Mountains and meadows, rivers and flowers,  Thinking of landscapes I stare at for hours,  Great big white clouds and thunder that rings,  These are a few of my favorite things! Daily Journal Excerpt from 06-25-2021 Snowcrest Mountains, Mt.: “Today was a blur. I didn’t feel great for most of the day, but I have a

It was early May and it was one of the first warm days of a late Madison spring. I was sitting in my third class of the day, in a windowless lecture hall, dreaming about class ending and heading outside to get even an hour in the sun. My friend Claire and I started whispering

At first glance, these toothpick forests of the Scapegoat Wilderness in Montana want to invade me with fear and loneliness and hang me out to dry in the sun under identical trees across the hillsides. Their haggard branches reach weakly into the air before sloping downward into submission. They unsettle me with their lifeless stature,

Silence. Lichen spreads between my fingertips like spider webs as the callousness of rock scratches against my hands. It is the first day of WRFI’s Montana Afoot and Afloat course, and I just met my classmates for the next nine weeks. Giddy yet apprehensive about what was to come, I sat on a rock beside

As I walked through ponderosa pine covered forests, on top of glacial moraines, through snow, and along boulders the size of cars, I began to understand why Jumbo is a place people want to protect. Mount Jumbo and the Jumbo Valley are located in British Columbia’s Purcell Mountains. This range is located in the Ktunaxa

After a cold and wet six-mile hike, there was nothing I wanted to do more than crawl into my sleeping bag and go to sleep. However, everyone still needed to eat. Of course that day my course job was to help cook dinner. At home, I am more of a microwave chef. If all else

“Even when I’m a thousand miles away from my roots, I’m home.” -Zac Brown Band Growing up in a small town in Southern New Jersey with not many things to do and always wanting to be elsewhere, it was hard to find a sense of place and home there. Since moving out West four years

To the fathers of eight exceptional young women: You sent your girls off into the backcountry of Montana and Canada. I would have been nervous being a father of three adult girls myself. We left two days after Father’s Day. I, like many of you, most likely did not get to enjoy our daughters’ company

No one wants to carry around an encyclopedia in their 75 liter pack through the Scapegoat Wilderness. Even if I did want to carry around my phone, there is no service for Siri to look up definitions for me. Therefore I am challenged to create my own definition of “Wilderness.” With assistance of my WRFI

With this piece I am portraying two of the values of the wilderness; accessing the concrete, physical attributes that surround you and the reflective thought that they provoke. Some choose to see value in what is before their eyes whereas others find value in the opportunity to explore what goes on behind them. I have