21, 1922

A

ll hell broke loose south of Missoula as a barrage from American guns lay down wire entanglements in front of German trenches.

An estimated 25,000 spectators from throughout the Northwest crowded into the grandstands and around the racetrack at the Missoula County Fairgrounds a mile away to watch a re-enactment of the 1918 Battle of Chateau-Thierry in northern France.

It was the largest crowd to witness a single event in Missoula, and possibly retained that record until the expansion

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of the University of Montana’s Washington-Grizzly Stadium in 2008.

Real planes bombed a makeshift French village on the German front line. Smoke and darkness limited the spectators’ view, “but to the men who had been through the real hell-fire of battles, it was all too real,” a Missoulian reporter noted.

As darkness descended, a band played old war tunes and a battery of big guns winked from the unpopulated South Hills. Grenades, mines, 75mm shells and bombs exploded in the heat of battle.

Moments after the doughboys captured the final trenches, flares lit up the battlefield and Old Glory was hoisted to a mast. The band struck up “The

Star-Spangled Banner” and the audience stood in silent respect.

Thousands of automobiles honked away when the battle ended. Meanwhile, more than 500 tired, dusty doughboys of the Montana National Guard and the 4th U.S. Infantry from Fort Missoula stumbled back across the broken field to reassemble and return to camp.

Kim Briggeman is a Missoulian reporter. He can be reached at (406) 523-5266 or by email at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.

Kurt Wilson is the Missoulian’s photography editor. He can be reached at (406) 523-5244 or by email at kwilson@missoulian.com

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missoula magazine

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CLIMB THE SUBLIME by michael moore

O

n the first sun-washed day of March, more than 35 people made a 40-minute walk into the Bitterroot Mountains to rock climb in a new area whose creation I have been blessed to be part of.

That may not seem like a crowd when you think of other sports, but for a climbing area in Montana, 35 is like an overflow throng in Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

The mood was festive, as climbers mingled while they queued up for their favorite routes or perhaps a chance at a new route. Folks who didn’t know one another introduced themselves, traded information – climbers call it beta – about different climbs, and raucously encouraged one another as they crept up the steep walls of what we call the North Rim of Mill Creek.

It’s hard to describe the feeling all those folks left me with, but one word that kept circulating in my head was “community.” That’s an overused term, to be sure, and perhaps it’s gotten a little too squishy to be apt.

So let me digress. For as long as there’s been climbing, there’s been what’s been known as the climber community. To describe it as a loose affiliation would be to overstate both terms, but it exists.

It’s a small, insular world of driven people who like the fact their their sport is outside the mainstream.

Within this little world, there are (at least) two divisions, one of which gladly welcomes new climbers to the throng, the other a bit more elitist and devoted to the notion that climbers partake of a rarefied air they feel most are unworthy to breathe.

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I am in the first camp. I think our sport is improved by inclusion rather than exclusion, and I think folks who climb easy to intermediate walls have an experience as rich as those who ascend the world’s most difficult climbs.

The North Rim is an area that offers some of both, with some difficult routes on sublime, overhanging walls, and easier (and far more popular) routes on walls that are steep but heavily featured. And so what we see at Mill are primarily folks in the inclusive camp; even those committed to the harder climbs seem psyched to see new climbers trying their hardest as they muscle their way up the easier routes.

And that is as it should be, as none of us started out brilliant, strong and fearless.

How people climb doesn’t interest me much, though; I am fascinated that they’ve come together in one place.

T

he social sciences have a concept known as a gift economy. The basics of such an economy are that goods and services are provided to others without any agreement that the provider will receive anything in return for the labor or investment.

In essence, a gift economy gives away something of value without creating an obligation for the receiver to give anything back.

Gift economies stand in marked contrast to barter or market-based economies, where there’s some sort of material value exchanged. An ancient example of a

heather ericson

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"I don’t think any of us who developed the North Rim imagined how powerful a force the gift might be."

dane scott

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gift economy would be giving away food in agricultural societies, while a more recent example might be open-source software developers who create programs that are distributed freely. The operating system Linux is a perfect example.

