Distinctly Montana Magazine

DONNIE SEXTON TAYLAR ROBBINS Today's downtown, with its wide streets and 1890s brick buildings housing book- stores, boutique stores, banks, and yoga centers, still thrives. For sheer energy, I like the riverside Caras Park—former home of drunks and grass-rolling couples—where today kids cavort around the Returnings, the giant fish sculpture by Jeffrey Funk, kayakers thread through the Brennan's Wave on the Clark Fork River, and there's Saturday meat market. Literally. It's the Clark Fork Farmer's Market, at the opposite end of Higgins from its predecessor, the Missoula Farmer's Market. The tinny music from the "A Carousel for Missoula" with its 38 hand-carved horses (the 1991 dream child of Chuck Karapich and hundreds of volunteers) and the shouts from the nearby playground Dragon's Hollow add to the party-like atmosphere. Or catch a First Friday, when the art mob is out, drifting from gallery to gallery, sipping wine, studying the new canvases. Wild, The Heart Missoulaof Weird BY CAROLINE PATTERSON www.distinctlymontana.com For sheer inspiration, check out the Missoula Art Museum, housed in the former Carnegie library. Or see the latest indepen- dent film at the newly refurbished crystal-chandeliered Wilma. THE UNIVERSITY AREA: CONTEMPORARY ART TO CHAI With orderly rows of Norway maples, the University area takes up two of Missoula's 13 historic district designations. One of Missoula's oldest areas is where my great-grandfather built the Prairie-style home I now live in. Its district is the Maggie Smith of Missoula, grand old dame, charming, a bit caustic, with its Victorian mansions, A. J. Gibson houses, and classic bungalows, endless tug-of-war between residents and college students. It's full of sweat-shirted teenagers on skateboards, students tramping to and from bars on weekend nights, but on dreamy springs nights, I can still imagine a suitor serenading his beau at her sorority from a horse—as my great-uncle did to my great-aunt. Its centerpiece is, of course, The University of Montana-Missou- la, built in 1895 at the foot of Mount Sentinel (hence the "M") with its A. J. Gibson clock tower, elegant brick campus scoured by winds from Hellgate Canyon. It is a place we depend on to keep us fired up—with its steady stream of lectures, classes, and readings. Check out the Meloy and Paxson galleries of the Montana Mu- seum of Art and Culture where classical meets contemporary art. Refuel on chai and chicken curry wraps at the Buttercup Mar- ket & Cafe, a new cafe and grocery featuring organic Montana produce, meats, and wine. Then walk it off on the 2.5-mile Kim Williams Trail, shadowed by osprey and named for the public radio naturalist, that winds along the 134-acre wild area bordering Mount Sentinel along the former tracks of the Milwaukee Railroad. 61

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