M. Mark Miller, Author

Author: mmarkmiller

  • A Tale: Dunraven Says Mountain Men Led a “Delicious Life” — 1874

    Beginning in 1807 when John Colter first passed through the area that became Yellowstone National Park through the 1830s, Mountain Men flourished in the Rocky Mountain West. Then a combination of over trapping and a shift in men’s fashions to silk hats ended the lucrative beaver trade. The last big Mountain Man rendezvous occurred  in 1840.

    Although a trapper couldn’t earn a fortune after that, a few hardy souls remained in the area making a subsistence living. Yellowstone tourists encountered such men until the 1880s. Here’s a description of  an encounter with two Mountain Men and their entourage written by the Earl of Dunraven, a wealthy Irish nobleman who visited the Park in the 1874.

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    In the afternoon we passed quite a patriarchal camp, composed of two men with their Indian wives and several children; half a dozen powerful savage-looking dogs and about fifty horses completed the party.

    They had been grazing their stock, hunting and trapping—leading a nomad, vagabond, and delicious life—a sort of mixed existence, half hunter, half herdsman, and had collected a great pile of deer-hides and beaver-skins. They were then on their way to settlements to dispose of their peltry, and to get stores and provisions; for they were proceeding to look for comfortable winter quarters, down the river or up the canyon.

    We soon discovered that the strangers were white, and, moreover, that there were only two men in camp; and without more ado we rode in and made friends. What a lot of mutually interesting information was given and received! We were outward bound and had the news, and the latitude and the longitude. They were homeward bound, had been wandering for months, cut off from all means of communication with the outside world, and had but the vaguest notion of their position on the globe.

    But, though ignorant of external matters and what was going on in settlements, they had not lost all desire for information. An American, although he lives with an Indian woman in the forests or on the plains, never quite loses his interest in politics and parties; and these two squaw-men were very anxious to hear all about electioneering matters

    These men looked very happy and comfortable. Unquestionably the proper way for a man to travel with ease and luxury in these deserts is for him to take unto himself a helpmate chosen from the native population. With an Indian wife to look after his bodily comforts, a man may devote himself to hunting, fishing, or trapping without a thought or care. He may make his mind quite easy about all household matters. His camp will be well arranged, the tent pegs driven securely home, the stock watered, picketed, and properly cared for, a good supper cooked, his bed spread out, and everything made comfortable; his clothes and hunting-gear looked after, the buttons sewn on his shirt (if he has got any shirt—or any buttons) and all the little trivial incidents of life, which, if neglected, wear out one’s existence, he will find carefully attended to by a willing and affectionate slave.

    They had a lot to tell us also about their travels and adventures, about the wood and water supply, and the abundance or deficiency of game. So we sat down on bales of beaver-skins and retailed all the civilized intelligence we could think of. The women came and brought us embers for our pipes, and spread out robes for us and made us at home. And the little, fat, chubby children, wild and shy as young wolves, peered at us from behind the tent out of their round, black, beady eyes.

    ∞§∞

    — Text from The Great Divide by the Earl of Dunraven, 1875.

    — You might also enjoy:

    — To see more stories by this author, click on “Dunraven” under the “Categories” button to the left.

  • Montana Book Award Honors Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Kushner Resnick

    Goodbye Wifes and Daughters tells an archetypical story, one that Montanans know all too well. Some men cut corners to maximize profit; others willingly work in dangerous places to support their families, and many men die. It might have been hard rock miners in Butte or asbestos processors in Libby, but Susan Kushner Resnick chose to tell the story of coal miners in Bear Creek, Montana.

    On the morning of February 27, 1943, an explosion ripped through Smith Mine #3 killing 75 men  that day and the town of Bear Creek over the next decade. Resnick puts the story in context. She tells how the pressures of World War II make men feel it’s their patriotic duty face danger to keep up production. How owners exploit that patriotism to maximize profit. How methane builds and sparks ignite it.

    All that is important. But the power of the book lies in Resnick’s recreation of the life in a small town. Resnick has researched deeply and she uses the details she dug up to bring the people to life. She tells us not just that the the town took pride in its high school basketball team, she tells us how many points to the top scorer made, and who sat on the bench, and where they went with their girlfriends after the game. Such exquisite detail brings the people—both those who died and those who survived—to life.

