Team Adventure - The Montana Rescue Mission by Brianna Randall - juvenile fiction

Book Release! (Want a free copy?)

Some of you probably remember when I started writing a kids’ book during grad school. Maybe you even heard the reading I gave at a local Missoula bookstore almost a decade ago.

After I finished the novel, I shelved it for quite some time. Then, in the midst of moving and rearranging our life, I pulled it out again. I spent the winter months revising this fun adventure book, and had a blast sinking back into the characters. Even though it’s geared toward 8-10 year-olds, it’s a good way to explore western Montana.

Thanks to the modern digital age, I was able to self-publish an electronic version on Amazon for Kindle owners.

Want one? The book is FREE for the next 4 days if you click here. After that, it’s only $.99. Here’s the book summary. Let me know if you enjoy the adventure!

Kate is a city girl who’s more comfortable wandering around the mall than through the woods. But she’s determined to brave the wilderness of Montana in order to rescue her older sister, Nicole. Luckily, Kate’s best friend Maddie is a Montana girl, through and through. They sneak out of summer camp, and are unexpectedly joined by their campmates Cody and Darren (for better or for worse!). Together, these four sixth-graders head into the woods – and straight into one adventure after the next.

Kate and her friends sail, hike, raft and ride through Montana. It’s not all smooth sailing, though: they also get lost in the mountains, run into a bear, capsize a raft in the river, and walk straight into a wildfire! Team Adventure’s rescue mission is one wild ride, and a race against the clock as they try to make it to the forest Nicole is risking her life to protect.

Join Team Adventure as they learn more about fish, mountains, wildlife, rivers and the history of the Northern Rockies Mountains. This is one fun journey you don’t want to miss!

Bri in Little Blackfoot River in Montana - on the horizon line - clark fork coalition

Community and Culture, Reflections on Life

Farewell (for now) to Working for Freshwater

9 years. 5 legislative sessions. 100s of grant proposals. 28,000 miles of streams and rivers to speak up for. Dozens of floats, monitoring days, and presentations. Thousands of meetings, laughs, successes, snafus, late nights, and learning moments.

That’s just a sliver of what working for clean water means to me.

Today is my last day of work at the Clark Fork Coalition, a kick-ass high-powered conservation group that does good things for great rivers in Montana. I’ve worked for almost a decade in a variety of roles at the Coalition, and never once did I dread going to work. In fact, walking in the front doors almost always made me smile in anticipation of what the day might bring. This is due in large part to the remarkable people I was lucky enough to work with and for.

If you’ve ever worked for a small non-profit organization, you know that every employee is a jack-of-all-trades. We are writers, lobbyists, fundraisers, counselors, janitors, technicians, scientists, lawyers, explorers, tour guides, comedians and engineers — all in the same day. We are passionate and dedicated and motivated to make the world a better place. And we’re really fun, too.

The Coalition taught me a lot about how to make change happen — not just for the spectacular rivers and landscapes in Montana, but in my community, my country, my daily life. It taught me that water connects everything: big and small, urban and rural, personal and global, eating and drinking, forests and valleys, mountains and ocean.

Why, you might ask, would I quit such a fabulous job or pivot away from such an important cause? Because it’s the right time, and I can feel that deep inside. I don’t ever want to walk in the front door dreading the day, so I’m planning to leave while the smile is still on my face and the passion is still beneath my skin.

Plus, as I see it, we’re just moving downstream to explore. Granted, the Pacific is a lot bigger pond than the Clark Fork River, but I’m comforted by the fact that all of the clean water I worked to protect will be a part of the ocean that floats my boat.

I think my husband said it best in his farewell email to his co-workers at Trout Unlimited yesterday, so I’m going to let his words close out my farewell-for-now to the world of freshwater conservation:

I’m calling it quits. Not because I think there’s a better place to work or because I could make more money somewhere else, but because its just time. Its time for someone with a new perspective to take over my program, to infuse it with new ideas and enthusiasm. This track is starting to get awful familiar, and it’s time for me to find a new one.

I’ll be basically wandering for the foreseeable future, seeing some new places and people and trying to figure out what I’ll do next in my life. My wife and I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to cut ties and vanish for a couple years. We will be leaving March 26 with a couple of backpacks, some snorkeling gear and a desire to travel, sail and explore. Hitchhiking the ocean, some people have called it.

