Like many modern humans, especially those of us who are regularly bombarded by various technologies, I spend way too much time being distracted by “stuff” that doesn’t really matter, from news feeds to emails and text messages and what we’ve come to call social and streaming media—not to mention more traditional forms of the entertainment […]

Belgrade author Canyon Hohenstein draws on his experience leading a Montana inmate wildfire crew for his fictional novel “Who Tames the Flames,” exploring wildland firefighting, trauma, redemption and life with prisoners away from cell walls. Hohenstein discussed the book and the 2021 Swan Valley fire that inspired it at the Country Bookstore on Thursday, reflecting on the incarcerated firefighters he led and the personal stories that shaped his book.

I've been guiding canoe trips through the Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument for almost 20 years. People come from around the world to float the White Cliffs, to paddle through country that’s been relatively unchanged for thousands of years. Visitors find teepee rings, relive Montana’s history, sit in the shade of towering cottonwoods, and enjoy the stars under the Big Sky.

Seven long years ago the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, with the support of local residents, took the Forest Service to federal court to halt the Hanna Flats logging, road-building, and burning project on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest in northern Idaho. Through a long and winding legal saga the good news — for grizzly bears, old-growth forests, and the local populace which strongly opposed the deforestation — is that a federal appeals court just ruled for the Alliance.