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    — To find out more about my work with the Montana Book Award look under the “Categories Button” on the right.

  • Montana Book Award Honors Everything: A Novel by Kevin Canty

    The only fiction on this year’s list of Montana Book Award winners tells the intertwined stories of a fishing guide and his friends as they encounter challenges that life might throw at any of us. Missoula author Kevin Canty’s novel doesn’t quite live up to its title, Everything: A Novel, but it sure comes close. Among the issues Canty addresses are the death of a life partner, dealing with cancer, loving a child while watching her make bad decisions, falling in love with married partner, and selling a piece of real estate you love so you can live in comfort.

    Canty explores these universal themes in a specific setting, Missoula and the valleys and mountains that surround it. His clear prose  is equally adept at evoking the splash of a fish jumping in a mountain stream and the clatter of beer glasses in a student bar.

    The central character is a middle-aged fishing guide who calls himself “RL.”  The book opens with RL and his friend, June, drinking whiskey on the bank of the Clark Fork to commemorate her late husband. RL’s daughter, Leila, falls in love in love with one of his employees whose marriage is on the rock. And RL rekindles his affair with June, an old flame who’s in town for cancer treatments.

    There’s not a strong central plot that links together the several stories, but Canty proved he is a master of the short in his earlier books (Where the Money Went and A Stranger in This World: Stories) and the shared links to RL and the Missoula location are plenty to hold the book together.  It’s Canty’s characters and their problems that make the book stick in the reader’s memory like a well set fishhook.

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    — To find out more about my work with the Montana Book Award look under the “Categories Button” on the right.

  • A Tale: Lord Blackmore Riles His Guide by Catching 254 Fish in One Day — 1872

    In the 1870s a curious conflict developed  over who got to kill wildlife in Yellowstone Park. After decimating the bison herds on the great plains, hide hunters converged on the park and  slaughtering elk by the thousand leaving their carcasses to rot.

    Sport hunters condemned commercial hunting, but reserved their own right to blast away at anything that moved. On the other hand, hide hunters said they were just trying to make a living and condemned killing “just for fun.”

    The differing attitudes are illustrated  in the story below. It comes from the reminiscence of Jack Bean, an Indian fighter and commercial hunter who hired on as a guide to the Hayden Expedition of 1872.

    Lord William Blackmore, a wealthy Englishman who had helped fund the expedition, was Hayden’s guest and an avid fisherman. Here’s what Bean says happened when he went fishing with Lord Blackmore.

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    While the doctor was geologizing the country there, I went fishing with Sir William Blackmore in Lake Abundance.

    You could see plenty of trout close to shore in the lake, but when he got to catching them he thought it would be wonderful if he caught one for each year he was old—fifty four. He soon caught the fifty four and tried for a hundred, and was not long catching this and made a try for fifty-four more and kept fishing for another hundred, and another fifty-four.

    As we had gotten two thirds of the way around the lake by this time, I told him that I would quit as I had all the fish I could drag along on the grass, being two hundred and fifty-four. I dragged them into camp which was close along the lake and wanted to make a little show of these fish.

    Sir Blackmore, whenever he would see any bones would always ask, “How come those bones there?” I would tell him they were left by skin hunters in the winter.  He thought that all skin hunters should be put in jail for such vandalism and I told him he would do the same if he were in this country for the winter.

    So when I had shook all these fish off from the strings they made such a sight that I called Dr. Hayden’s attention to what Sir Blackmore would do if he had a chance. He colored up considerable and excused himself by saying, “The fish were so plenty it was Godsend to catch some of them out.”

    ∞§∞

    In 1886 the U.S. Army took over administration of the Park and ended the holocaust by forbidding hunting for any purpose and regulating fishing.

    — For more stories about fishing in Yellowstone Park, click on “fishing” under the “Categories” button on the right.

    — Excerpt from Jack Bean’s Reminiscence, Pioneer Museum of Bozeman.

    — NPS llustration, Yellowstone Digital Slide.

    — You might enjoy Jack Bean’s sarcastic description of guiding a greenhorn in Colonel Pickett Gets His Bear.  It fun to compare Bean’s story with Colonel Pickett’s version.

