Montana’s beauty on display everywhere

Yes, the weather can create trouble at times and, sure, there’s the risk of running into a deer or elk. There’s always a chance that another driver will make a poor decision, or a semi will move into the left lane on the interstate. And some roads could use a fresh layer of asphalt, right?

But it was none of those things that made it tough for me last week. After cruising Interstate 90 from Missoula to Big Timber on Thursday morning, I had the pleasure of seeing more of the Treasure State for the first time on the two-lane highways through Harlowton, Townsend and Seeley Lake into Kalispell and then through Polson, Ronan and Arlee back home on Sunday.

What was so dangerous? Well, I didn’t want to keep my eyes on the road when there was so much to see in every which way. In some places, come on, where are you even supposed to look with mountains and lakes and trees all around?

So much beauty — even from a car clipping along at … well, I mostly drive the speed limit.

If not for Alex and Jim Amonette, I wouldn’t have seen some of it.

My trip to Big Timber was months in the making. After reading my first column back in February, the Amonettes reached out with a kind invitation to visit their property north of town on U.S. 191, where they wanted to highlight signs of changing climate.

With the snow-topped Crazy Mountains as a backdrop and the bright sun hanging above us, we walked through fields and down to the stream that runs in front of their earth-sheltered home. Jim played the role of tour guide, pointing our invasive species and noxious weeds, stopping at times to use his trusty spade to pluck out yellow clover, a particularly nasty culprit that spikes nitrogen levels in the atmosphere, he told me.

In other places, Jim showed native flowers and other habitat on a piece of land that he and his wife found in 2002 and made their home more than a decade later after saving enough money to move to Montana.

“This is like our 30-acre garden,” he said.

Following our field trip, Alex served a plant-based lunch on the patio and talked of the work she does to help raise awareness through Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an international environmental group that seeks to influence climate policy through relationship-building with elected officials.

There are more than 3,000 CCL volunteers in Montana, she said, adding that the group has productive relationships with the whole of the state’s federal delegation.

Political stripes don’t matter, Alex told me: “What I care about is people seeing, ‘Hey, we have a problem. We need to do something about it.’”

A few moments later, we heard a sound from beyond the stream. The Amonettes knew immediately that it was a fawn calling for its mother and, eventually, we saw the baby deer in the tall grass.

My wife, Cassandra, who often travels with me, oohed and aahed. It was a beautiful sight, indeed.

We saw more of Montana’s wonder on our drive to Helena that afternoon — thanks to the Amonettes’ advice to keep going on U.S. 191 rather than backtrack to the interstate. When we hit Harlowton, we hung a left on U.S. 12 and enjoyed a two-hour drive through a new part of the state.

The next day, Cassandra and I got our first look at the glacial lakes along Montana Highway 83 on our way to Kalispell, where I had the good fortune to visit with some of our state’s other news leaders at the Montana Newspaper Association’s annual convention.

While I had the privilege of collecting 62 awards for our Lee Enterprises newsrooms, I was equally delighted to celebrate the best of local journalism from across the state — from Melody and Jeff Martinsen at the Choteau Acantha, which won the Thomas Dimsdale Award for best weekly newspaper; to Anton Kaufer, Matt Baldwin and the crew at the Daily Inter Lake, which protected home turf by winning the Sam Gilluly Award for best daily newspaper; to the Flathead Beacon, which was lauded as the state’s best online newspaper for 2023.

The local journalism is another of Montana’s beautiful things.

As we headed home, Cassandra and I were wonderstruck by Flathead Lake and, just when you think there can’t be anything more, there’s the drop into Polson on U.S. 93.

They don’t call this the Last Best Place for nothing. What’s your favorite piece of it?