I don’t think that being unemployed will always be easy, but I’m sure it will be interesting. I want to say thank you for taking a chance on a bright-eyed idealist and giving me the opportunity, the skills and the flexibility to succeed. For that, I will be forever indebted. I feel truly blessed to have been your co-worker and part of an organization that has an excellent mission, hires good people and is just fun to work for. Keep up the good fight and remember that we’re all in that fight together. I’ll miss you.

– Rob

friends dressed up in costume at our wedding in caras park in missoula

Community and Culture, Family and Friends

Finding Our Center in Missoula

My boss, Karen, likes to say that Missoula, Montana is the center of the universe. It’s certainly been the center of our universe this past decade, as we live and breathe the mountains, rivers and people that make this Rocky Mountain town so magical.

We’ve also lived with the not-so-magical Missoula moments: grey funky winter air settling over those iced-up rivers for days on end; wildfire smoke creeping along mountainsides (and inside lungs) during August; and familiar faces feeling a little too familiar when you’re craving anonymity and diversity.

We choose to live here for many reasons, but the main one is this: community. If Missoula is the center of the universe, then community is the center of Missoula. It’s the reason we make less money, endure long (really long) winters, and smoky summers. It’s the reason amazing, unexpected things unfold in the valley. It’s the reason we’re not selling our house when we leave for our adventures. It’s the reason we will always return.

Last night, I went to a fundraising dinner sponsored by the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies program, fondly referred to as “EVST” by students and alum (the code used for class registration). Those of you who read my post after an EVST retreat in September know that graduate school profoundly shaped me. EVST is more than just school, it’s an experience: it provided me with a career, passion, friends, confidence, and even the courage to voyage into the unknown on this journey we’re about to embark upon.

And, most importantly, EVST and its people form the center of my Missoula community.

At the dinner, I looked around the room and listened to my friends talking about why they love the program, which is also why many of them love Missoula. It gives us fire in the belly, connection to place, values-based advocacy, a life support system, sharing circles, starships, drinking partners, visionaries, and ski buddies.

The people in that room just get me. They get why we’re leaving our beautiful home, good jobs, and comfortable community. They get why we want to write this blog, meet new people, bumble through foreign cultures, and take risks without knowing the exact outcomes. And they congratulate us on making the leap into that unknown.

Biking home after dinner, I felt all of the connections in my universe wrapping around me like the silky strands of a spider web. These strands are deeply and irrevocably interwoven with Missoula, my family who lives here, and my community who will still be here when we get back. Cheers to that.

Community and Culture

Free Stuff – Round 2

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The garage is starting to look bare…for now. We’ll be building a wall to divide it in half next month, so that we can put all our stuff in “storage” downstairs before we go. That means we have to purge to make it all fit! If you want to peruse this stuff, let us know and you can come shopping in our downstairs bedroom.

There’ll be another round of free stuff when we get to the kitchen area. And we also have some very large bags of clothes for the next Missoula clothes swap (hint, hint if anyone’s itching to host a party!).

Patagonia waders (they leak, so be prepared to fix)

Sector 9 skateboard – NOT free, but only $40.

Community and Culture, Reflections on Life

A Man Spoke Tonight

A man spoke tonight about darkness. He spoke of ancient creatures that chew on trees. He spoke of crystalline-fragile ecosystems, and the waters that move and change.

He spoke of people who damage these waters and change the crystalline ecosystems. He spoke of being a rancher’s son, a transient’s best friend, and of being a janitor. He spoke of the dark waters and deep black skies that calm a troubled mind and that soothe a frantic soul.

He spoke in a front of a crowded room, full of people who disagreed with him. He spoke as the sole voice of dissent for a burgeoning civic project to light our city’s bridges.

I cried when he spoke. And the tears took me by surprise.

It wasn’t the bridge lighting project that sparked my emotion. Nor was it simply the man’s poetic words that catalyzed salty tears.

Rather, it was his brave act of speaking out that prompted my emotional response. It was the fact that he launched a different and heartfelt perspective into a sea of sameness. It was the fact that I am fortunate enough to live in a city, a state, a nation that lets him speak out…and even encouraged it. It was the fact that a roomful of dissenters respectfully allowed him to speak freely, and asked for his opinion even when they knew it was uncomfortably different.

