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Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps
| Bill Whitfield’s pictorial guide documents some of the state’s left behind and unrecalled mining sites. |
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| By Brian D’Ambrosio |
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Bill Whitfield often thinks about what Montana must have been like for the plucky miners and homesteaders who lived during the flourishing heyday of Montana mining towns.
Although these miners would probably have a hard time envisioning the world we know today, thanks to Whitfield’s pictorial guide Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps, it’s easier for us to envision theirs.
Brimming with more than 450 bare and blunt photographic recollections of mostly left behind and disremembered mining structures, relics, and machinery, Whitfield’s book provides us with the nostalgic insight to be able to better see and understand the mining world, and the satisfying luxury of visiting the places where the rough and ready lived, worked, fought, drank and died.
Although the inhabitants of Montana’s early-day gold and mine camps may only still be around in spirit, Whitfield feels we should still consider ourselves guests when on such long since abandoned grounds – and act accordingly.
“It’s amazing that at one point some of these ghost towns were teeming hilltops of people,” says Whitfield. “Some of them actually met up and touched. Then, you couldn’t tell when you were leaving one town and heading to the other. Now, there are two or three miles of separation, with one building on one side and one on the other – that’s all that’s left of what was once a three mile stretch of mining activity.
“It’s amazing what a century can do as far as depleting a resource and a population.”
Whitfield adheres to the old adage which tells us to “Take only photographs, and leave only footprints.” He is heedful of the fragility of crumbling structures and disintegrating memories. Indeed, he wants visitors to such places to remember that people sweated, toiled and sacrificed in the very spots they may be standing. And he hopes if the book accomplishes anything, it’ll encourage people to be more respectful of the less-traveled settlements and faint paths idle since the days of the trapper.
“Whatever has been left behind for us to admire is there because nobody passing that way before has destroyed it,” says Whitfield. “I wish that people had more respect for history. Lives were lived there. To see these places wiped out is sad.”
Montanans, Whitfield believes, share a special affinity with their past. His sincere photographic essay book, containing 71 locations of historical importance, is his way of reminding us to venerate where we came from, and to keep this relationship close to heart and mind.
Whitfield used outdated road maps and obsolete Forest Service grids to identify towns that haven’t officially existed for many decades and then find them.
“I would try finding a town that’s not on modern maps, and I’d try to find out as much as I could about it. I used a lot of early road maps from the 1920s and ‘30s. I compared new maps with the old maps; old mining areas are white on Forest Service maps. From there I was able to pinpoint just when the town stopped getting recognition and was able to know how long the town survived.”
Whitfield’s interest in the subterranean extraction hustles and spirited social bustles of mining towns can be traced back more than 30 years.
“I moved out west from Michigan in 1975. We stopped at the Black Hills area of South Dakota on the way and found some former mining camps on the map. We camped at these ghost towns. Ever since 1975 I’ve had the bug.”
Whitfield moved to the Bitterroot Valley in 1977. He has spent many weekends since identifying and exploring ghost towns.
“It’s been a 30-year journey,” says Whitfield. “I took the photos from 1985-1995, finally finishing up the book in 1999. During winters I would write the photo captions and historical information.”
In recent years, some ghost towns, such as Bannack State Park and Garnet Ghost Town, have gotten a significant economic boost from tourism. Many of them, however, are totally abandoned, and don’t see many visitors, primarily because, at many sites, little or nothing remains above the soil surface. Some of the places in Whitfield’s book are partial ghost towns which have yet to be permanently abandoned by inhabitants. Others are overgrown, difficult to access, dangerous, or illegal to visit.
“On the downfall, there are some negatives left behind at ghost towns, things like piles of waste. Waters are still being polluted because of them. They certainly weren’t environmentally minded. People that ran them were out to take whatever from the earth it could cough up.”
Often Whitfield would return to a location to find that the deterioration of certain buildings had advanced beyond belief in only a few short years; some structures had fragmented into unrecognizable oblivion.
“We’d go back to places we had been a year before, and when we’d get there, some of the greatest buildings there were gone.
“I’ll bet that you wouldn’t be able to find dozens of the buildings in this book, or perhaps even entire towns, anymore. They won’t be there anymore, unfortunately.”
There are many different reasons why the remains of some ghost towns are allowed to vanish: the structures are unsafe fire hazards and unproductive tax liabilities; ranchers knock down rickety sites to prevent injuries to their livestock; it’s cheaper to demolish derelict buildings than to fix them. Other explanations exist, too.
