Of writing and riding in montana

BIG TIMBER, Mont. -- William Clark paddled down the Yellowstone 200 years ago, stopped here to eat and continued downstream. The Shoshone woman-guide Sacagawea was with him, as were a band of explorers he and Meriwether Lewis led to the Pacific.

God and the Crow and the Sioux willing, Clark sought to join up with Lewis farther east, where the Yellowstone ties to the Missouri, and follow it on down to St. Louis.

I had come to Montana with lesser ambitions. A week or so earlier, I pulled two horses across North Dakota on a prairie night as beautiful as any night anywhere. Meadowlarks called and combines laid hay in tidy rows that stretched to tomorrow and beyond, sweetening the air. Adjacent to these, on glassy ponds, ducklings formed themselves into little bands, silhouetted against the evening's long shadows.

I had wanted to fish Clark's Yellowstone. Whitefish were nearly the singular finned species inhabiting that river when he explored it. But I wanted brown and rainbow trout, later arrivals than whitefish to the Yellowstone and other rivers of the West and more sporting as well.

The horses were another matter. A cutting was ongoing this weekend in Big Timber, and I wanted to give it a go.

And, in the hills and high benches that form the margins of the river ranch where I would stall my horses, there is riding through bunch grass and bluestem and small bands of black Angus, the blank stares of which suggest no agenda whatsoever.

Also there was my friend Tom McGuane, whom I've long regarded as one of America's best writers, a view not uncommonly held. He has just published a new book, "Gallatin Canyon," and there was that to talk to him about, as well as fishing, riding, reading and writing.

At a campground just north of Big Timber, I rented a dollhouse-size log cabin on the banks of the Boulder River.

When I arrived late one evening, that river flowed darkly beneath a canopy of cottonwoods, and I fell asleep listening to water wash over rocks.

Friday morning, I hauled my gelding to the Big Timber Fairgrounds, joining Tom and his wife, Laurie, and other riders.

Friday was a practice day, and already summer's heat was forming on Montana's broad plains; no place more so than on the backs of the penned cattle and the horses we put to working them.

Tom first moved to Montana in 1969, far ahead of the rush of people and money that in recent years has transformed the state's ranch lands from familial burdens to no-brainer investments.

By now, multiple generations of Montana families have earned their real estate licenses, plying the keen trade of sizing up out-of-staters and the depth of their pockets. These Montanans work the land in a different way than their forebears.

Finding guidance

I had been telling Tom a night or two earlier about my day on the Yellowstone. I have a St. Paul, Minn., friend, Dick Hanousek, who fly-fishes a lot, including in Montana, and he says he's never had a good day on the Yellowstone.

"But I did," I told Tom, reporting two brown trout longer than 20 inches, as well as many other trout.

I had hired a guide, Tom Travis, who lives in Livingston, Mont., and has written a book about the Yellowstone. He knows other things, too, including, but not limited to, Iraq, Iran, Syria, America's firepower and its proper use, how to cast to a fish, how to fight a fish, what not to bring for lunch on the Yellowstone ("no" to sandwiches, "yes" to fried chicken), and, not least, exactly which seams in the Yellowstone's current are likely to hold fish.

He knows also how to net fish, and in midmorning, after I had fooled a dandy brown on the surface, with a big fly, a grasshopper, he quickly put the fish in hand.