 |
| Bozeman, Montana |
31.10.21
22.10.21
21.10.21
20.10.21
19.10.21
Gallatin Speedway
 |
| Belgrade, Montana |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Charlie Hirst had hardly driven his 1998 Toyota Celica before he lined up at the Gallatin Speedway for the first time in early June. He had bought the car for $500, installed a roll cage and painted the number 411 on it. Before he knew it he was careening around the quarter-mile dirt track, gas pedal slammed to the floor, with no idea what was going to happen.
“It was terrifying,” said Hirst. “When I got in the car I thought I was gonna throw up.” He placed third out of three drivers in the sport compact class that day, yet left the speedway empowered and inspired.
The track at Gallatin Speedway is filled weekly in the summer by big, loud machines whose sole purpose is to go really, really fast. There are generally a handful of different classes of cars competing on any one night, and most of these cars have little in common with the standard passenger vehicle, save the four wheels and a driver’s seat. The sport compact class was introduced this year to make track racing more accessible. Rather than spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy a specialized racing machine, Hirst was limited by rule to spend less than $1,500 on his.
Still, starting a racing career from scratch isn’t easy. “In your head, you might think you’re a good driver,” said Hirst, “but you get humbled. And you go back next week, and you go a little faster.”
Hirst found the seasoned drivers in the bigger classes to be supportive, yet his biggest challenge was having enough competition. Because the sport compact class is so new, people just didn’t have time to put a car together this year.
In the last race of the season, Hirst placed second out of two drivers. Despite the loss, he returned home to Ennis motivated to come back next year, and go a little faster.
18.10.21
17.10.21
16.10.21
15.10.21
13.10.21
12.10.21
11.10.21
10.10.21
9.10.21
8.10.21
VA today
 |
| Livingston, Montana |
 |
| Bozeman, Montana |
LINK: ‘A big cumbersome beast’: The rising cost of caring for veterans
7.10.21
6.10.21
Snowfill portraits
 |
| Bozeman, Montana |
At the Snowfill Recreation Area, dogs rule.
The park was created in 2008 in response to a lack of off-leash areas in the city, offering everything a good dog needs and nothing she doesn’t. Open space? Count 37 acres of it. Smells? The hillside is soaked with a thorough record of every dog that has visited. Decorative fire hydrant? You shouldn’t even need to ask.
On a recent Saturday, Jessica Crawford brought Aiko, her 9-month-old chocolate lab, to Snowfill. Standing near a conveniently located wag-bag dispenser, Crawford noted the trail winding through the park and the broad views of the Gallatin Valley. “It’s such a utopia here,” she said. For Aiko and his fellow dog friends madly sprinting circles around each other, utopia might be an understatement.
2.10.21
1.10.21
30.9.21
29.9.21
A classroom
 |
| Gallatin Gateway, Montana |
LINK: Gallatin Gateway seeks feedback on historic designation for schoolhouse
28.9.21
26.9.21
25.9.21
24.9.21
23.9.21
22.9.21
21.9.21
20.9.21
B-47 Ridge
 |
| Emigrant Peak, Montana |
In the blue morning of July 24, Diane Lumadue began walking up an unfamiliar trail in an unfamiliar part of the country with unfamiliar hiking partners. She was straight-faced, but joked easily with the others who gathered at the Gold Prize trailhead in a sparsely wooded cleft of Emigrant Peak in the Paradise Valley of Montana. The group of more than 30 had intended to leave 20 minutes earlier, a delay which was explained when a SUV arrived in the rocky parking area and unloaded the governor of Montana, who would also be joining the trek.
The group followed a man named Bryan Wells, who had assembled them from all corners of the country. Wells, though, has lived most of his life in the Paradise Valley. These rough folds of land are his home, and he led the group through the complicated terrain with the familiarity of one showing off their living room.
Still, the hike was the hardest thing Lumadue, coming from West Virginia, had ever done. There were others who floated up the four-and-a-half miles, but Lumadue didn't feel like she was one of them. She ran out of breath. When she looked up from her feet, she became dizzy. She felt concern for the others who were faring worse than her, yet the pace set by Wells rarely slackened.
Lumadue was born in 1966, four years after her uncle, Lt. Fred Hixenbaugh, left Dyess Air Force Base in Texas in a B-47 bomber on a routine training mission over Montana. The B-47 was a terribly powerful aircraft, iconic in the lineage of large jet planes, yet reliably unreliable. That night in 1962, Hixenbaugh and his three fellow airmen became among the 464 people who would die in B-47 crashes when they slammed into a ridge of Emigrant Peak, exploding into a fireball thousands of miles from their homes and families.
Wells became obsessed with the crash, out of a sense of duty and of adventure. He wanted to honor the fallen servicemen by placing a memorial on the ridge, which was illegal in National Forest Service land without an act of Congress, so Wells got an act of Congress, and the body also agreed to name the location B-47 Ridge. To celebrate, he invited kin of the deceased, retired Air Force pilots, and politicians who had helped Wells achieve his vision, to visit the crash site and pay their respects. Lumadue made the trip in the stead of her mother and her aunt, for whom the grief of losing a brother at a young age never went away.
After ascending three thousand feet of steep dirt and duff, Lumadue reached a sharp shoulder of the mountain. Now far above the trailhead, she could see the yellowing rangeland of the Paradise Valley in one direction and across smoky layers of the Absaroka Mountains in the other.
“We’re now standing on B-47 Ridge,” a retired pilot told Lumadue, putting his arm around her. “Let’s go down and see your uncle.” Lumadue wept as tiny pieces of aluminum began sparkling under tufts of grass below her feet.