“As mining continues,” says Whitfield, “a lot of these old places are sitting on valuable property. That’s because, in the past, one place they didn’t mine was under the towns. But since nobody lives in these towns anymore, it’s being done.
“You get goose bumps when you notice that something is missing and that you were able to be there before it disappeared. You’re glad that you got to see it, but you feel sick, too. I consider the photos in my book a testimonial to the spirit and sense of historical importance most of us embrace as part of our past.”
Many of these neglected buildings lack any type of state or federal protection, and more than likely will soon tumble and blow away in the blustery winds of natural transition, making Whitfield’s bleak, classy photographical documentation even more inestimable. Through these pages, we see verifiable testimony as to the final phases of lonely, untreasured places.
“The outlook isn’t very good,” says Whitfield. “Granite is the most disappointing to watch. I was there in 1977 when it had a full Main Street, along with buildings on both sides of the streets. Five years later, in the mid-1980s, the change was quite drastic. So much was gone.”
Unexpected finds along the way have made Whitfield’s quest more than worthwhile. In the former town of Martina, he stumbled upon sturdy old cabins made of cedar logs and cedar splits; a well-preserved stamp mill, in what was once Ajax, appeared as if it wouldn’t take much effort to restart the stamping process.
“Finding places accidentally is the greatest feeling,” says Whitfield.
Even though he has recently published a book superlatively capturing the essence of the weathered wood look and rugged terrain feel of the scattered buildings comprising Montana’s once vibrant, long since somnolent, ghost towns, Whitfield isn’t calling off the scouting party just yet.
“I’ve got leads on places I still need to go. I hear that there was a mining town near Bannack that was built on stilts. I need to go and see if there’s anything left.”
For more information, visit www.stoneydale.com.
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Time is of the Essen
| Continent-skittering author Marty Essen chronicles his relationship with wildlife while crisscrossing the globe in “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet.” |
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| By Brian D’Ambrosio, Editor |
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One day he canoes past a submerged herd of hippos. The next he dodges a pack of charging elephants and is surrounded by howling wolves. On another he hikes alongside a Porcupine Caribou migration. On yet another he rafts with humpback whales. No, Marty Essen isn’t your familiar tourist. But, then again, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet isn’t your everyday travelogue.
When he travels, he does it the muddily adventurous way: no romantic cruises or grand lodging; no windshield tourism or sauntering out to the hotel poolside; no crisp chardonnay or splendid cuisine. For Essen, any enjoyable or bold junket starts with the observation of, and the interaction with, extreme wildlife – zebras, Cape Buffaloes, crocodiles, and rock python snakes, to name a few.
Indeed, when crisscrossing the globe as part of a three-and-a-half-year adventure that would later become the inspiration for Cool Creatures, Hot Planet, Essen was chucked out of his canoe by an aggressive hippo, stung by one of the world’s most poisonous insects, bitten by a poisonous snake, encircled by wolves, and angrily shooed away by an agitated orangutan. Maximally intense, huh?
Well, just how, in only a few short years, Essen went from being a humdrum workaholic businessman to peeling off tiger leeches in the sultriest, most dangerous spots in the world, is equally extreme.
In 1999, he was the restless 39 year-old owner of a successful telephone company and had never even once taken a sick day off from work. He rarely vacationed. He had never traveled anywhere outside of North America. When faced with the mental and spiritual confrontation of turning 40, a true self-described midlife crisis, he finally took a long overdue respite with his wife, Deb.
“That year we went to Belize,” says Essen. “The trip changed my life forever. I guess I got bit by the travel bug.”
He soon realized that this bug had only one remedy – or seven of them, actually. Marty and Deb decided that they needed to jaunt to each continent in search of exotic spiders, venomous insects, odd snakes and gigantic mammals – the types of creatures that regular folks are intensely terrified of. Three and a half years, seven continents, and 10,000 photographs later their curiosity had been mollified.
Spawned from these experiences is a simply and playfully written armchair ecotourism adventure titled Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. Offering more than 400 pages of tough treks and precarious situations, the book details an unbridled bevy of enthusiastic encounters and frantically fun experiences in witty, worthwhile blog-like fashion.
“We managed to see some of the remotest places on the planet,” says Essen, a lifelong herpetologist (a lover of amphibians and reptiles) who developed a love of animals at an early age.
“My dream of an animal-oriented career became sidetracked at the age of 13, and I finally had the chance again to incorporate this love back into my life. It’s always been a part of who I am.”
In Cool Creatures, Hot Planet, Essen not only documents his zanily zestful wildlife encounters, but also communicates and conveys profound themes and subthemes about the distinct beauty of different landscapes, the variegated purpose of predators, the strong need for wildlife rehabilitation centers throughout the world, and the collective moral rot of humanity for allowing exotic animals to fall extinct.
