Montana Tales and Trails

These are the times that try our souls. Isolation, face masks, drugs and diseases that are difficult to pronounce, let alone understand.

Take heart. There's a world out there that proceeds without us. A place where winter stubbornly exits stage left, while spring occasionally lifts its head but seems too shy to take command. A place of beauty we should try to visit.

As the calendar approaches May, red-winged blackbirds and Western meadowlarks are staking out their breeding and nesting areas. Sandhill cranes stand silhouetted on prairie hilltops like a weathervane on a barn.

Mature bull elk hav...