A third man goes down for using a drone in Yellowstone National Park. Donald Criswell of Molalla, Oregon, was charged with violating the National Park Service's ban on unmanned aircrafts. He allegedly flew over the crowded Midway Geyser Basin and close to bison in August. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to the charge of violating a closure and was fined $1,000.

In September, Theodorus Van Vliet of the Netherlands pleaded guilty to controlling an unmanned aircraft that crashed into Grand Prismatic Spring.

Andreas Meissner of Germany also pleaded guilty in September to charges from operating a drone, which crashed into Yellowstone Lake in July.

MORE>>>ABC/Fox

Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation, then moving to Bozeman where she owned a downtown retail anchor for eighteen years. These days she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Energetic Healthcare, hosts a monthly movie night, teaches and writes about many topics.

The other day I was in the Peak Alignment class at my gym, rotating my right ankle this way and that, in various positions. It’s a true testimony to the promise of and potential for healing. I suspect that most of us have an injury that has surprised us by how well it healed and I suspect that we worked hard for that outcome. Here’s the story of my 2008 ankle adventure. 

It was the last Sunday of  September, the Hyalite mountains alive with deep green and brown, vibrant gold and red, the air scented with change, warm and crisply cooling all at one time.  A glorious day for a hike. When I saw an unexpected turn to a waterfall along a mountain trail, I didn't hesitate long before deciding to follow it.

As the trail rose, I felt the first tingles of misgiving. Wearing hiking sandals, I had left my walking poles at home. I had been having trouble with balance, worried about slipping and falling if the trail got too rocky and steep. 

When I stepped over a creek, I paused to enjoy its tiny cascade, small and sweet, then climbed on, lured by the promise of a waterfall. When I reached it, I found it beautiful but brief -  a quick cascade over stepped rocks that  fell in to a pool, then narrowed to become the creek I had crossed earlier. I could hear the roar of a larger fall above, would need to climb over and around a boulder and up a mountain-goat steep slope to see it. 

I sat on a shelf at the base of the boulder, studying the graveled slope I had already climbed, negotiating with myself. Prudence won out. Sighing, I stood up. 

I heard bones snap when I fell as if I had heard them break every day for years, this fall, this break, as eerily familiar as if I had not just known it would come, but had already experienced it.   

My first thought was that it would be good to put my foot in the water to cool the injury and keep it from swelling. The lower fall's pool was within reach but I would have to crawl to it. My stronger impulse was to use the energy medicine protocols I had learned, to believe in them enough to trust them to help. 

I began the self-care Fast Aid procedure I learned in my tranining to become a BodyTalk practitioner. It includes a series of techniques that helped bring me out of shock, alerting my brain to my ankle's injury and asking the brain to begin to heal that injury. I found a rhythm of tapping and breathing.  As soon as I finished one cycle I started the next, again and again. 

I knew someone would find me, could hear voices echoing from somewhere up the trail, but out of cell phone reach, I guessed that it would take at least three to four hours for someone to alert Search and Rescue and for them to reach me. It was cold in this spot. As the afternoon progressed it would be much colder yet.  A long, cold wait,  caught up in the fear of what ifs, what now?  

As I tapped, suddenly my toes tingled, squirmed. Their awakening surprised me. I hadn't known the feeling had left them. 

I kept tapping, breathing, working with the Fast Aid protocol. As suddenly as the feeling had come back in to my ankle, a knowing came that I could walk if I wanted. Not only that I could, but that for me, in this moment, it was so much better to stay with this trance-like focus on healing, to move with it, than it would be to lie and wait for help when I knew my mind would get the better of me. 

I rummaged in my pack, ate the very few almonds I had brought, drank some water and thought about the challenge that confronted me. It was probably three miles to the trailhead and my car. Once there, would I be able to drive? It was my right ankle that had snapped. 

I conjured the presence of a friend who had trained as an EMT and had a real practicality about how to handle emergency situations. I wondered what he would do with with the things I carried in my backpack: fluorescent green hiking socks; a long-sleeved, flannel shirt that I had given my ex-husband and stolen back when we divorced fifteen years before.  I looked at those, dug to the very bottom of the pack and found what I didn't remember I had left there even though I hadn't worn it in months: a foam rubber, black knee support. 