The book documents travels through Belize, Australia, Canada, Antarctica, Borneo, Europe and, finally but most unforgettably, Africa.
While on his nonhunting safari tour of Africa, Essen achieved his goal of spotting the continent’s five most dangerous animals: Cape Buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, and rhinoceros. From rutted roads along the Zambezi River, he photographed various other animals he’d never dreamed of seeing in person, all sharing the same landscape, including waterbucks, impalas, vervet monkeys, and chacma baboons.
The daily quantity of mammal sightings certainly interested Essen, but it was the African rock python – (a nonvenomous beauty and the continent’s largest snake at seven and a half feet long) – that gave this lifelong herper the adrenaline thrill of a lifetime.
“Being able to locate and hold one of those African rock snakes was the single most satisfying moment of all my trips,” says Essen, known to be able to grab an aggressive python from a tree in one sharp, quick-reflexed movement, a’ la Steve Irwin.
However, the heart-trembling culmination of Essen’s seven-continent globe trot came during a dangerously close encounter with a huffy hippopotamus.
Semi-aquatic and known to populate rivers throughout sub-Saharan Africa, often in herds of up to 50, hippos need water to stave off sultry jungle temperatures. They are noted to be extremely territorial when not on land.
While on the Zimbabwe’s Zambezi (Africa’s fourth longest river), Essen’s group – which included wife Deb, adventure guide Skip Horner, and two local guides, Brian and Humphrey – would paddle approximately 40 miles, pass 1,500 hippos, and float over hundreds of crocodiles.
“Seeing hippos and elephants in the wild is nothing like seeing them on television,” says Essen. “Hippos are such dangerous and goofy looking animals. I was a little nervous about taking the trip through hippo land, but we were told by our guides not to worry about it.”
In fact, prior to paddling guide Brian did his best to alleviate any fears, saying, “I’ve been doing this for 18 years, and I’ve never had a client in the water. Once we start paddling, your nerves will settle down and you’ll be surprised how safe and easy the canoeing is. Just relax and enjoy the scenery.”
Within hours of the guide’s reassuring declaration, Deb and Marty had canoed next to a sunken, flat riverbank when they’d felt a strong jolt. Thinking they were too close to land for it to be an animal, and that perhaps they smacked against a rock, they eased up a bit. Seconds later a huge crunch tore right through the center of the heavy-duty, fiberglass Canadian canoe and catapulted them into the sky.
Essen writes: “As we continued skyward, my eyes shifted to Deb, who was rising higher than I was. At peak height, the canoe rolled shoreward, dumping us like a front-end loader would. I hit the ground first, followed by Deb – who landed on her side with an eerie thud!”
Fortunately for the Essens, the hippo – presiding over a stretch of river it considered to be its own – had dumped the couple on a depthless bed of mud instead of in the Zambezi River, where they would most likely have been polished off as crocodile cuisine.
“It was over quickly,” says Essen. “Not many people ever have such a thing happen, so it was a pretty special experience. It bit the canoe dead center, lifting us up six-feet high. If the bite had been further to the back or further to the front, one of us would have been killed.”
Marty and Deb spent most of that night laughing about the incident, until the sober reality of the situation set in: They were still facing three and a half more days of canoeing along the same hippo-jammed waters.
“It was a little nerve wracking getting back into those waters,” says Essen. “But, I’ve got to say following this trip the hippo may be my favorite animal in the whole world.”
While Essen’s book is environmentally-oriented and layered with stern messages of environmental safeguarding and responsibility, it is also textured with politically-charged directives, which are sometimes discreet and at other times not so at all. In fact, the author repeatedly reminds all of us to refrain from making impulsive stereotypical judgments and succumbing to petty prejudices, to respect the cultural differences of others, and to make certain we don’t allow our own leaders “to mortgage the world’s environmental future to satisfy the greed of a select few.”
“I don’t want people to realize that about one-tenth of the book is political until after it’s too late. I don’t do a lot of preaching in the book. Instead of preaching, I try and let people come to the natural conclusion that they need to be interested in conservation.”
In one of the book’s early chapters, Essen uses the extinction crisis facing the orangutan as an example of human greed trumping the autonomous rights and needs of animals. Orangutans, say some experts, could be extinct in the wild in as few as 10 years.
“The orangutan is threatened so severely,” says Essen, who photographed and encountered wild orangutans in Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo (Sumatra is the only other place orangutans inhabit). “Palm oil plantations, and the human destruction of the forest for them, are pushing these animals to extinction. Their habitat is being destroyed to make way for palm oil. For that reason, I’ll never buy palm oil again in my life.”