    — You can read more of Bean’s delightful reminiscence in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.

  • Guest Blog: Reading Hemingway in Yellowstone by Craig Lancaster

    Craig Lancaster

    How does he do that? When you pick up one of Craig Lancaster’s books, he grabs you by the throat and drags you kicking and screaming into the story. You’ve got no choice.You just turn the pages until you get to the end. Then you say, “that was good.”

    Craig’s writing is invisible like a crystal clear mountain stream. You know it’s there not because you can see it, but because of what you can see in it. You never say “that guy sure know’s how to create characters.” You fall in love with the good guys (and hate the bad guys). You don’t say “he sure knows how to describe a scene.” You see a street in Billings or a mountain in Utah. You don’t tell yourself “his plots really work.” You just keep turning the pages.

    I should have figured it out when I read Craig’s first novel, 600 House of Edward, but I was having too much fun. Maybe I’ll see it when I read his new novel, Summer Son, but I doubt it. I’ll just  enjoy the book first. Then I’ll go back and look for things that make his writing work.

    Like me, Craig is an admirer of the invisible prose of Ernest Hemingway—as Craig puts it—”the spare, almost parched, approach to language, in which simple words built simple sentences that stacked up into simple paragraphs, the sum of which was not simple at all.”

    On his blog a while back Craig recalled a summer trip to Yellowstone Park. That’s perfect, I thought, I’ll ask him to write a guest blog about two of my favorite subjects, Yellowstone Park and Ernest Hemingway.

    He obliged me.

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    Considering the summer of 1987 through the lens of nearly a quarter century, I wish now that I’d kept a journal or carried a camera to capture every little moment and object that demanded my interest. That summer, my parents packed up the Grand Marquis, tossed me, my sister Karen and my brother Cody into the back seat and pointed the car north, toward Yellowstone National Park, for a two-week vacation.

    To be perfectly frank, I’d have rather stayed home in suburban Fort Worth and continued putting the moves on Lisa Fravert (who, it turns out, was far less interested in me than I was in her), but my folks compelled me to go. I cordoned off my share of the back seat, threatened my much-younger siblings with imminent death if they crossed into my territory, and dropped myself into two things that I hoped would stave off boredom and family interaction (which, if you think about it, are the same thing to a teenage boy): my Sony Walkman and Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

    (Quick digression: Seriously, a Sony Walkman! Cassette-style, even. In my lifetime alone, a blink-of-the-eye 41 years, I’ve known music on eight-tracks, vinyl, cassettes, compact discs and, now, computer files so compressed that 400 songs can fit on a device half the length of my index finger. We cannot be far away from new music being piped directly into our cranial nodules, pre-selected by an algorithm that assesses every song we’ve ever heard and sends us new selections based on our biochemical responses of pleasure. It’s going to be great.)

    I’d discovered Hemingway the previous spring, when I was assigned to read A Farewell to Arms by my honors English teacher, Janelle Eklund. I hadn’t held out much hope for it. Hemingway struck me as hopelessly rooted in an era that had nothing to do with me or my life, a name on the spine of books in my parents’ house that I’d never seen cracked. It was only after I did the work of crawling inside the book that I saw and appreciated Hemingway’s genius—the spare, almost parched, approach to language, in which simple words built simple sentences that stacked up into simple paragraphs, the sum of which was not simple at all. To write in such a way requires supreme control, an unwillingness to expend a single unnecessary syllable. Long before I read Hemingway for the first time, I’d resolved to be a writer, and in my teens, I was still flailing around for my voice, often with poor results. On a given day, I could do bad imitations of Dave Barry, Stephen King and, God help me, Andy Rooney—sometimes all three of them in a single paragraph. In Hemingway, I found an approach to writing that I could understand and an ethic I could emulate. He had built his creative writing on a foundation of journalism, the career path I came to follow. It was, in so many ways, a perfect convergence of my developing sensibility and a tangible manifestation of where it could lead.

    In Casper, Wyoming, where we spent a few days with extended family, I ventured into a mall bookstore and bought a collection of Hemingway’s short stories, and this wrenched open a whole new realization of the man’s talent. I’m going to employ an out-of-left-field comparison here, one I’ve used before: Hemingway’s short stories remind me John McEnroe’s career in doubles tennis. Both derived their greatest fame for other things—Hemingway for his novels, McEnroe for his Grand Slam singles titles and obnoxious bearing on the court. And yet, in these sidelight endeavors, both are possibly the greatest who ever lived. It’s an incredible level of ability for one person to possess.