So, what does this have to do with climbing and the North Rim? Nearly everything, as it turns out.

I’ve climbed on and off for decades and have met a couple of handfuls of route developers in that time. I’ve met hundreds of climbers, but the climber who puts up new routes is a rarity. For one thing, forging a new route up a rock wall is a major time suck. You’ve got to find a wall, determine whether it can be climbed at least somewhat safely, then start climbing. If the climb looks like it will “go” – which is to say it’s a route worth climbing and can actually be climbed – you’ll spend a lot of time scrubbing lichen and dirt off holds and knocking off loose pieces of rock.

If the route is a traditional line, meaning that you will place your own protective gear, the expense will be small, perhaps just chain anchors at route’s end.

But if you’re putting up sport climbs – on walls that can’t be protected without bolts – you are going to spend some money.

Now, there are some climbers who forge new routes solely for the sake of exploration and adventure. That’s great, and an endeavor to be encouraged.

Putting up climbs so that others can climb isn’t inherently better than climbs undertaken for purely personal reasons, but it is different. And it is what makes climbing a gift economy.

A recent essay by Debora Halbert in the book “Climbing: Philosophy for Everyone” referenced this notion of climbing as a gift economy, but she advanced an argument that is interesting but not precisely my experience as a route developer.

Halbert used a philosophical model advanced by Peter Kropotkin, who saw gift economies as a sort of social anarchist’s answer to the failures of capitalism. Tying in climbing and using Kropotkin’s terms, she suggested route development as a form of “mutual aid” that had as a side effect the building of community.

I don’t disagree with that, necessarily, but I also don’t have the time to mount an argument for anarchism over capitalism.

Plus, it’s really beside the point.

I’m more inclined to the economist Duran Bell’s less political idea that exchanges in the gift economy are used simply to create beneficial social relationships, which are indeed a form of community.

That said, I don’t think any of us who

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"The question is why?

And the answer is that it’s a way to give back to climbing, to further the community, to create opportunity for those who come after us."

heather ericson

developed the North Rim imagined how powerful a force the gift might be.

W

hen we started putting up routes, we did so both to make ourselves happy and to provide new climbing routes for Northwest climbers. We also embraced the idea of putting up climbs that would be accessible to beginning and intermediate climbers; that was, in fact, one of our goals.

We are now close to having 40 climbs, most of them bolted sport routes. Those bolts, hangers and anchors cost money, but it’s money we’ve been happy to spend.

The question is why? And the answer is that it’s a way to give back to climbing, to further the community, to create opportunity for those who come after us.

For our act of creating a new climbing area to actually become a living, breathing gift economy, we had to accept the possibility that no one would ever come to the North Rim. Another possibility – unlikely, though possible – was that people would come and pronounce it no good.

Fortunately, neither of those possibilities came true. In fact, the response has been just the opposite – we’ve had more climbers than we ever imagined. And those climbers have also affirmed the work in a way that none of us who worked on the area anticipated – by being gracious and thankful, by putting that

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gratitude into words and actions.

What they’ve done is acknowledge the gift.

That simple act of showing up in a new place to experience the grace of the mountains has buttressed a Missoula climbing community that is visible, inspired, encouraging and joyful.

The gift economy presumes that acts will be taken with no expectation of a return. I think our core group – Dane Scott, Ken Turley, Tim Karst, Kurt Krueger, Olin Martin and me – had precisely that expectation.

Although folks have offered to pitch in for our expenses, we haven’t accepted their money. The reason is that we’ve already seen the return on our investment. It’s in the faces of the climbers. Sometimes it’s a thank you from a new climber who just led her first climb on one the North Rim’s easier routes.

Sometimes it’s in the exhausted shoutout from a guy falling repeatedly on the crux of one of Dane and Ken’s hard routes.

And sometimes it’s as simple as a dozen people saying hello to one another for the first time, sitting beneath soaring walls above a roaring creek, new friends framed by a backdrop of frosted peaks.