Orangutans, says Essen, have lost around 80 percent of their habitat in the last 20 years. Today, most estimates put Borneo’s population at 12,000 to15,000 – down from the generally agreed upon figure of about 20,000 in 1996.
“It’s a rare thing to see an orangutan that’s not in a zoo. Few people get the chance to see them. I’m lucky for it.”
Out of all the luck and good fortune he has had in his life, Essen says that his most fortunate encounter stems from a meeting he had with local reporter Rod Daniel. In 2001, on the 10th anniversary of Essen Communications Corporation, Daniel interviewed Essen. After the interview, Essen told Daniel that he was heading to the Amazon rainforest to celebrate the occasion. The reporter invited him to write a story about his adventures.
Essen’s story about the Amazon ran as a feature article; a second story about a trip to Australia was so greatly accepted that he decided to expand his travels to all seven continents and chronicle each marshy and slippery footstep. The accolades showered upon Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents have been even more unexpected.
The book has won 3 first-place awards for travel/essay writing: the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award, the National Indie Excellence 2007 Book Award, and the Best Books 2006 Book Award. Essen appeared at the 2007 Montana Festival of the Book, with a multi-media presentation about his travels and travails.
“Fifteen thousand hours of writing and eight trips over the course of three and a half years has paid off,” smiles Essen.
Still focusing on his love for animals, Marty has recently finished writing a children’s book about the value of predators and is working on additional wildlife-oriented projects, including a second book examining the ecological importance of a 100-mile swatch of unprotected coastline hugging the shores of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Perambulating the world in search of rare wildlife and interesting topics is one chapped component of this creature teacher’s future that’s unlikely to change. Whether he’s being stung by toxic insects, painfully pinched by poisonous snakes, or blitzed by hippos, he’ll be having an outstandingly grand time doing it – all in the name of bona fide pleasure and wildlife guardianship.
“My life has been filled with so many different and great unanticipated events and surprises. And I look at this book – and my life, too – as tools to open up dialogue about conservation issues. The book is secondary to speaking up about the value of wildlife.”
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Frontier Life at Fort Owen
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| By Wm W. Whitfield |
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Perhaps one of the most interesting developments in early western Montana history is the arrival of the Bitter Root’s first independent trader. Major John Owen showed up in the valley in 1850, just as the Jesuit priests who had settled at St. Mary’s were abandoning their Mission.
For nine years the priests had toiled to build a foothold in the region when orders came from their superiors to relinquish their holdings and move to more suitable surroundings.
Owen and his Shoshoni wife had just come up from Fort Hall in present day Idaho with a considerable amount of trade goods and livestock, and were encamped near the mission. In what has since been called the state’s first legal real-estate transaction, Owen paid the Jesuits $250.00 for the buildings and property and almost instantly started making improvements.
He first built a stockade of upright logs about a hundred yards east of the original Mission site, which was located about a mile northwest of Stevensville, near the banks of the Bitter Root River.
The palisade wall was considered necessary for protecting his property from the frequent raids conducted by the Blackfeet Indians, who harassed the Salish people and the Jesuits on a regular basis, and were probably at least partly to blame for the Mission’s failure. At one point Blackfeet warriors actually removed two or three logs from the wall in the middle of the night and made off with all of Owen’s horses.
In the following years Owen had a thick adobe wall erected inside the palisade of logs as a more permanent defense against future incursions. Two heavy timbered doors allowed access through the southern wall, and a pair of bastions towered over the south-facing corners of the fort. In 1860 a howitzer was brought in from Fort Benton, and on the 2nd of October “it was mounted and fired five times, the first cannon shot in the Bitter Root Valley.”
Owen not only kept a daily journal for most of the time he resided at the fort, but also kept a ledger of trade at the outpost with detailed information on who came and went and what items they purchased. He often went on buying trips to various trade centers such as Fort Benton on the Missouri, and Old Fort Walla Walla about two hundred miles east of Vancouver.
The Major also frequented Hudson’s Bay posts at Fort Connah in the Flathead Valley and Fort Colville on the upper Columbia. He was reported to have traveled 23,000 miles in all to acquire the goods he traded at Fort Owen, which is very nearly equal to a full trip around the world!
During a number of these extended excursions, John’s brother Frank was left in charge of the daily fort activities and he also contributed to many of the improvements made on the property.
It seems likely that Frank had come to the Bitter Root Valley with his brother, and his name does appear as witness to the title transfer with the Jesuits, dated November 5, 1850.
