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We have been up the Champlain waterways, through the Chambly Canal, down the St. Lawrence River to Montreal, up to Quebec on a train, and now on the Rideau canal, having passed through Ottawa. The foliage is verdant, the sky alternately weeping or dazzlingly blue, the churches ancient and towering, and the towns along the way quainter than quaint. There are a plethora of monster vacation palaces with 200K wake boats along the way, but they don't quite fit the narrative. This adventure is way...
There are days that depth of spirituality looms massively. There are other days that there is just a steady stream of awareness that God is good and present in day-to-day living. As the country song reminds us, “some days a diamond, some days a stone.” Diamonds and stones both have value, it just depends on where you find them and what you do with them. A Christian faith is like that as well. It is stony times that build foundations for us. Try building anything with a diamond but try carrying a foundation stone on your finger. Neither wor...
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been doing forest conservation in the Blackfoot and Seeley-Swan Valleys since the mid-1970s and when we heard the announcement of the Pyramid Mountain Lumber mill closure this spring, like for so many in the community, it was a gut punch. Local Montana mills and all the contractors they support are a vital part of reaching our collective forest restoration and conservation goals, and we recognize that the economics of running a mill in Montana have gotten harder and harder. There has been nearly no change in...
"I'm not a quitter, grandpa!" Seven-year-old Chance was not about to give up. His older brother had caught a couple of trout on his own and his four-year-old younger brother had caught one too, with some undivided assistance from Grandpa Chuck. Now it was Chance's turn. He was standing on a narrow strip of gravel between a current seam on the West Fork of the Bitterroot and a strip of willows behind him. I had been watching from downstream. As his casts neared the point where some small fish...
Looking back, I can recall and reveal glimpses of my journeys that ultimately connected me to the straight path leading to the narrow gate of life through the one, true Church. There are no coincidences; nothing happens without God within His Divine Providence in which He gives us free will while subtly guiding us to receive and embrace His numerous gifts such as faith and cooperation with His abundant, beneficial grace. Attending elementary Sunday school with the Methodists, I memorized numerous Psalms being especially thankful for Psalm 23...
There still might be some leftover "super hatches" here and there; I remember one year when there was still major salmonfly activity well into late July on the Blackfoot. And then there was the year that green drakes, which might be done by mid-June most places, persisted until after the Fourth of July on the Bitterroot. And I don't mean occasional sightings. When I fished both of these hatches, years apart, they were the major happening on these rivers. The "super hatches," as they're called, a...
I'm writing to introduce myself as the newest physician at Partnership Health Center's Seeley Swan Medical Center. After practicing rural family medicine for the past seven years in northern Washington, I am excited to return to Montana and continue providing rural healthcare in the Seeley Swan area. I was born and raised in Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin for both undergraduate and medical school. I completed my Family Medicine residency training in Missoula through...
Salutations de Montreal. As you can see, I am quite fluent in Google translator. We just arrived in Montreal after a somewhat harrowing trip from Sorel-Tracy at the top of the Richelieu River and canal system. Actually, the St Lawrence Seaway was completely calm with no traffic. Harrowing makes a better story. We are becoming facile in the transit of canals, where the boat is raised and lowered by the filling and emptying of enclosures called locks. We are up over 20 locks now, with quite a few...
Not everyone has to go through hard times in order to see the beauty of what they can be. Sometimes I imagine what life might have been like if certain events hadn’t occurred, certain abuses, pains, rejections. Would I still be the same person today? Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that the things that have happened, have happened. They simply are. How I choose to understand them, live into the complexities of meaning, that’s where life is interesting. In fact, that’s really where life is. S...
On a sunny autumn day, in a beautiful little slice of Montana, two people bob up and down in the chest-deep water of a beaver pond wrestling with a giant tube attached to a fence. Their names are Elissa and Elyssa, which I know can be confusing, and they are both some of the leading experts in western North America on protecting human infrastructure from beavers. The giant tube Elissa and Elyssa are wrestling runs through a notch in a broad, decades-old beaver dam. Pretty much as soon as the pip...
By January of 1879 in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison had built his first high-resistance electric light. This invention would revolutionize the world and create incredible opportunities for human development and growth. The invention itself would have long tentacles of repercussions that would reverberate amongst scientific and economic fields. It would impact the field of medicine itself and set the stage for change in our relationship with sunlight. Humans live in a circa 24-plus-hour environment relying on light and darkness to guide...
It's not every day that a fly shop owner has a client take him on a guided float trip. My friend John was in the front seat of the boat, I was in the rear. John and I first met at the Portland Expo Sportsman's Show where I was doing seminars and demonstrations. We hit it off and over the years he fished out of my shop regularly, bringing groups of friends with him. He was the gracious host to our dinners after fishing or after show hours in Portland. I wasn't too surprised when he invited me to...
The fate of Pyramid Lumber has been very much a topic of local discussion over the last few months. It isn’t just the employees and owners of the mill that will be affected if it closes. Foresters, loggers and truckers are all part of the machinery that generates “timber dollars.” More than recreation, those “timber dollars” are what caused Seeley Lake and the Seeley-Swan Valley to grow in a stable fashion and become complete communities with schools, churches, grocery stores, hardware stores, auto parts, pharmacies and even a medical/d...
