As usual I'm off the thread sorta;

Alice, where in Montana? I just came back from visiting my cousin, Sue in Big Timber, went up to the Crazys and down to the falls on the Boulder River. Just one incredible view after another, no wonder my cousin stays there in spite of the winters. I'm reading Alice Gleason's writings: Starting From Scratch. She lived in the Choteau area near the Teton river, A.B. Guthrie was a friend of hers and a neighbor.

And KIM C you do re-enacting? what period? could you and/or Alice PM me? My ladyfriend and I are slowly inching our way West. Spending next summer in the Yellowstone if we can get jobs there.

Went to the Medicine Wheel, slept at Porcupine campground, only one there, what blessed silence!

As a "Fur Trade" re-enactor I had a few laughs over frontier house. We kept saying, "waugh, they got it MADE!" try doing that under canvas or an oilskin "tarp" or dug into a creek bank! Brother bill and I go off into the Boone Wildlife area. Nothing but nature, absolutely NO "improvements" Take a ground cloth, hardtack biscuits, some bacon and a squirrel rifle and a gourd canteen and some salt. Stay a night or a month, the place is wild and peaceful. The Missouri country can support a person forever if they have common sense and love the silence. I don't know if folks who "went West" would have been as green as that, maybe in the LATE 19th century. The pilgrims who didn't cut the mustard usually died.

CB