High Country News

Busting fences

IF YOU DRIVE WEST from Bozeman and veer off the interstate a few miles after Echo Lake, turning down a mostly gravel road still lovingly called Highway 38, you see them everywhere: Fences. At every turn, almost every inch of the way until you hit the national forest, they lurk. Some wrapped with tightly wound barbed wire, others just a few posts leaning on each other like a pair of drunken uncles. Everywhere you look, they straggle, weathered enough to deceive you into believing they’ve been there as long as the majestic streams and fields and mountains they serve to keep you from.

Fucking fences.

I followed them all the way to Missoula, to the James

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