    Onward, we drove, hooking up with my mother’s sister and her family in Billings, where I live today. The merged families then made their way to Red Lodge, up the switchbacks on the Beartooth Highway, to Cooke City—where I met a woman who’d known Hemingway, a connection to him that knocked me out—and into the park. This is where the haze of memory fails me a bit; I cannot remember the order in which we took in the sights, or how many days we stayed, or even the finer details of the majesty we saw. I spent a lot of time on narrow trails leading to viewing platforms, my 4-year-old cousin Dani riding on my shoulders. The rest of the time, I spent with my nose in Hemingway’s prose and my ears under assault by Rush’s Moving Pictures.

    (Another quick digression: What’s it going to take to put Rush into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame? I’m serious. I can think of few pop-culture travesties that irritate me more.)

    I was 17 years old that summer, and now I am the age my mother was back then. The calendar turned over faster than I could have imagined, but even though time has erased the sharp edges of memory of that vacation, it will never leave me. I can glance to my left as I write this and see those two books—the very ones I manhandled that summer—sitting in my bookcase. I can walk out my door and into my city and state and know that I’m finally at home in the land I fell in love with as a teenager. I can pull up my current manuscript—backed up nightly on a Web-based server, a phrase I couldn’t have conceived of twenty-four years ago—and know that I’m working at the dream Ernest Hemingway helped nurture in me, the writer’s life.

    Simply put, I’m a lucky man.

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    Craig Lancaster is the author of the novels 600 Hours of Edward (a Montana Honor Book and High Plains Book Award winner) and The Summer Son. Visit him at his website (www.craiglancaster.net) and/or his blog (http://craiglancaster.wordpress.com).

  • News: Bound Like Grass: A Montana Memoir Masterpiece

    The Montana Book Award honors books that have a Montana setting or author, or —in the case of this year’s winner—both. Not only does Great Falls author Ruth McLaughlin live in Montana, she grew up here. In fact, her memoir about life in the northeast corner of the state is a quintessential Montana story.

    Bound Like Grass: A Memoir of the Western High Plains tells the story of McLaughlin’s idealistic grandparents’ pursuing their dreams by homesteading and her parents’ hardscrabble existence trying to hang onto the land.

    The book begins with McLaughlin finding the only remains of the house where she grew up are a blackened chimney and rubble—perfect symbols of the broken dreams caused by the Montana homestead era of the early twentieth century.

    Historians agree that big chunks of the three million acres of Montana land that were claimed under the Dessert Land Act of 1877 should never have been homesteaded. Promoters enticed homesteaders to try dry land farming with the slogan, “Rain Follows the Plow.” That was always a dubious statement and it proved to be false —if not an outright lie. Dry land farmers enjoyed some success in the relatively wet years in the 1900s and 1910s, but then drought set in launching an exodus on par with the dustbowl.

    While it helps to know the background, McLaughlin’s book isn’t a history lesson. It a story about the descendants of the rugged people who kept their land through the Great Depression and the  tough lives they led. In addition to their struggle to make the meager land yield enough to put food on the table, her parents contended with raising four children, including two disabled daughters. McLaughlin tells the heartbreaking stories of her sisters with loving candor.

    Even more heart rending is the story of her brother’s escape to California and his troubled relationship with their father. After his father gives up farming, the son asks for only one thing—a worn out tractor that could be restored into a valuable collector’s item. The old man sells the tractor for a few dollars—a searing symbol of toxic relationship.

    McLaughlin writes with the blazing clarity of prairie sun on a cloudless day. She uses writing techniques like a master novelist to turn what might seem the most ordinary of lives into a compelling story. Ruth McLauglin’s Bound Like Grass belongs on your bookshelf with Montana’s other masterpiece memoirs: Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky, Mary Clearman Blew’s All But the Waltz, and Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean.

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    — To find out more about my work with the Montana Book Award look under the “Categories Button” on the right.