A plan came in to focus. 

I bent, reached, gathered up two robust, relatively straight sticks, broke them to the same 3 inch lengthes and put them on the ground next to me, picked up the socks and pulled one on to each foot. With the sock making a padded covering for my right ankle,  I braced a stick on each side of my ankle, then tightly wrapped the knee support to hold them in place, pulling  its Velcro closures tight, creating a makeshift walking cast to support for my ankle, my suddenly vocal ankle that I had taken for granted for so very many steps, over so very many years. I wrapped the long-sleeve flannel shirt tightly around it all, tying its arms securely, closed my pack, hoisted it and myself up, stood, and . . . walked. 

After a bit, I noticed a long stick with a forked top tucked in to bushes along the trail, picked it up, and let it help me take the next step, leaning in to it, on to it, walking in a state of expanded awareness, my focus on and in my ankle, on the miracle of its willingness to keep carrying me, one step after another, down the trail.  

People along the way wanted to help, were curious and concerned. One young woman lent me -- a complete stranger -- gorgeous, resilient walking poles. She wrote her name and cell phone number on a scrap of paper so I could contact her later to return the poles. Her name? Charity.  

Further along, a couple recognized me from the downtown business I had owned. Later, on their way back down the trail, they caught up with me again. The woman, Judy, said  she would walk with me. Her husband would go on ahead, then come and pick her up once she had driven me home in my car. I wanted to demure but already was learning I needed help, that I couldn't just handle this one alone. Without Judy's company,  I don't know if I could have made it that last mile of the walk. I talked with her about any and everything then, using the chatter to distance myself from my exhaustion.  

As soon as she drove me far enough out of the mountains to get cell phone reception, I called my daughter and asked her to call the friend who had inspired my creative walking cast. He was the one who later peeled down the sock on my right ankle, took one look and said:  “We're going to the Emergency room.” Several hours later he arrived to pick me up just in time to watch the Orthopedic sketch the bones of my ankle. The x-ray had revealed that both the tibia and fibula were broken.

That following spring I took a Wilderness Emergency Medicine course. Three years, two surgeries, and multiple sessions with a physical therapist and a host of other healing practitioners (including myself), I walked the same trail, dismayed by how steep and rocky it was, astonished that I had been able to walk it with a broken ankle.  

Mostly I take the strength of my ankle for granted. I like it when something, like ankle rotations at the gym, remind me to be appreciative of — and a little awed by — the gift (and commitment) that is healing.

The mystery of who killed John Bozeman in 1867 takes a new twist this weekend when historians present a new suspect in the death of the city’s namesake.

The Extreme History Project will stage the original play “Who Killed John Bozeman?” at the Museum of the Rockies on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

The play is the only event scheduled this year to honor the 150th anniversary of the town’s founding in August 1864, when John Bozeman, Elliott Rouse, William Alderson and a handful of men started a town where the Bozeman Trail crossed Sourdough Creek.

The play is a chance to celebrate history, introduce an audience to the city’s founding fathers and take a new look at the mystery surrounding Bozeman’s death, said Marsha Fulton, who co-founded the nonprofit Extreme History Project with Crystal Alegria.

MORE>>> Bozeman Chronicle

A Montana delegation led by Governor Steve Bullock is back in Big Sky Country after an eight day trade mission to China.

 Many of the business participants think their investment in the journey is about to pay big dividends.

 "There's not a business in Montana right now, that alone or in partnership with other businesses could not do business with China," said John McKee, the owner of Headframe Spirits in Butte.

 As one of nearly a dozen business owners on the trade mission, he's confident the connections he made will help get his liquor flowing into China.

 "There's not a meeting that I took that I couldn't honestly foresee writing a deal from. And we will be writing a deal - we will be selling booze in China. It will be sometime within the next year, I'm hoping within the next six months," said McKee.

MORE>>>KPAX

9:47 a.m. A Whitefish woman reported that last night a black car drove into her driveway and turned around.

11:22 a.m. A woman driving down Highway 2 West complained that a man in a white pickup cut her off and waved his middle finger in her direction.

