An Arborophile Copes with Dendromania

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. —Alfred Joyce Kilmer A Note from Chris: Monica thinks I'm obsessed with trees, aspens in particular. Perhaps she's right. I can think of worse things to obsess over.…

Pride Goeth Before the Fall

I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. —Chris G. Fall is here. The tourists are gone, the saloon is closed, and most of the locals have left for the season. All is quiet on the North Fork—or so it would seem for now. Old Man Winter is on his way. Here at…

Under the Dome Alone

“Oh no, don’t do that,” my mom said when I called to tell her that I’d be staying at the yurt alone for five days. “I’ll be OK,” I reassured her. “I have plenty of bear spray. But I can’t leave the cats alone. It’s freezing up there at night already.” “But I’ll be so…

All the Pretty Gills

A Note from Chris: Fly fishing for trout: for me it's not about catching a lot of, or big, fish. It's about so much more. Standing hip deep in gin-clear water produced from glacial melt high in the Rockies, surrounded by unspoiled wilderness, absolute solitude (with the exception of the bald eagle skimming the water…

Butter-and-eggs

Flowers are the earth laughing.  —Ralph Waldo Emerson As the undisputed “Crown of the Continent,” Glacier National Park is grand, with its expansive views, mammoth glaciers, towering Continental Divide, historic lodges, hulking grizzlies, and, of course, big sky. But it’s the little things that make the park and its surrounding areas memorable on a personal…

Heat, DEET, and No Retreat

Like much of the U.S. right now, we are suffering from a brutal heat wave. The highs are twenty degrees above average and we haven’t seen a significant rainfall for over a week (though we did hike in a sleet storm near Logan Pass on July 3). Combine this with the fact that we are…

A Festive Fourth

Happy Fourth of July! We hope everyone had a great time celebrating 236 years of independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. We celebrated by sitting on the side of a dirt road, drinks in hand, to cheer on one heck of an irreverent yet patriotic, charming, and short parade. Classic Polebridge, and we love…

That Which Doesn’t Kill Us …

Well, Readers, it’s been a while since I’ve posted about the topic I’m sure you’re all dying to know more about: the composting toilet. As the saying goes, that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. And we’re still here. If you compost your garden waste or kitchen vegetable scraps, you probably already know that…

Neo-Pioneers

A Note from Chris: The thing about living in a yurt in the middle of nowhere is that every task takes three times longer than it should. In fact, I haven’t seen so many curveballs since my ol’ baseball days. The list of projects is long and never-ending—like building a shed for firewood and the new…

Square Foot Gardening

In a state as vast, remote, and sparsely populated as Montana, square-foot gardening may seem absurd. I know it probably does to many of our North Fork neighbors. In fact, one thought our little veggie-plot-to-be was a horseshoe pitching box. At twenty-four square feet, the raised bed looks not unlike a postage stamp in the…