  • News: Memoir About Growing Up on High Plains Wins 2010 Montana Book Award

    The Montana Book Award winner and honors books are listed the the news release below. I will provide reviews of  them—and maybe some good books that didn’t win awards—over the next few days.

    You can read my post about the selection process here.

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    BOUND LIKE GRASS WINS 2010 MONTANA BOOK AWARD

    The 2010 Montana Book Award winner is Bound Like Grass by Ruth McLaughlin, published by University of Oklahoma Press. This annual award recognizes literary and/or artistic excellence in a book written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues. Presentations and a reception with the winning authors will take place Thursday, April 7, during the Montana Library Association Conference in Billings.

    Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains is an honest, beautifully written memoir of McLaughlin’s own and her family’s struggle to survive on their isolated wheat and cattle farm. With acute observation, she explores her roots as a descendant of Swedish American grandparents who settled in Montana at the turn of the twentieth century with high ambitions, and of parents who barely managed to eke out a living on their own neighboring farm.

    Four Honor Books Were Chosen:

    Everything by Kevin Canty, published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Canty’s novel chronicles a year in the lives of five appealingly aimless Montanans. Layla, a bright college student, and her heavy-drinking father, RL, fall into parallel adulterous romances—she with Edgar, a promising young painter, he with Betsy, an exgirlfriend undergoing cancer treatment. Meanwhile, June, a friend of both father and daughter, struggles to put the death of her husband behind her. There is a lot of booze and heartbreak in the book, yet it is full of optimism and humanity.

    Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Resnick, published by University of Nebraska Press. One morning in 1943, close to eighty men descended into the Smith coal mine in Bearcreek, Montana. Only three came out alive. “Goodbye wifes and daughters . . .” wrote two of the miners as they died. The story of that tragic day and its aftermath unfolds in this book through the eyes of those wives and daughters—women who lost their husbands, fathers, and sons, livelihoods, neighbors, and homes, yet managed to fight back and persevere.

    The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick, published by Viking. In his tightly structured narrative, Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly sketches the two larger-than-life antagonists: Sitting Bull, whose charisma and political savvy earned him the position of leader of the Plains Indians, and George Armstrong Custer, one of the Union’s greatest cavalry officers and a man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage. Philbrick reminds readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations.

    Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountain West by Dan Flores, published by University of Oklahoma Press. Dan Flores has assembled some of the most important and evocative artwork created in the region, depicting scenes from the Wind River Range of Wyoming to the Canadian border country. The accompanying essays are insightful and solidify Montana’s art history identity.

    The Montana Book Award was founded by the Friends of the Missoula Public Library in 2001 and winners are selected by a committee of individuals representing areas throughout Montana. Members of the 2010 Montana Book Award committee included Honore Bray, Missoula; Adam Kish, Twin Bridges; Mark Miller, Bozeman; Carole Ann Clark, Great Falls; Jill Munson, Fort Benton; Gordon Dean, Forsyth; and Samantha Pierson, Libby.

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    — To find out more about my work with the Montana Book Award look under the “Categories Button” on the right.

  • A Tale: Two Pictures and 1300 Words — Walter Trumbull, 1870

    The Washburn Expedition of 1870 convinced the public that there really were wonders on the upper Yellowstone. Stories of towering waterfalls, mountains of glass, a crystal-clear inland sea, and fountains of boiling water could no longer dismissed as “tall tales.” Prominent government officials and businessmen whose word couldn’t be doubted said they were there.

    Just as important the as credibility of members of the Washburn Expedition was their writing skill. Several expedition members  wrote articles about the trip for the Helena Herald that were reprinted around the world.

    N.P. Langford and Truman Everts published articles in Scribner’s Monthly that also brought national attention. The illustrations that accompanied those articles where artists’ fanciful imaginings based on verbal descriptions. The images with Langford’s article were by Thomas Moran, whose later paintings of Yellowstone gave him world fame. Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson, whose work influenced the decision to make the area a national park, went to the upper Yellowstone with the Hayden expedition in 1871.

    Two members of the Washburn Expedition left pencil sketches of what they saw, Charles Moore, a private in the military escort, and Walter Trumbull, the son of U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. Trumbull also published an account of his Yellowstone experience in the Overland Monthly. His written description and sketches of the Yellowstone Falls provide an interesting opportunity to test the adage, “A picture in worth a thousand words.”