Thank you, Americans, Montanans, Missoulians, friends, for listening to others. Thank you for welcoming stories of darkness, even as you seek the light.

And thank you to the man who spoke tonight, for reminding us that some people crave the solace of dark or troubled waters, and we might never fully understand why.

Community and Culture, Videos

The Missoula Mandala Project

This weekend Bri and I help our good friends Jana and Pedro build the Missoula Mandala, Brazilian-themed outdoor community art project that coincides with the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos. Here’s a video I made of the piles of colored sawdust being transformed into a large, beautiful, symmetric design with the help of hundreds of kids and community members.

Community and Culture, Reflections on Life

Cuddly Chickens Up For Grabs (if you can catch them)

One of the best parts about living in Missoula is that you get the best of the “urban” and the “rural” worlds. It’s Montana’s second largest city–and the biggest city for several hours driving in any direction–so we get our share of culture and music, as well as a hip downtown. But since it’s surrounded on all sides by vast wilderness, mountains, rivers, and agricultural lands, you can easily escape the urban bustle and embrace the rural lifestyle.

Plus, you can be a chicken farmer.

Two years ago, we built a sweet chicken coop, complete with a window, insulation, a tin roof, and a fun-run for the girls. We populated it with 4 young silver-laced wyandottes, and watched them do their chicken thang. With a light on in the coop for a couple hours in the morning and evening, they even kept laying their pretty speckled eggs throughout Montana’s dark fall and winter.

Last summer, one got strangely and incurably ill (i.e. she was trying to walk around on her head and was miserable). We lost her. But the other 3 soldiered on.

One of the most hilarious parts of being a chicken farmer is chicken herding. We let the girls free-range for worms and other goodies a few times a week. They roam the yard, and even occasionally take a walk down Highland Drive to visit the neighbors (half of whom are urban chicken farmers, too). But then you gotta put the girls back in the coop, which is easier said than done.

Herding is a fine art, and takes years of practice. It’s a mix of patience and pressure: if you make them walk too fast or get too close, they scatter in 3 directions. But if you go too slow, they slip right through your legs to find another tasty treat in the dirt.

It’s time to say goodbye to our girls, though.

We’re getting ready to leave in early April, and it’d be nice to see them settled in a new coop-dominium before the weather gets frozen and harder on them. They should have another year of laying in front of them, as long as they get enough light, food, and water.

So, our question for you: who wants to be a chicken farmer? We’ll throw in 10 pounds of free food, and a free herding demonstration, to boot.

Community and Culture, Dance and Yoga

Dancing Adventures

Dancing is definitely up there with my top 3 favorite things in life. Especially when I get to pair it with one of my other top 3 favorites: spending quality time with my best friends and family (which, luckily for me, happen to be the same people).

Check out this video of a little Wednesday night ditty with my buddy, “Karamat.” Yup, we’re wearing random costumes. Nope, we’re not even slightly buzzed. Why? Well, why the hell not? What else would we do on a dark, cold-ish Montana weeknight? Plus, I wanted to inaugurate the new Go Pro Hero 2 that arrived that afternoon in the mail (checked it off the list in our Little Red Bon Voyage Bible, thanks to 20% off at REI). And I hadn’t seen “Karamut” since the last time we donned random wigs and danced around…at least 2 weeks ago.

Saturday night, my sister and dad and I left the wigs in the costume trunk, and went down to the Blacksmith Brewery in Stevensville to investigate the seasonal Pumpkin Ale and the groovy tunes of Tom Catmull. Both rocked. Too bad I left the Go Pro at home…the slightly blurry smartphone pics are still pretty fun, though. Check out the father-daughter duo tearing up the brewery dance floor below. I got in a dance with both Cassidy and Dad, and also led Ali in a sweet polka spin. My pink cowboy boots always make me feel like leading a polka.

Community and Culture, Dance and Yoga, Reflections on Life

From Dancing to Dodging Deer – Just a Typical Tuesday

west african dance bri — These photos were from a huge African drum and dance festival in Seattle a couple years ago. It’s in April each year, and well worth the trip!