Frank kept the fort ledger updated and current while Major Owen was away, and he made many purchasing trips of his own, as well.
In 1852 he was once again at Fort Hall where he engaged a young herder by the name of John Dodson. Less than two weeks after arriving in the Bitter Root, Dodson was killed and scalped by Blackfeet Indians within sight of the fort while he was bringing in a wagonload of hay.
Just a few days earlier Dodson had almost prophetically written in his personal journal, “Mr. Owen had five horses stolen last night by the black feet indians I suppose as they commit great depredations on the whites at this fort.”
Dodson was buried on September 16, 1852 in the small graveyard originally established by the Jesuit Priests. The Blackfeet were the traditional enemies of the Salish Indians, and the whites at Fort Owen were undoubtedly put in jeopardy through their friendly association with the Salish.
In fact, Major Owen temporarily abandoned his fort the following spring due to continuous raids by the Blackfeet, and the extensive financial losses associated with them. He returned to the Bitter Root later that summer with an army escort, who planned on building a provisional depot in the valley as part of a railroad survey project.
For the first couple of years most of the trade conducted at Fort Owen was with the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai Indians, along with the occasional mountain man and fur trapper who happened to be passing through. At that time all of western Montana was part of the Oregon Territory.
Then, in 1853 western Montana became part of the newly formed Washington Territory and the fort became a sort of central headquarters for members of the Stevens Expedition as they mapped out the various passes and valleys between Fort Benton and Walla Walla.
Isaac I. Stevens was the first Governor of the new territory and Fort Owen at St. Mary’s Village actually served as an unofficial capitol while he was residing there. A separate camp was eventually established several miles to the south known as Cantonment Stevens, where members of the survey crew built rough cabins and stables for their stock.
Nearly all of the materials needed for the construction of this camp were purchased at Fort Owen. As luck would have it, the property Major Owen had purchased from the Jesuits included a small water-powered gristmill, and a sawmill.
Major Owen was said to rule the Bitter Root Valley like a kind and benevolent king, and Fort Owen served as castle to his kingdom. The Salish Indians were especially fond of him, and claimed that he always came through on his promises and never treated them unfairly in trade. He built up the orchards and farms that the Jesuits had started and eventually constructed another gristmill and sawmill.
Owen also hired the first teacher in the region and opened a school to all the native children who lived near the fort. His personal library was considered to be the best in the Pacific Northwest, and he made it available to all who visited his home.
Many festive occasions were enjoyed by all at the Major’s expense, with the full bounty of his gardens and farms providing the sumptuous fare. When Governor Stevens made him Indian Agent to the Flathead Nation, the Major pressed the government for more usable goods which would help the natives improve their lives permanently and allow them ultimately to provide for themselves.
Fort Owen prospered through the 1850’s and even into the early gold rush days of the sixties, however Captain Mullan’s Military Road from Fort Benton to Walla Walla bypassed the Bitter Root Valley and consequently much of the local trade was diverted to Hell Gate.
Still, items such as flour and fresh fruit and vegetables from Fort Owen and the surrounding farms were highly prized in the gold camps, and for many years afterwards the Bitter Root Valley was considered to be the breadbasket for the entire region.
Unfortunately, by the early seventies the Major’s health began to fail and his debts became overwhelming. The end of an era loomed ominous. In 1872 the sheriff of Missoula County was ordered to sell the property at auction. With all these setbacks the fort was still considered to be the most valuable estate in the area.
John Owen’s friend and fellow Indian Agent W. J. McCormick bought the holdings for about half of its estimated value. Unfortunately, the property was allowed to fall into a rapid state of decay under his ownership, and the adobe walls soon buckled and crumbled away.
Sadly, in 1889, the same year that Montana gained her statehood, both Owen and McCormick died.
Owen passed away in his home state of Pennsylvania, and Major McCormick was killed at Fort Owen in a violent windstorm. The Major was up on a roof that was about to come off, while his employees handed him rocks to hold the roof down.
An eyewitness described the storm as a “hurricane.” McCormick and the roof were both blown into the courtyard where he was crushed by the rafters.
In 1956 the property was deeded to the Montana Parks Department, and all the profits from that year’s Stevensville Creamery Picnic went towards preserving the historic site of western Montana’s first and last independent trading fort.
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| Faith, familial inspiration motivate author of Christian children’s book |
| By Shannon Selway |
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Debbie Lynn’s new book, a Prayer from the Heart, was destined to be published. After all, the initial spark that ignited the book, Debbie felt, was clearly from guidance above.