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    We reached the falls of the Yellowstone on the morning of August 30th. These falls, two in number, are less than half a mile apart. From the lake to the upper falls, a distance of about twenty miles, the river flows, with the exception of a short series of rapids having a moderate current, through an open, undulating country, gently sloping toward the stream..

    Here and there are small groves, and the timber is quite thick a mile away from the river. A quarter of a mile above the upper falls the river breaks into rapids, and foams in eddies about huge, granite boulders, some of which have trees and shrubs growing upon them.

    Above the rapids, the river is about 150 yards wide, but, as it approaches the falls, high, rocky bluffs crowd in on both sides, forcing the water into a narrow gorge, which, at the brink of the falls, is about thirty yards wide.

    The most convenient and desirable place from which to view the falls is from a ledge, easily reached, which juts into the river a considerable distance, just below the falls, and a few feet lower than their brink. It is so close that occasional drops dampen one’s face.  The height of the upper falls is 115 feet. The ledge is irregular, the water being much deeper on the west side than on the east. Great rocks project in the face of the fall, tearing and churning the waters into foam, with here and there a little strip of green, which contrasts beautifully with the surrounding silvery whiteness of the water.

    Between the two falls, the river flows quietly in a wide channel, between steep, timbered bluffs, four hundred feet high. Just above the lower falls the bluffs again converge; the one from the west stretching out as if to dam up the river, which has, however, forced its way through a break, forty yards wide. The rocky cliffs rise perpendicularly from the brink of the falls, to a height of several hundred feet. The rocky formation is of a shelly character, and slightly colored with flowers of sulphur. The plunge of the water is in the direct course of the stream, and at the brink of the falls, it appears to be of uniform depth. It clears its bed at a bound, and takes a fearful leap of 350 feet.

    The volume of water is about half as great as that which passes over the American Fall, at Niagara, and it falls more than twice the distance. The adjacent scenery is infinitely grander. Having passed over the precipice, the clear, unbroken, greenish mass is in an instant transformed by the jagged edges of the precipice into many streams, apparently separated, yet still united, and having the appearance of molten silver.

    These streams, or jets, are shaped like a comet, with nucleus and trailing coma, following in quick succession; or they look like foaming, crested tongues, constantly overlapping each other. The outer jets decrease in size as they descend, curl outward, and break into mist. In the sunlight, a rainbow constantly spans the chasm. The foot of the falls is enveloped in mist, which conceals the river for more than a hundred yards below.

    These falls are exactly the same in height as the Vernal Falls in the Yosemite Valley, but the volume of water is at least five times as great. I think I never saw a waterfall more beautiful than the Vernal, and its surroundings are sublime. Its Indian name is said to mean “Crown of Diamonds;” and it certainly deserves the name. I remember sitting on the rocky ledge just at the edge of the falls, and with an opera-glass watching the water as they plunged downward, breaking into myriads of drops; each drop, like a lens, gathering prismatic tints from the shining sun, and flashing like diamonds of the purest brilliancy.

    The lower fall of the Yellowstone reminds me of the Vernal Fall, on the Merced.  Though nothing, perhaps, can equal the sublime scenery of the Yosemite, yet that only excels the lower falls of the Yellowstone, and the grand canyon which extends for many miles below them.

    Below the falls, the hills gradually increase in height, while the river descends in a succession of rapids through the canyon. At the falls, the canyon is not more than twelve hundred feet deep, but a few miles lower down it is nearly eighteen hundred feet deep. Its average thick a mile away from the river. A quarter of a mile above the upper falls the river breaks into rapids, and foams in eddies about huge, granite boulders, some of which have trees and shrubs growing upon them.

    Above the rapids, the river is about 150 yards wide, but, as it approaches the falls, high, rocky bluffs crowd in on both sides, forcing the water into a narrow gorge, which, at the brink of the falls, is about thirty yards wide.

    The most convenient and desirable place from which to view the falls is from a ledge, easily reached, which juts into the river a considerable distance, just below the falls, and a few feet lower than their brink. It is so close that occasional drops dampen one’s face. The height of the upper falls is 115 feet. The ledge is irregular, the water being much deeper on the west side than on the east. Great rocks project in the face of the fall, tearing and churning the waters into foam, with here and there a little strip of green, which contrasts beautifully with the surrounding silvery whiteness of the water.