That is the real gift.

For more information about climbing at the North Rim of Mill Creek, go to millcreekreport.blogspot.com.

The website offers printable topos of the climbs, as well as a map to the area.

literary landscape

...continued from page 19 chronologically from the Paleo-Indian period to the Late Prehistoric period, details how Montana’s early peoples adapted to the rugged environment and several dramatic changes in climate. Learn how they hunted bison and other game before the introduction of the horse, how archaeologists can identify a culture by its projectile point, and where Montana’s original hard-rock miners worked their quarries.

“Yellowstone Bison: The Science and Management of a Migratory Wildlife Population” by C. Cormack Gates, Len Broberg

The bison is an icon of the Western Range and a symbol of the challenge of large migratory herbivore management in a partially settled landscape. Yellowstone National Park is one of the few remaining wild bison strongholds in North America, but the management of this population has increasingly been the subject of controversy.

In a national park spanning three states and adjoined by federal and private lands, the history of this migratory wildlife population presents a compelling tale of trans boundary management. This book reviews the ecology of the species, documents Yellowstone bison management history, illustrates the use of a systemsmodeling approach to issue resolution, and offers insights into the challenges of management in a dynamic administrative context.

“Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters” by Charles Finn

In 29 microessays that border on prose poems, Charles Finn captures chance encounters with the everyday – and not so everyday – animals, birds, and insects of North America.

There are no maulings or fantastic escapes in Finn’s narratives – only stillness and attentiveness to beauty. With profundity, humor, grace, and compassion, Finn pays homage to the creatures that share our world – from black bears to bumble bees, mountain lions to muskrats – and, in doing so, touches on what it means to be human.

“Prairie Fever: British Aristocrats in the American West 1830-1890” by Peter Pagnamenta

From the 1830s onward, a succession of well-born Britons headed west to the great American wilderness to find adventure and fulfillment. They brought their dogs, sporting guns, valets, and all the attitudes and prejudices of their class. Prairie Fever explores why the West had such a strong romantic appeal for them at a time when their inherited wealth and passion for sport had no American equivalent.

In fascinating and often comic detail, the author shows how the British behaved – and what the fur traders, hunting guides, and ordinary Americans made of them – as they crossed the country to see the Indians, hunt buffalo, and eventually build cattle empires and buy up vast tracts of the West. But as British blue bloods

became American landowners, they found themselves attacked and reviled as “land vultures” and accused of attempting a new colonization. In a final denouement, Congress moved against the foreigners and passed a law to stop them from buying land.

“Nothing to Tell: Extraordinary Stories of Montana Ranch Women” by Donna

Gray

Sitting at the kitchen tables of 12 women in their eighties who were born in or immigrated to Montana in the late 19th or early 20th century, between 1982 and 1988 oral historian Donna Gray conducted interviews that reveal a rich heritage. In retelling their life stories, Gray steps aside and allows these women with supposedly “nothing to tell” to speak for themselves. Pride, nostalgia, and triumph fill a dozen hearts as they realize how remarkable their lives have been and wonder how they did it all.

Some of these women grew up in Montana in one-bedroom houses; others traveled in covered wagons before finding a home and falling in love with Montana. These raw accounts bring to life the childhood memories and adulthood experiences of ranch wives who were not afraid to milk a cow or bake in a wooden stove. From raising poultry to raising a family, these women knew the meaning of hard work. Several faced the hardships of family illness, poverty, and early widowhood. Through it all, they were known for their good sense of humor and strong sense of self.

Barbara Theroux is manager of Fact and Fiction Bookstore in downtown Missoula.

She writes the “Missoula Reads” column for each edition of Missoula magazine.

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as the river runs

...continued from page 36

that happen to me,” he says with a laugh.

“Except with me, the fish were not so big, and it was more clumsiness on my part.”

Local residents and ranchers began

championing the restoration of the Blackfoot fishery half a dozen or more years before the movie came out, Roos says.

