The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
Sorted by date Results 454 - 466 of 466
You don't have to be an ancient mariner to see we have plenty of water around us. People are filling sandbags, checking flood insurance policies or waiting for fields to dry up so they can plant. From a recreation point of view, too much water makes it difficult, impossible or downright dangerous to boat or float or fish. That leads to a lot of grumbling about something we have no control over. Life underwater is exciting, too, but sometimes in a good way and for different...
Authors' Note: This piece is excerpted from a report Clyde Fickes wrote in May 1944. It appeared in "Volume 1 – Early Days In The Forest Service." His words are excerpted with light editing. Fickes retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1947. He died at age 103 on Dec. 29, 1987 – from an accident on the dance floor. For a Ranger Station, no more isolated or lonesome spot could have been found. Visitors were practically unheard of for months at a time. The nearest nei...
Investing money for retirement is a good and noble goal. After all, who does not want to have a bit of a nest egg to retire on? Social security is ok; it will help you some. But it was not intended to be the main source of one’s retirement fund. For many of us living in rural Montana, there is not the “old-school” safe and secure retirement program that people who worked in industrial areas have often had. Of course even the pension funds that were thought to be secure and s...
At a recent book signing, a gentleman who knew quite a bit about the Judith Basin country explained how Utica, a small town in the basin on the road into the Little Belt Mountains, received its name. He mentioned that one of the early arrivals onto that landscape thought folks would have to be crazy to live there. (We can't figure out why, as it's a beautiful piece of geography, but perhaps he showed up in the winter when strong winds were blowing and piling up drifts of...
As we move through the month of May there are many things worth celebrating. If you are being inundated with water right now, you will be celebrating the lowering of the run-off, and assistance from neighbors and friends. Speaking of which, please do not hesitate to call me if I and the folks who make up Community Bible can be of any help to you. Being new to the community I do not know many of you yet, but hope to. If. Like me, you are a motorcyclist, you celebrate warmer...
Call it 670 miles – or perhaps more precisely 674 miles – but either way, the Yellowstone River remains the nation's longest undammed waterway. It's a great river that meanders through some of the finest mountain and prairie topography on the planet – peaks reaching past 12,000 feet in elevation, the largest high-mountain lake on the continent, dense evergreen forests, buttes, colorful badlands, deep canyons, and sweet-smelling sage and juniper covered hills. A good porti...
My last “Musing” was titled “A New Beginning” and in it I shared some thoughts on being in community, and also on a new chapter in life as pastor of the Community Bible Church of Lincoln. I am very excited about that! But then again we are all excited about new things, new relationships, and the newness that springtime brings to our lives. But with new things there is change, and we often do not like change. Change causes us some feeling of discomfort doesn’t it? But to gr...
Authors' Note: This piece is excerpted from a report Clyde Fickes wrote in May 1944. It appeared in "Volume 1 – Early Days In The Forest Service." His words are excerpted with light editing. Fickes retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1947. He died at age 103 on Dec. 29, 1987 – from an accident on the dance floor. The Sun River country comprises some interesting and spectacular topography. The river comes out of the mountains in a due east and west course for some 8 or 9 m...
The calendar says that spring has come to Montana, but it does not seem like it has come to the high country. I must say that I was spoiled last week as Lisa and I travelled to Cannon Beach, Ore. to attend our mission’s annual conference. We enjoyed a few 60 degree days, a fair amount of wind and rain, and the greenery of western Oregon. It was a nice time away except for the driving, but well worth it. Spring brings renewal to the land and the people, and so does attending a conference with over 140 like-minded m...
It's like this. I'm now bankrupt in one country and stone broke in another. That takes some work. I've written about Beré. She works in the restaurant on the weekends and occasionally other holidays. When I first arrived here, I took note of the horrendous tasks she faced, almost always alone. When she arrived on Saturday mornings, she walked into a four-foot-high stack of dirty sauce pans which had to be cleaned with cold water and steel wool. After two or three hours of...
Normally, I’m not one for complaining about the weather. Several times this winter I was heard to remind my better half that he chooses to live in the mountains and thus snow and cold weather are to be expected and besides, isn’t it beautiful? I even took a sort of weird, nostalgic pleasure in experiencing a “real” winter, like the ones I remember from a childhood spent trudging through snowdrifts (uphill both ways) to meet the school bus. But, with March coming in like a lion and going out like an a-hole, even I have re...
Looking back, it’s surprising to realize how hazardous our ranch childhoods were. We had scores of attractive dangers to lure us into difficult situations. We had horses, defensive cows with new calves, our pond, plus myriad things our urban friends didn’t. We were unsupervised most of the time, our fathers being at work and our mothers tending other children in those days of large families. Most of us were driving, or at least steering, tractors by the time we were seven or...
Do you sometimes think the state is being inundated with new ways, and we are losing the real Montana? In some places perhaps yes, but most of the state is still the Montana we have always known and perceived. It is only in a small percentage of the state's mass where this change has actually taken place. The last census showed Montana, the fourth-largest state in the nation in terms of landmass, as having 989,415 folks residing within its borders. We use the 2010 census, as...