    Between the two falls, the river flows quietly, in a wide channel, between steep, timbered bluffs, four hundred feet high. Just above the lower falls the bluffs again converge; the one from the west stretching out as if to dam up the river, which has, however, forced its way through a break, forty yards wide. The rocky cliffs rise perpendicularly from the brink of the falls, to a height of several hundred feet. The rocky formation is of a shelly character, and slightly colored with flowers of sulphur.

    The plunge of the water is in the direct course of the stream, and at the brink of the falls, it appears to be of uniform depth. It clears its bed at a bound, and takes a fearful leap of 350 feet. The volume of water is about half as great as that which passes over the American Fall, at Niagara, and it falls more than twice the distance.

    The adjacent scenery is infinitely grander. Having passed over the precipice, the clear, unbroken, greenish mass is in an instant transformed by the jagged edges of the precipice into many streams, apparently separated, yet still united, and having the appearance of molten silver. These streams, or jets, are shaped like a comet, with nucleus and trailing coma, following in quick succession; or they look like foaming, crested tongues, constantly overlapping each other. The outer jets decrease in size as they descend, curl outward, and break into mist. In the sunlight, a rainbow constantly spans the chasm. The foot of the falls is enveloped in mist, which conceals the river for more than a hundred yards below.

    These falls are exactly the same in height as the Vernal Falls in the Yosemite Valley, but the volume of water is at least five times as great. I think I never saw a waterfall more beautiful than the Vernal, and its surroundings are sublime. Its Indian name is said to mean “Crown of Diamonds;” and it certainly deserves the name.

    I remember sitting on the rocky ledge just at the edge of the falls, and with an opera-glass watching the waters as they plunged downward, breaking into myriads of drops; each drop, like a lens, gathering prismatic tints from the shining sun, and flashing like diamonds of the purest brilliancy. The lower fall of the Yellowstone reminds me of the Vernal Fall, on the Merced. Though nothing, perhaps, can equal the sublime scenery of the Yosemite, yet that only excels the lower falls of the Yellowstone, and the grand canyon which extends for many miles below them.

    ∞§∞

    — Excerpt from “The Washburn Expedition”  by Walter Trumbull, Overland Monthly, May-June 1871.

    — Images from the Coppermine Photo Gallery.

    — For more stories about the Washburn Expedition, click on “Washburn” under the “Categories” button to the left.

  • A Tale: Rudyard Kipling Goes Fishing With Yankee Jim — 1889

    Yankee Jim George between his cabin and the Northern Pacific track.

    In 1889 when British author Rudyard Kipling visited Yellowstone, a spur of the Northern Pacific carried passengers from Livingston, Montana, to the edge of the Park. But Kipling heeded advice from a fellow passenger and stopped to visit Yankee Jim George, the legendary operator of a toll road than ran through the canyon that still bears his name.

    Yankee Jim was a garrulous man who must have met thousands of tourists after he began collecting tolls in 1873. In 1883 the railroad took over Yankee Jim’s road bed, although they did build a bypass for him. Even after the county took over the road 1887, travelers continued to stop by Yankee Jim’s.

    Dozens of travelers’ diaries describe a stop at his cabin, note his courtly treatment of ladies and recount his tall tales. Kipling was no exception. Here’s his story.

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    From Livingston the National Park train follows the Yellowstone River through the gate of the mountains and over arid volcanic country. A stranger in the cars saw me look at the ideal trout-stream below the windows and murmured softly: “Lie off at Yankee Jim’s if you want good fishing.”

    They halted the train at the head of a narrow valley, and I leaped literally into the arms of Yankee Jim, sole owner of a log hut, an indefinite amount of hay-ground, and constructor of twenty-seven miles of wagon-road over which he held toll right. There was the hut—the river fifty yards away, and the polished line of metals that disappeared round a bluff. That was all. The railway added the finishing touch to the already complete loneliness of the place.

    Yankee Jim was a picturesque old man with a talent for yarns that Ananias might have envied. It seemed to me, presumptuous in my ignorance, that I might hold my own with the old-timer if I judiciously painted up a few lies gathered in the course of my wanderings. Yankee Jim saw every one of my tales and went fifty better on the spot.