“It wasn’t declining, it stunk,” he says.

But after Redford’s film appeared, and people learned that the rivers in the movie weren’t the Blackfoot, and why, donations poured in to organizations such as Trout Unlimited that made the efforts easier.

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ohn Maclean still pulls out his father’s book and re-reads passages from it from time to time.

But he says it’s been years since he rewatched the movie.

“The story is a classic,” he says. “It hooks you in. I don’t feel the same about the movie.”

Too, there’s something unsettling about watching Hollywood actors play the father he knew so well, and a grandfather and uncle he never met, he says.

“There’s a rush of an emotional reaction,” Maclean says. “Still, it’s a good movie, and what I like is that it’s a real family movie. Life is violent – Paul was beaten to death – but that’s not shown on the screen. The movie pulls no punches, but it doesn’t rub your nose in it, either. The whole family can watch it.”

Maclean, who lives in Washington, D.C., still returns often to Seeley Lake – where he’s a member of the volunteer fire department – and to the log cabin his grandfather, the Rev. John Maclean, built there.

An author himself, Maclean’s latest book, “The Fiery Touch,” about southern California’s arson-caused Esperanza wildfire that brought about homicide charges after an engine crew perished in the blaze, will be published in the coming months.

A

long with “Thelma and Louise,” which came out a year earlier, “A River Runs Through It” launched Pitt to stardom.

Within two years he had the first of his nine Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Oddly enough, it came for another Montana-set (though filmed across the border in Canada) movie, “Legends of the Fall.”

While some called his portrayal of Paul Maclean “career-making,” Pitt told Rolling Stone magazine in 1994 that he thought it was one of his weakest performances to date.

“It’s so weird that it ended up being the one that I got the most attention for,” he told the magazine, crediting Redford and the rest of the cast with raising his game.

Perhaps most amazing is how close it all came to never being.

Norman Maclean didn’t write “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories” until he was 70, and after he had retired from the University of Chicago.

Then, he couldn’t find a publisher. One famously turned it down by telling Maclean his stories had “too many trees” in them.

Finally, the University of Chicago Press agreed to publish the book.

Redford, however, had never heard of it when he visited his friend, Montana author Thomas McGuane, outside Livingston.

“It was an accident,” McGuane told the Bozeman Chronicle. “Redford was visiting me and we were talking about Western books we liked. He hadn’t heard of Norman Maclean’s book, so I gave him a copy and the rest is history.”

T

hat history includes times it seemed the book might never make it to the screen. It was never Maclean’s goal to begin with, and he had legitimate concerns what Hollywood might do with his story of trying to come to terms with his brother’s life, and murder.

“The first script he saw, he hated,” John Maclean says. “It opened up with (young) Paul at the dock at Seeley Lake.

He catches a fish – and then he snaps its neck and kills it. When my father read that, we had to scrape him off the walls. He was infuriated. His brother was troubled, but he was beautiful. Whoever wrote that clearly didn’t understand the book or the people

in it.”

The writer who eventually did the screenplay, Richard Friedenberg, was nominated for an Oscar for it.

The smartest thing Redford did, John Maclean says – besides employing himself as narrator – was to not begin filming until after Norman Maclean had passed away, in 1990 at the age of 87.

“I can’t prove it,” John Maclean says, “but I think Redford had the brains to outwait my father. He knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make the movie while he was still alive.”

After “A River Runs Through It” was released 20 years ago, fly rods weren’t the only things that saw a huge jump in sales.

Norman Maclean’s book, the one with “too many trees” that was published in 1976, sold more than a million more copies after 1992.

Vince Devlin is a Missoulian reporter.

He can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or by email at vdevlin@missoulian.com. Michael Gallacher and Kurt Wilson are Missoulian photographers. They can be reached at (406) 523-5270 or by email at mgallacher@missoulian.com and kwilson@missoulian.com.

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parting shot

p.s.

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River tubers file down the bank to the Clark Fork River for an evening float, one of the joys of summer in downtown Missoula.

photograph by tom bauer

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