In the summer of 2004, as an intern at The Monitor, I remember gazing up at the Elkhorns on one side of Highway 69 and the Bull Mountains on the other wondering about the bears. They were up there, and back then, when I was 21 years old, that was about all I knew.
I lived on the Carey Ranch that summer. Helen and Tom, who has since passed, welcomed me into their home and treated me like a member of the family. Helen still runs the ranch, as most readers of this paper probably know. The Carey family are five-generation icons of Jefferson County: good, sturdy folk who work the land in an age when most people “interact” with nature through social media.
Even in 2004, I could tell their lifestyle was unique, or at least from another era. I just wasn’t experienced enough back then to grasp and appreciate the authenticity of ranch life in the Boulder Valley, which hits at the very core of Montana’s appeal.