As you might notice, Rob and I don’t really like routines. We avoid them, actually. But there’s one thing we don’t mind scheduling: our favorite athletic hobbies. For Bob-ito, that means volleyball, basketball, and martial arts. For me, that means dance classes of any kind, usually at the Downtown Dance Collective: Oula, Brazilian, ballet, hiphop, salsa.

Tonight I got the best of both worlds: an unscheduled dance class. Thanks to my mom, I found out at 4pm there was a 7pm West African class taught by visiting master drummers and dancers from Guinea. Sold.

I take a West African dance class about once a year, usually when someone from the African continent comes to Missoula to teach (thanks, Unity Dance and Drum!). Even though I dance almost daily, my body is always wrecked after a West African class. Somehow, nothing else physically compares to the exertion I put forth flailing, jumping, squatting, and spinning to loud, live drums.

And nothing else can make me feel so completely humble and humiliated one moment, and then exhilarated and affirmed the next. It’s awesome.

Sidenote: I highly recommend everyone try something that makes them feel this schizophrenically bipolar at some point. It brings us out of our comfort bubbles and makes us realize we can do interesting–even astounding–things.

west african drummers — Again, this was the big festival in Seattle in April. Everything is free. Thanks to my friend, Saleche (Celeste), for finding it and going with me in 2010.

In preparation for the body-wrecking class, I rode my bike downtown to try and loosen the muscles. It’s now pitch black by 8:30pm, so the ride home through dark, forested Greenough Park along bear-infested Rattlesnake Creek was its own adventure. Good thing I have lights on my bike.

Yelling “Hey, Bear. HEEEYYY, BEARS,” into the dark woods, I turned a corner and literally braked about 4 inches from a huge buck. Whew. Better than a bear, but it still got my heart rate up higher than the dance class did.

Just another Tuesday night in Missoula…spontaneous African dance and a near-miss on T-boning a deer on a bike. I wonder if tomorrow’s more-regularly- scheduled Oula dance class will have anything spontaneous in store!

Community and Culture, Fishing, Hiking

Ode to the Smith River

After several backpacking trips this summer, car camping feels like staying at a 5-Star Sheraton Hotel. After work on Friday, we loaded up the Honda with our thick, cushy Thermarests, big, comfy down sleeping bags, the roomy tent, real pillows, musical instruments, chairs…and beer!…and headed east toward the Smith River.

The Smith is one of Montana’s premier floating and fishing rivers. Normally, when someone says they’re “going to the Smith” they mean they’re floating the windy canyon, launching their drift boats, rafts or canoes near White Sulphur Springs and spending 4-5 days floating 50 miles north toward Great Falls.

But that’s only during the spring and early summer. Montana has a competitive permit system to divvy out coveted float trips during those precious few weeks when snowfall subsides, the runoff from spring thaw calms down, and before the river shrivels from irrigation withdrawals and hot, dry weather. We’ve snagged a permit many years during that narrow perfect window. (Check out this sweet canoe setup from our 2011 Smith trip!)

No one really floats in September, since the flows drop drastically. This weekend, the river was flowing at a meager 100 cubic feet per second. Luckily, though, September is a great time to camp and fish.

Our friend, Mike, is the son of a smart, smart man who chipped in with friends to buy property along the Smith River years ago. Mike invites his friends to enjoy this remarkable riverside property during the last weekend in September each year to celebrate birthdays, whiskey, trout, and the onset of autumn. Lucky us.

And celebrate we did. We caught big trout, shot rifles to bone-up for hunting season, played guitar boisterously, ate like royalty, and sat around with good friends telling funny stories.

This particular outdoor adventure–like most we undertake–underscored the bottom line for how to return home with a satisfied glow. It’s the people. The community. The shared experience is what brings the rivers, forests, fish, and wildlife into sharp, 3-D focus in our memories.

On the September Smith trip, that means repeating the same inside jokes, eating Corey’s Stupendous Smith River Chili, singing along to Mike’s rockin’ set list on guitar after dinner, and giggling when we hear Ryan’s booming Fireball Whiskey-inspired laugh. It means creating new traditions due to campfire restrictions, like roasting marshmallows over a Coleman lantern and snuggling like inchworms in our sleeping bags around a single candle. Most of all, it means simply being with each other with no “real world” distractions near a clear stream, under a full moon, beneath a big, bright Montana sky.