Author Archives: Alan Kesselheim

It is familiar, these local outings on the East Gallatin River. Every spring for 35 years I’ve done all or some of this small stream that runs fresh and boisterous for a month or two each year. We’ve already done … Continue reading →

April, this final month in a yearly round that has stretched from just south of the Arctic Circle to the Mexican border, from deep wilderness to manicured flows, from nearly a month in length to only a few days, from … Continue reading →

It wasn’t for lack of trying. The logistics for these winter outings have been both fun and daunting. I left my rig and trailer with a cousin in San Diego back in January after my stint on the lower Colorado. … Continue reading →

For 12 days we disappeared. Poof. No news, no people, no air traffic, no light pollution, no distraction. Big Bend, Texas is big, empty, mysterious, evocative country. The Lower Canyons, downstream of the National Park boundary, are all of that … Continue reading →

Heading south on the two-lane between Needles, California and Quartzite, Arizona, pulling my little camper trailer and listening to a fading radio station, I see a figure. Someone walking along the edge of the road. Not hitchhiking, carrying nothing, wearing … Continue reading →

I suppose you could apply this melancholy then-and-now reaction almost anywhere ‘wild’ these days, but the Colorado River below the Grand Canyon is such a blatant example that, for me, it becomes inescapable. I simply can’t be there without confronting … Continue reading →

Not easy to find a multi-day paddling destination near Montana in mid-winter. I knew I’d have to be creative in the winter months, so I thought about places I’d long wanted to explore by boat, and places where I might … Continue reading →

When I started this river-trip-a-month theme last May, I assumed that many of my sojourns would be solo ones. Marypat is still working, many of my friends have obligations that tie them down. I just didn’t think I’d be lucky … Continue reading →

Ah, the reluctant blogger returns. It has been a while, and things have been happening, so that partly explains my absence. Last May I gave notice that I wouldn’t be returning to teach at Montana State University. It felt like … Continue reading →

Over the winter months we rise in the dim dawn and sit together in the living room. No lights, across from each other, coffee in hand. Often we don’t talk. We each greet the day in our fashion, let the … Continue reading →