Montana’s remote northwestern corner inspires varied reactions from visitors, who come face to face with a sense of their own insignificance in a landscape that feels at once boundless and confining, a world of dark timber and long shadows. And then there’s the silence, which has a way of amplifying each breath and machination of the mind. But any discomfort is quickly overshadowed by a profound sense of awe, as many newcomers are comforted by the fact that a place so mysterious and tucked away still exists in an increasingly congested world.
Nestled against the intersection of Idaho and British Columbia, the Yaak Valley is a cleft cut into a piece of earth that is green and soft, where undulations of mountains are draped in a quilt of regenerating fir and spruce and larch. In fall, the aspens flare yellow-gold before they drop their leaves. The Yaak River drains southward to meet the Kootenai just north of Troy (population 900), whereupon the big river becomes bigger still, gathering its strength for the journey north and west. Up the Yaak, wolves and grizzly bears prowl through the timber in a wild landscape shared by a few hundred indomitable residents who are tough enough, or compelled enough by romance and solitude, to scratch out a living close to the land. The Yaak Valley is not a place you stumble upon by mistake; it’s a place you go looking for, seeking the chance to be dwarfed by something or the very real possibility of getting lost in more ways than one.
