Farm in the Dell Rocky Mountain Front

Text by Suzanne Waring

Our society is structured around those self-supporting individuals who can attain an education, grow up to work at a job, and raise a family.  This sequence has naturally evolved because that’s how  a majority of people find fulfillment.  But what happens to those who are unable to matriculate through life in a typical manner?

Steve Lettengarver and his wife, Glena, of Fairfield have asked themselves this question because they have a daughter who is developmentally disabled (DD).  What would give her an opportunity for seeking fulfillment in her own way?  What will happen to her when they are no longer around to guide and to care for her?

Text by Amy Dardis

We live in a world where everyone is constantly connected yet struggling to connect. We’re overwhelmed with emails, texts, news feeds, notifications, likes, comments, pins, tweets, shares, updates, and alerts. Day to day life is noisy, automated, streamed, and synced. Checking our phone while having coffee with a friend is considered socially acceptable and most people would rather communicate through email, text, or social media rather than over the phone or in person.

Technology is advancing all the time and affects the way we do business, the way we communicate, and the way we live. But one thing that has not changed and never will is our deep rooted desire to connect with others. We need connection, crave connection, and seek out connection. Technology offers a facade of authentic connection but fails to deliver the real thing. A typed email just doesn’t have the same effect as a hand written letter. A text filled with emojis lacks the same level of emotion that you can hear in someone’s voice over the phone, chatting over messenger isn’t anywhere near as intimate as meeting for coffee, and applications like Skype or Facetime can never replace real physical connection like holding hands or hugging someone you care about.

A Business Operated by Women

Many of the cows on the Milk River Genetics Ranch live to be twenty years old. That’s old for cows. Kathy Creighton-Smith, the business owner, has patience and compassion for the cows that live in her pastures. Maybe that’s why they live so long.

Creighton-Smith was fortunate to attend Colorado State University at Fort Collins, Colorado, when an embryo transfer lab was established. When she graduated, embryo transfer was so new that few had the skills that she had learned while working in the lab. She was offered several jobs, but her husband’s family had a ranch in North Central Montana, and that was where she wanted to make her life, so in 1991 she started her own cattle embryo transfer business near Chinook, Montana, and named it Milk River Genetics.

“If you can keep him alive, you can have him”. Courtney Funderburk absorbed these words as she cradled the two day old English Setter in her hands and vowed to nurse him to health. Bailey, as Courtney and her Dad named him, required round the clock care for two months, including bottle feeding every three hours and a rotating “potty schedule” that few could understand or appreciate. As a result of this deep love and incredible care, Bailey gained weight and strength, and became intimately connected to his caregiver. As he grew into a healthy, energetic pup, the quality of his breeding and love of the hunt poured out of him, and it was obvious that he wanted to work the field. Training, direction and loving discipline molded him into more than a trusted companion; Bailey became a gun dog and hunting partner for life, one that lasted 14 years, and provided countless memories in the field and home that will never be forgotten.

A hunting camp means many different things to many different men, but for Vern Raymond and Al Stenhjem it means nothing if not commitment. Not a commitment to each other (it’s not that kind of story), but a commitment to an idea, a connection to wilder times and wilder ways.

For the past 45 years these two men have led a rotating roster of regulars into the wilderness, setting up camps across South Central Montana, making life a little less comfortable but all the more enjoyable.

The strange sensitivity of presence. The prickle of aura. The unexplained specter of a protector – a hovering apparition, an unexplainable form of residual energy.

Grandstreet Theatre is one of the most haunted buildings in Montana. Many believe that one of its most enduring and patronizing poltergeists is a woman named Clara Bicknell Hodgin.

“Clara was beloved by the people of Helena,” said Kal Poole, managing director of Grandstreet Theatre. “Many think that she is part of the community once again—in the form of a ghost.”