    He dealt in bears and Indians—never less than twenty of each; had known the Yellowstone country for years, and bore upon his body marks of Indian arrows; and his eyes had seen a squaw of the Crow Indians burned alive at the stake. He said she screamed considerable.

    In one point did he speak the truth—as regarded the merits of that particular reach of the Yellowstone. He said it was alive with trout. It was. I fished it from noon till twilight, and the fish bit at the brown hook as though never a fat trout-fly had fallen on the water. From pebbly beaches, quivering in the heat-haze where the foot caught on stumps cut foursquare by the chisel-tooth of the beaver; past the fringe of the water-willow crowded with the breeding trout-fly and alive with toads and water-snakes; over the drifted timber to the grateful shadow of big trees that darkened the holes where the fattest fish lay, I worked for seven hours.

    The mountain flanks on either side of the valley gave back the heat as the desert gives it, and the dry sand by the railway track, where I found a rattlesnake, was hot-iron to the touch. But the trout did not care for the heat. They breasted the boiling river for my fly and they got it. I simply dare not give my bag. At the fortieth trout I gave up counting, and I had reached the fortieth in less than two hours. They were small fish—not one over two pounds—but they fought like small tigers, and I lost three flies before I could understand their methods of escape. Ye gods! That was fishing.

    ∞§∞

    — Excerpt from  From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel, Volume Two, Rudyard Kipling, 1899. (Page 203−205).

    — Photo, Pioneer Museum of Bozeman.

    — For related stories, click on “Fishing” under the “Categories” button to the left.

  • News: A Peak Experience — A Whole Day With Book Lovers and Great Books

    I spent the whole day on Saturday closeted with half a dozen book lovers from all over Montana. We got together at Chico Hot Springs to pick the 2010 Montana Book Award Winners. The process works like this:

    Publishers submit books for consideration. About all that’s required is that a book be about a Montana setting or by an author who lives in Montana. Except for technicalities defining the details of publication and residence, that’s it. Past winners have included fiction (The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford), non-fiction (Full Court Quest by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith), and young adult (Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.)

    After a book is submitted, it is distributed to readers who vote via email. As soon as two of them endorse the book, it is fully nominated so everyone reads it. If two people reject the book then it’s set aside. This means each judge reads about 25 book a year—about a dozen or so that get fully nominated and another dozen that get rejected.

    Because about half the submissions arrive in the last quarter of the year, readers have to scramble to get everything read. (My eyeballs literally ache sometimes.) But by the time the meeting at Chico rolls around, everybody has read all the nominated books. That makes for a marvelous experience—a full day of discussing a wide range of good books with avid readers who have thought about them carefully.

    The meetings start with one judge introducing a book. After a brief group discussion, another judge introduces a book for discussion, and the process proceeds until all the nominated books have been discussed. Finding one “best book” in a diverse set  may seem like an impossible task, but by the time all the nominees have been discussed, four or five books emerge as leaders.

    Then committee members cast secret ballots indicating their top four choices in rank order. We weight the votes (4 points for a first rank, 3 for second, etc) and tally them. The committee discusses the tally, eliminates the low scorers, and votes again. The process repeats until one book has five first-place rankings—and it’s the winner.

    The committee then uses similar procedures to decide if there should be Honor Books and if so how many. For the last couple of years, entries have been so strong that number of honor books has been set at four—the maximum allowed. The one regret: many good books don’t get awards.

    After the judging, there’s time left in the afternoon for a soak in hot springs waters and drinks in Chico’s cowboy bar.

    And in the evening—dinner in the wine cellar of Chico’s five-star restaurant. Great food and great conversation with avid readers who love books. It just doesn’t get any better!

    The Friends of the Missoula Public Library sponsor The Montana Book Award. Book lovers everywhere owe them a vote of thanks.

    I can’t announce the winners until they’ve been notified officially. When that happens, I’ll provide reviews on this blog. I look forward to telling you about some really great books.

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    — The Montana Book Award Logo is a woodcut by Claire Emory.

    — To find out more about my work with the Montana Book Award look under the “Categories Button” on the right.