Debbie awoken one day, feeling rather groggy, and felt immediately driven to get on paper a clear and concrete message. She had an overwhelming and profound desire to write, an urge that she couldn’t deny. She brewed some coffee and sat down and got to work.
“The whole thing was clear, simple and vivid. And, it was strange. I’ve never written [any story] in my life!” Debbie said.
Debbie completed the book in a mere two hours. It contained a message – or, a guide if you will – about how a child can talk to God. Prayer, Debbie feels, can be very difficult for children, but her book takes the complication out of prayer, and puts a child at ease when talking to God. For that matter, its core message rings true for adults as well.
You certainly can’t have a children’s book without illustrations, but Debbie only had to pick up the phone once to find one. On the other end of the line was an award-winning, multi-talented artist, Patricia Herring, her mother.
Patricia Herring’s talents are off the charts, and she dabbles in various genres, but her primary focus has been pastels. Recently, Patricia illustrated the children’s book, True Colors of Grace, by Melissa Kornicki. So when her daughter approached her with the task of illustrating Prayer from the Heart, she was not only up to the task, but was somewhat acquainted with the illustration business.
Debbie’s story was solid and conveyed much - especially for a children’s book. Transforming Debbie’s vision into an artistic interpretation was something Patricia did with ease. The mother/daughter team understood each other well, and the book truly began to take shape.
Debbie wanted to present the book to a publisher in its intended form, and needed someone to format the story and illustrations into book form. Again, Debbie didn’t have to look too far. Her brother, Kip Herring (also an award-winning artist), knew how to turn Debbie’s words and Patricia’s illustrations into reality. The book was ready to present to a publisher.
Tick, tock. A Prayer from the Heart sat idling for the better part of a year on an editor’s desk, and Debbie once again felt that undeniable “nudge” to do something about it. She inquired about its status and was told “it’s on the editor’s desk, but that’s a good thing.” But, Debbie’s “nudge” guided her to approach another publication company: Tate Publishing.
Tate Publishing had her manuscript for only a couple of weeks and sent Debbie THE letter every author dreams about getting: a formal offer for her book. In addition, the letter was heavily laced with praise, enthusiasm and good future expectations from its author from Tate Publishing Author Acquisitions Department. They too were very excited to make the offer. (I’d bet not as excited as Debbie, though!)
It took three years from the time the ink dried to publication, but the journey along the way would prove worthwhile for Debbie.
Debbie’s inspiration to write the book came during a time in her life that she considers as a dark, sad period. She had devoted her entire adult life to raising her three children and being a fulltime homemaker. Her comfortable life changed when the reality of a divorce came into the picture; it was such an inconceivable scenario. She thought so much was lost with “the rug pulled out from under her,” but now reflects back believing it to be a positive learning experience. She attributes prayer, God, and her loving family to assisting her through those dark times, and had learned a lot about herself and gifts from God that she didn’t even know she possessed.
“I am grateful for everything. God leads you. You end up in a different spot than you planned, but along the way there is always something to learn.” Debbie commented. “I am now excited about the new life ahead of me. I’m really glad I didn’t turn into an angry or bitter person.”
Debbie and Patricia have already experienced what it feels like to be at a book signing. A pre-release signing was held in the new Bitterroot Christian Bookstore in Stevensville on December 7th. That went well.
The official release date for a Prayer from the Heart is January 8th, and Debbie Lynn and Patricia Herring will be ready with their pens and smiles for their next book signing at the Bitterroot Christian Bookstore in Hamilton that day.
A Prayer from the Heart, is here to stay. To add what should prove to be a timeless piece of children’s literature to your library, Sunday school or as a gift, you can simply visit: Missoula’s Garden of Read’n, 2621 Brooks; Hamilton’s Bitterroot Christian Bookstore, 204 Main; Stevensville’s Bitterroot Christian Bookstore, 229 B Main; and directly from Tate Publishing at www.tatepublishing.com.
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Bitterroot Art Beat: Rich Adams
| Artist’s precise and accurate pencil drawings bring new realities, exhilarating depth to familiar subjects. |
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| By Brian D’Ambrosio |
Graphite pencil art has become the focus of his artistic endeavors and expression. With each new drawing and detail, this focus becomes a passion, and in fact, this medium serves as the singular conduit and sole means of his aesthetic exploration.
This very simple tool has been used by Adams to interpret and recreate his view of nature, landscape, and the world for the last few years. In his eyes, the world, or more specifically, western Montana and the Rocky Mountains, continues to be an infinite source of awe and inspiration, with an overabundant selection of material-worthy topics available to replicate and breathe new life into.