11:45 a.m. Someone reportedly busted the window out of truck and sprayed some sort of unnamed chemical on the handle bars of a bike parked on Electric Avenue in Bigfork.

12:21 p.m. A woman on Three Mile Drive reported that earlier this morning she was awoken by two women who were trying to break into her house through the “dog room.”

1:34 p.m. A Kalispell woman suspects that it was her ex-husband who broke into her garage and stole her tools.

1:35 p.m. A Somers resident complained that the orange cones he puts in front of his property are continually ran over and occasionally destroyed. He suspects that his neighbor does it intentionally.

MORE>>>Flathead Beacon

Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books (www.amazon.com/author/millerkathleenclary). She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula. 

Because my one-year old grandson, Jack, lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, I frequently find myself on Skype in order to see him as often as I can (and engrave onto his impressionable developing memory that I am “Grandma”). 

            Jack has visited three times in his young life, and so each time his beaming countenance rises on my computer screen, I pry my own face away long enough to show him things here that he might remember. 

            “See Cody?” I ask as I turn the camera to our German Shepherd who was a favorite during his last visit.  The feeling is mutual; Cody cooperates to look at the screen, and when he sees that Jack is securely settled in his high chair it signals “orts on the floor” and “discarding the yucky bites” and so he assumes the canine attentive posture in hopes of being on the receiving end of illegal snacking.

            This morning I was vacuuming when the delightful computer chime rang out.  I swiftly shut down the Dyson (Oh darn; This chore will have to wait!) and dashed to answer the call as if I hadn’t seen the toddler for months when, in fact, it had been less than 24 hours since our last virtual visit.

During our initial greeting that consists of peek-a-boo, hand clapping, face slapping, and my rolling my tongue like a lizard, I espied in my peripheral vision our friendly flock of turkeys—some two dozen of them—waddling across the gravel and strutting onto the lawn out back.  It was a clear and sunny day, so I turned the laptop to face the picture window and emoted like a birthday party clown for Jack to “Loooook!”  I couldn’t see the child’s reaction (probably fear), but heard my daughter reassuring and further instructing “Turkeys!  See the turkeys?” whereupon several deer (of all ages) entered the outdoor pageant, nibbling on the grass and maneuvering around the plentitude of poultry

            I cracked one of the windows to the melodious chirping of multitudinous smaller birds.  Katharine and Jack were able to hear their cheeping as a button-nosed bunny hoped on stage from deep within some shrubbery, just before Cody became aware (it takes Cody awhile to become aware) of the pageantry. He predictably went berserk, barking and tearing from window to window while knocking over chairs, his targets utterly nonplussed at the verbal assault. 

            After I satisfied my protector that there was no need to attack, Katharine told me that Jack had been watching with great interest.  “It’s just like in Snow White when all the animals come out of the woods to help her do the housework!” she enthused, being a rabid Disney fan still, at age thirty.  She dressed like Ms. White just last Halloween; uncannily hangs every heroine’s costume in her closet.

            “Ah-hah-hah-hah-hahhhh …” I trilled, imitating the signature tune Snow sings.  I must admit I felt somewhat supported in my tedious efforts with such an auspicious menagerie cheering me on.

            It was Jack’s naptime so I reluctantly disconnected and redirected my attention to the vacuum.  Acknowledging my forest friends I resolved to think of house cleaning as a fairy tale…even if my prince was on the golf course.

Lacey Middlestead is a Montana native and freelance writer currently living in Helena, Mont. She loves meeting new people and helping share their stories. When she’s not busy writing articles for newspapers like the Independent Record and Helena Vigilante, she can usually be found indulging in her second greatest passion–playing in the Montana wilderness. She loves skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and four wheeling, hiking, boating, and riding dirt bikes in the summer.

The other night I felt restless and soon found myself driving out of town---windows down, music cranked and belting out Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.” The sky was stunningly clear with heaven’s light bulbs strung about. It was one of those nights Montanans count themselves blessed for living in the Big Sky state. I found myself thinking about Fall and the flurry of color it always arrives in. There’s no doubt it’s a beautiful time of year and that alone makes it one of my favorite season. But as I felt the gentle fall air twirl through my hair, I realized I love Fall for a whole strew of other reasons I never realized.

