A Note from Chris: As the season ends, and Monica is too busy with the final harvest to write a blog post, I'll share an essay with you.We hiked (a lot), dug a sand point well, tended a garden, defended ourselves against grasshopper swarms, stared at aspen groves, did some yurt-improvement projects, befriended (and then…
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.…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Without a composting toilet, dry sink, or sufficient source of heat at the yurt yet, we decided to head back home to Whitefish rather than stay the night. As Chris closed the gate to our lane, I took one last look at the cabin, far off in the distance. There had to be more to…
Happy 2012! Chris and I just returned from a traditional Austrian Christmas vacation, where we visited Vienna, Prague, and Salzburg. We had a wonderful time seeing the sites and traveling by train through the Czech countryside—but no matter how bucolic the view outside the window, our minds were never far from Polebridge and that day…
Postcards from Polebridge 