Your local volunteer team has been working hard to make our upcoming Fourth of July celebration a day to remember! Our theme this year is “Stars and Stripes and Summer Nights,” representing what makes this such a special place, and how important this holiday is to all of us. Check the posters around town for a detailed schedule, or go to seeleyswanevents.net. We hope to see all of you at one of the events, along the parade route (2 p.m. start,) or at the fireworks. Just like last year, which the same awesome group of volunteers put tog...
Now that summer is here, many of us think fondly about the delicious fresh fruits and vegetables found at our local Farmers Markets. In Seeley Lake, we have a wonderful program to help older adults in the community receive nutritious, local food. The Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP), or as many call it, Farmers Market Coupons, is made possible through grant money from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Anyone aged 60 and older who meets the income guidelines can call (406) 728-7682 to make an appointment or stop...
"Chuck, what are you doing?" We had just launched on a not-quite-treacherous stretch of water. It was too early in the day, and possibly too early in the season to expect much dry fly fishing with the salmonfly hatch. It could happen, we told ourselves. There were telltale nymph shucks on the rock near the high-water line and in the willows. We had seen some adults flying around. The ever-hopeful guy in the front seat started with a big salmonfly dry. He was busy fishing - hitting the...
It is evening at Liberty Landing Marina, New Jersey, which is directly across the Hudson from Manhattan, New York City. The fading sun is glinting off the glass skin of the Freedom Tower, which replaced the destroyed World Trade Centers. In the distance is the Empire State Building, now dwarfed by more modern edifices. We arrived here after a 132-mile run from Cape May, New Jersey, having toured the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. We don't usually go that far in a day, but weather might have...
Summer Reading Program — “Adventure Begins In Your Library” This year’s Summer Reading Program at your Seeley Lake Public Library welcomes explorers of all ages to embark on an exciting journey of discovery, imagination and learning. The Summer Reading Program begins on Monday, June 17. Come by the library to sign up and receive your free bag of goodies. Lots of prizes will be available throughout the summer, including coupons for small ice-cream cones from the Ice Cream Place for complet...
A lot of what we hear in the media about electric vehicles can be discouraging to anyone even considering buying one, and I had a lot of those concerns as well. Can you find places to charge them? Are they affordable? Do they just trade one environmental problem for another? Are they more dangerous to drive? I’ve found out that a lot of what we hear is exaggerated or just untrue. My husband and I bought an electric vehicle a year ago. We spent a fair amount of time researching EVs and talking to people who have them. We settled on a Chevy B...
If you studied Montana history in the eighth grade many years ago, you read about the Copper Kings: Marcus Daly, William A. Clark and Augustus Heinze — the one we never remember. Clark, born in 1839, came west to work in the mining camps, ran a freight business from Salt Lake City to Montana and became a banker in Deer Lodge. In this latter role he foreclosed on mining claims in the Butte area, just when electrification in major cities back east created a huge demand for copper. Once he went off to Washington D.C. to serve in the U.S. Senate ...
I wish every little girl was blessed to have a father like Dave Kesler. A father who will train her up in the way she should go with the appropriate levels of love and discipline, and a father who will sacrifice himself to protect her. Anyone can allege wrongdoing against anyone for anything. Slanderous allegations require no special skill set. Proving the allegations through proper due process is quite a different task. None of the allegations against Dave Kesler have been proven. Not one. I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Dave Kesler, a...
I am writing to support the candidacy of Representative John Fitzpatrick. John currently represents Deer Lodge and Granite Counties. As a result of the Redistricting Commission re-drawing the district boundaries he is now running for office in both Powell County and the Seeley Lake area. During the 2023 Legislature, John really looked after the interests of Deer Lodge, Powell and Granite Counties. First, he sponsored and enacted House Bill 13, the State Pay Plan bill, which provided the staff at the prison and Warm Springs with the first real...
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 21:25 As ancient Israel settled into the promised land their social and governmental organization was quite loose. The main feature at this time was the emergence of individuals who delivered their fellow countrymen from various oppressors, e.g. the Philistines. But it really didn’t work too well. The more serious problem was the independence of the tribes from each other, thus exposing the ancient Israelites to all sorts of social and polit...
Greetings from the Chesapeake Bay. We have been working our way up through Virginia, now Maryland, through the lands of earliest English exploration, American Revolution, Civil War and other scrimmages/wars/skullduggery that created this country. Last week we visited the very battlefield at Yorktown, where English General Cornwallis blew a fourth quarter lead and surrendered to George Washington. All this history has filled me with patriotic fervor, a desire to give back to honor all the...
In a recent Letter to the Editor, Don Larson contends that the waterfront and riverfront properties are the worst septic effluent polluters on our lakes and waterfront. That is speculation. Even if it were proven to be true, how does that address the known elevated groundwater nitrate issue within the district? Mr. Larson’s comments on testing and repairing waterfront septic systems on all the lakes has merit but again, how does that address the known issue within the district? And, is there any reason why we can’t do what Mr. Larson sug...
