Distinctly Montana Magazine

4 5 Y E A R S O F H A U N T E D W A T E R S 2 6 N ORMAN MACLEAN WAS NOT BORN IN MONTANA, NOR DID HE DIE HERE. His published work is slim, especially when com- pared to A.B. Guthrie or Ivan Doig. But I wager that if you asked people what piece of writing best exemplifies Mon- tana, many would respond A River Runs Through It. There are writers that we immediately associate with the peculiar regional land- scapes of the Western part of the United States: Edward Abbey in the Southwest, Wallace Stegner and Wendell Berry in the Northwest, Muir or even Steinbeck in Cal- ifornia. That Maclean is not generally thought of in the same way, that is, as a writer of the natural world, is both an advantage and a disservice. On the one hand, it high- lights how A River Runs Through It is as much about the mysteries of the human heart as it is the eddies and flows of a river. But on the other, it obscures how sensitively and evocatively he was able to render the landscapes of the West. This description of an approach to the Blackfoot manages to combine his semi-autobiographical character's subjectivity, elegant description, and swaths of geologic time: "I had to be careful driving toward the river so I wouldn't high-center the car on a boulder and break the crankcase. The flat ended suddenly and the river was down a steep bank, blinking silver through the trees and then turning to blue by comparing itself to a red and green cliff. It was another world to see and feel, and another world of rocks. The boulders on the flat were shaped by the last ice age only eighteen or twenty thousand years ago, but the red and green precambrian rocks beside the blue water were almost from the base- ment of the world and time." article and photos by BRYAN SPELLMAN T H E L A N D S C A P E S O F N O R M A N M A C L E A N : A MACLEAN FAMILY FAVORITE FISHING SPOT, ALONG THE BLACKFOOT RIVER Forests, Mountains, Water Muchmore Hole, Blackfoot River JOHN MACLEAN

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