Western themes, including wildlife and landscape, are the subject matters which Adams studies and wraps his artwork around. His romanticizing of mythic animals, such as the American bison, deeply imbues itself with both a multilayered appreciation and respect for the simple beauty that nature has perfected, as well as an exemplification of the mechanical devices that man has made to capture it. His signature pieces include a massive bison with a patch shaped like Montana etched into its fur and a mountain goat hovering over precarious terrain.
“I have an emotional connection to each piece that I begin,” says Adams. “Whether I appreciate its beauty, or I respect it for its power, or I have a more meaningful personal bond, this ensures that each piece is infused with a personal energy.
“Whether drawing an animal or a person, I always feel more closely connected with the subject after completing a drawing. Studying the intricate details of an object for sometimes 30 or more hours can bring a true appreciation of the beauty of nature.”
Graphite pencil looks very similar to black and white photography. Indeed, when one bounces a few feet back from one of Adams’s drawings, it becomes hard to discern the form of medium only steps away. At the moment, he is focusing on photo-realistic illustration, combining graphite, charcoal, and carbon pencil to render realistic drawings.
“This art is very similar to black and white photography,” says Adams, “in that they both are thinking in terms of form, texture and contrast, and thinking about nailing the tonal elements down. Both pay attention to tonal variety to create a new reality. Using the camera as a tool for shaping my view of the world was immediately captivating for me. I love photography and drawing. This is a perfect marriage of the two.
“Often this genre is called photo-realism, but the underlying idea for me isn’t necessarily to make it look like a photograph, but to try and recreate the photograph and recreate the reality on paper. I’m not copying a photo, but I’m using it as a three-dimensional study. Hopefully, it makes people wonder what’s beyond the photo and gets them thinking three-dimensionally.”
Adams has slowly become an adroit disciple of both pencil drawing and the realistic renderings it can accomplish. Drawing is comprised of line and form, and is widely respected as an art onto itself. But, rendering is texture, tone and value, and the translation responsible for thrusting a drawing to life.
“The technical accuracy is described, on paper, as form. But, to me, accuracy, is truly describing an environmental or physical setting and being realistic in a legitimate way. The precision, or the rendering, is the execution of that legitimacy without taking shortcuts or doing it in a haphazard way, and being loyal to your own message. I don’t want to be so mechanically accurate that I lose my artistic introspection. It’s a balancing art.”
Adams says that he isn’t satisfied with a drawing until he can infuse new spirit and impart revived meaning into it. This need to take a drawing to the next level of photo-realism is an extension of his previous studies: he is a mechanical engineer by training, but an artist by choice. He’s a man who has recognized – only recently, in fact – art as a way to escape the corporate world and its hectic hindrances. He says that his “appreciation for the mathematical and scientific foundation underlying all things in nature, and all things made by man,” has triggered his obsession with photo-realism’s emotional grit.
With graphite pencil art, seemingly simple exercises, such as drawing dog hair, are in fact daunting, time-consuming tasks. Artist’s styles differ widely but so do their aims. Adams says it’s best for artists to adopt techniques that suit their individual style and ambitions.
Still, the sketching of animal parts and figures, as well as human faces and expressions, needs to be easily believable; to create reality, nuanced, slower techniques are required. There are a number of levels at which one can plunge into a drawing.
“Multilayers are usually necessary,” says Adams. “Wildlife needs a sense of depth and texture that is hard to define. You need to reconstruct their textures. There’s a lot to the process of drawing, like figuring out how you want the light to cast a shadow or reflect on an image, or how to create the eye as a shiny, wet image.
“There are many individual components to a drawing, and it’s not always easy to transfer expressions to the viewer or reconstruct the personality of the subject. Drawing involves problem solving. Pencil art can be appreciated on simple and deep levels. On the deeper level, you can see the masterful techniques which are used to create realistic features.”
The tools necessary to start working as a graphite pencil artist are simple and inexpensive. However, the amount of time one needs to expend in order to learn and study and tackle the techniques of the craft is extensive. Steady patience is a required prerequisite, too.
“I carry with me a fly-fishing box full of tools, and people are often surprised that the box is all that I need. But, every tool has ten different usages and offers infinite possibilities of how things can be applied. It’s fulfilling to see such simple tools applied so beautifully.”
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| Cooking With Wildlife Chef Vince |
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| Vinnie’s Southwest Elk and Beans |
By Wildlife Chef Vince
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Here it is another new year and my favorite time of the year to fish. I am a die hard, hard water fisherman. If one does not have a boat, you can finally get to those hard to reach places that you could only dream of getting to in the summer. This brings me to another adventure about our two friends Trip and Fall.
