Roland Cheek's
Tales of the WEST that WAS
and the WEST that IS
Roland Shares Columns
Looking for inside info about the West? Want to know what makes Montana and the Rockies tick? Ever wonder why my kinds of folks are so comfortable to be around?
That's what Roland does best: share secrets from a lifetime amid the West's best (but little known) treasures. He shared through five outdoor columns per month, 60 per hear, that ran in as many as 17 daily and weekly newspapers for 21 years; and for seven years through a daily radio porgram aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. All in all, the guy shared secrets, experiences, and hard-won knowledge about the kinds of places God keeps for Himself; through well over twenty-six hundred acclaimed columns and scripts. That means there are over twenty-six hundred reasons out there why Roland is called "A Rocky Mountain Sage."
In all, over 300,000 readers and listeners know Roland and his work, enjoying the guy's dry humor, outdoors skills, and pungent tell-it-like-it-is critiques of officious behavior -- sometimes his own, sometimes of friends or strangers, sometimes by government officialdom.
Jane spirits Roland's work out Skyline Publishing's back door and will GIVE them away through Roland's past radio scripts and newspaper columns, as well as his new, weekly "Campfire Culture" weblog. If you liked Jane's charming "Moccasin Telegraph" newsletter, you'll like its "Campfire Tales" manifestation. We hope you'll pass those tales on to your friends, along with it's web address: www.campfireculture.com.
Too, if you like (or liked) Roland's Campfire Culture weblog, Jane's "Moccasin Telegraph newsletter, or their newspaper columns and radio programs, we'd like to hear from you.
(We also take complaints.)
To the novice yearning for outdoor adventure, food -- or the lack thereof -- is the most prevalent deterrent. Bears? Snakes? Mountain lions? Isn't it true that most beginners shudder at their thought.
An open letter to my sweetheart
A confused grizzly bear trapped in the heart of Flathead Valley, near the sprawling commercial airport. A family of grizzlies filmed grazing on lawn clover and toying with hummingbird feeders in the Many Lakes area of the same valley. What is going on?
The beast paused in a shaft of moonlight, lifting her nose to test the air's gentle downhill drift. It was an odor so delicate, from such distance, only the olefactory sense of one so wild could possibly detect it. She turned to stalk the breeze.
I am an amateur bear-ologist.
Ever notice how folks get grumpier as they grow older? It's an apparently natural phenomenon, else Hollywood wouldn't have used the theme for popular movies starring Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau.
It all began with Hilger rancher John Gilpatrick writing: "I read a comment you made that said something like this: `What we need is a conservative with a conservation ethic.' How true!"
March ranks high on my un-favorite list. The month means the mud of spring break-up and highway potholes to trap tanks. March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. But in Montana lions and lambs sometimes lie down together on the same day. And inevitably Simba exits into April picking his teeth.
Call it what you will: breeze, blow, blast or blizzard; call it whiff, whirl, storm or squall; call it draft, puff, gust or gale. Makes no difference whether tempest or tornado -- most folks living in my part of the country learn to come to terms with the one single constant that's always been and always will be -- wind.
Six of us -- three couples, all in our sixties -- packed into the Belly River country in Glacier National Park. The time we chose was the second week of September in order to avoid heavy visitor numbers of mid-summer.
A prominent former television news anchorman originated in a Montana sister state to the east. He's NBC's Tom Brokaw, who hails from Yankton, South Dakota. Brokaw continues a tradition of news journalists rising from the rural West who make it big time in the Big Apple. Others who spring to mind are Eric Severied of CBS (Roseburg, Oregon) and the late Chet Huntley of NBC (Springdale, MT).
A long horseback packtrip into wilderness country takes a certain modicum of experience and talents.
One of the paradoxes of horseback pactrips into mountain country is that the more proficient one becomes in the art of packing horses, the less memorable such adventures become.
It felt as though ten thousand needles were jammed at all angles into my feet. Just seconds before I'd been unceremoniously shoved from deep slumber by an insistent bladder.
Aren't Horseshoes Supposed To Be Lucky?
Shoeing horses, pouring concrete, and cutting wood all rate as the toughest kind of grunt work for me. Especially shoeing horses.
He carries a down-filled coat and she doesn't. She carries a first-aid kit and he doesn't
Dear Mr. Roland Cheek. Hi, my name is Trevor Alton. I'm 11 years old and live in Montana City. I love to go camping and hiking. We don't get the paper so it was by accident I saw your column. I would like to learn more about how to "survive" in the "wild". I was wondering if you could please write back and tell me some things I should know. This is of course if it is convenient for you.
For the better part of my life I've roamed the most remote regions of the Northern Rocky Mountains. During youth, any place within a day's walk from road's end was too civilized for my attention. And in middle age I guided others to the same places I'd visited earlier. It's only now, during my dotage, that I've discovered the advantages of day hiking ... and sleeping in my own bed come night.
How about a historical museum at Big Prairie? Big Prairie is in the Spotted Bear District of the Flathead National Forest. It formerly headquartered a separate U.S. Forest Service ranger district, but is now the primary work center for the western portion of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Big Prairie is a long trek by trail from the end of any road.
Roland and Jane hiking with llama in Utah's Canyonlands country. (Roland is in middle)