1. Fall arrives in a slow but glorious style…like the love you think you’ll never find but that sneaks up and transforms your whole existence before you even have a chance to catch your breath.

2. Strung haphazardly between the gentlest and harshest seasons, Fall compels you to slow down finally and just appreciate all the things you too often take for granted.

3. Fall reminds us that the only predictable thing in life is that it is ever-changing. Whether in good times or bad, take comfort in knowing this day you’re living right now will never be the same as the one before it or the one after.

4. Patience….my goodness how much Fall has taught me about patience. The leaves adorning nature’s fragile limbs become their most beautiful not when they first bud in the spring, but just before they witness their last sunset and drift to the ground in an accepted passing away. For me, Fall’s leaves reminds me that sometimes the shiniest moments in our life come seemingly at the end of things. Remember, the best may very well be ahead of us.

5. Fall leaves us ambitious and wanting more. In summer it’s so easy to get caught up in the nice weather and endless days. When Fall descends we know winter is approaching and we scramble to get in our final hikes in the mountains and grill the last pounds of hamburger over the barbeque on the deck. In between all the doing, we also start fantasizing about the spring and summer of next year and all of the new and fantastical journeys we will find ourselves on.

6. Fall is the only season of the year that I can actually feel. There’s always that one day when I step outside in the morning and feel the seasons click and the calendar page turn.

7. The beauty of the colors and dancing leaves is overt and demanding….you literally can’t help but pause to appreciate it.

8. So many intoxicating sounds accompany Fall. There’s crunchy leaves, corn stalks rustling with the breeze, the whack and thud of wood being chopped, the clap of guns being fired by hopeful hunters and that soft morning silence of a season that is simply at peace with things.

9. Pumpkin. That most unique and tantalizing of flavors that is so special that it is reserved for only a few months out of the year. I cherish every latte, slice of pie and whipped frosting tinted with its warm flavors and spices.

10. Fall is the most grateful of seasons. In America, we have an entire national holiday designated just for thankfulness. But I think we are all grateful during fall for the adventurous summer we are wrapping up and for the bounty of blessing we hope life will bestow on us in the new year.

Fall, it would seem, is my very favorite season after all.

Members of several American Indian tribes plan to gather in Yellowstone this weekend to protest any move by the federal government to remove grizzly bears from endangered species protection.

Grizzly numbers have rebounded in Yellowstone and Grand Teton in recent decades but the bears remain protected under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species.

The "Prayer for the Bear" event is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Sedge Bay on Yellowstone Lake.

Event organizer Sara Mathuin said 26 American Indian nations have ancestral connections to Yellowstone. Mathuin said the general public is welcome to attend the protest.

 MORE>>>Billings Gazette

Tourism has bounced back with vigor in Big Sky, where it’s grown at a faster rate than both the state and the country.

Numbers cobbled together by Visit Big Sky, a nonprofit destination-marketing group formed in 2013, show that the resort town’s lodging tax collections have increased by double digits for the past three years. In 2013, the increase in collections at Big Sky was nearly quadruple that of the state and roughly 10 times larger than the nation, according to figures the group collected from the American Hotel & Lodging Association and the Montana Department of Commerce. Lodging tax collections increased through the first half of 2014 at a rate triple that of the state.

 MORE>>>Bozeman Chronicle

The Last Best Place; it’s a nickname that more than one million people in Montana know well. But even in the Last Best Place there are some areas that are just better than others—the Best Places in the Last Best Place, if you will.

As part of an ongoing series exploring the best places to live in each of the 50 states, Movoto Real Estate gathered data to learn which place in Montana is truly the the best; the real Last Best Place. After we sifted through our data, we concluded that West Yellowstone took home the top prize. Still, West Yellowstone isn’t the only place to make the cut. Here are the 10 best cities in Montana, the treasures of The Treasure State:

1. West Yellowstone

2. Colstrip

3. East Helena

4. Baker

5. Big Timber

6. Helena

7. Sidney

7. Havre

7. Shelby

10. Cut Bank

10. Manhattan

MORE>>>Moveto.com