It seems that our two young friends, Trip and Fall, decided to build an ice fishing hut. They decided it had to be small enough to fit on their old flatbed trailer, yet big enough to hold them and all their gear. One more thing: It had to be light enough so they could slide it easily across the snow and ice.
Well, as with all their projects the sled evolved from lightweight to heavy. However, it was very comfortable and quite a sight to behold. The floor was made of plywood and had several holes cut into it to fish through. Add to this two old overstuffed living room chairs for comfort. Next they added shelves, hooks for lanterns fishing tackle and clothing. They also incorporated large windows with shades and left room for a heating system.
The day came for them to go fishing on their favorite lake. The night before they loaded all the gear into the ice house and they were ready to load the sled onto the flatbed trailer. Only one problem, it was too heavy to lift up and put on the homemade trailer. They could not budge it. They unload the gear from the ice house but it was still too heavy. Trip with all his engineering skills says,” Lets build a ramp just like the Egyptians did when they built the Great Pyramids of Egypt. They shoveled snow and wet it down and it worked just great. They gave a big push and the ice house slid up and onto the trailer bed and off the other side. It seems that they forgot to hook up the trailer to the truck. They commence to build another ramp on the other side and soon discovered they had two nice ramps on either side and no way to hook up the truck. They then removed the one ramp and hooked it up to the truck.
All the while they were building and unbuilding, the fiery language was so hot it almost melted the snow. Neighbors were looking out windows, dogs were barking and mothers were pulling their children into their homes. Of course, all the while this was going on Fall was blaming Trip, and Trip was beating Fall about the head and shoulders with his raccoon hat, while simultaneously giving Fang the dog, disdainful looks. It seems, while our two heroes were having to build and tear down ramps, Fang was rolling on his back, tail a wagging and holding all four paws to his ribs. The sounds that dog made sure sounded like chuckles and that toothy grin made one feel he was laughing at our two idiots and of course he was doing just that.
Well, morning came and our two boys, and Fang the dog, are off to fish a local hot spot. As you already may have guessed they had to build another ramp to remove the house. It was a sight to behold: The two boys pushing and Fang in his harness pulling.
They drill their ice fishing holes and begin to fish. Fang at this time was quietly laying down by the heater watching the boys bring up fish after fish. Every now and then the dog would eat a fresh trout and Trip catches him in the act and the fight begins. Trip and Fall grab the tail end of a very large fish that Fang was trying to inhale. They pull so hard that they lose their grip on the slippery fish, falling backwards; they push the rest of their fish down the ice hole with their behinds. It was at this time that there was a moment of silence, except for Fang slurping down the tail of the fought over fish.
They suddenly feel the hut move. It seems that in their haste they had forgotten to anchor down the Ice house and the wind had begun to blow. They were suddenly being hurled at break neck speed across the lake. Here they were trapped in their house moving at about a hundred miles an hour, stuck to the back of their ice house with Fang sitting on top of them both, growling all the time. They soon run out of the lake, hit the far side of the lake, shattering the hut and leaving our two inept kids sitting in their overstuffed chairs, with no hut and Fang eating there trashed lunches and bait.
The two boys began to pile up the shattered remains of the ice hut, and with the help of Fang, began pulling the remains across the lake and back into the trailer. They started a fire, with the shattered remains of the ice hut, and thanks to another fisherman who gave them a fish, cooked their meager lunch. They drove back home, with Fang riding shotgun. All the way home they had to put up with Fang’s rancid stomach a growling. All the while Fang emitted odors that reminded them of the skunks he so loved to eat.
The moral of this story is always be prepared and always have a backup plan of Vinnie’s Southwest Elk and Beans to warm up your cold and tired body.
What you need.
One pound or more of course ground elk or venison
One 15 oz. can pinto beans
One 15 oz can kidney beans
One medium onion - chopped
Two cloves minced garlic
Two cans ( 14 1/2 oz ) crushed or chopped tomatoes with juice
Two smoked ham hocks
Two to four tablespoons red chili powder - depending on taste
Quarter cup olive oil
What you do.
In a large Dutch oven or pot pour the olive oil and add the meat, garlic and onions. Cook until meat is browned. Now add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 60 to 90 minutes. Be sure to stir occasionally so the beans and meat do not stick. Remove the ham hocks and take the meat off the hocks and add to the pot. Goes well with warmed tortillas.
For more information about Chef Vince’s cookbook and wildlife recipes, visit www.wildlifechefvince.com. Chef Vince may be contacted at 370-1778.
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