“She touched one battered cover fondly, “It’s mad the things we worry about, isn’t it? My cottage is jammed to the rafters, and all I could think about was that someone might break in and steal my old snapshots.” 

 — Susanna Kearsley in The Shadowy Horses
 

Be kind to mystery writers. How are they going to give a detective the essential tip that solves a case if there are no family photo albums to review to find that elusive clue?  Photos on a Smart Phone or even those locked on a thumb drive just don’t have that same tangible quality — and it’s likely the detective would have to sort through hundreds or thousands of images to find the case-solving one.
 

Yes. This is the type of stuff I think about when I’m reading. Really.  Then I fret over my collection of digital, never-printed images. 
 

In the days of film, getting images printed was what I did. With digital, it’s easy to forget the wonder and beauty, the ease of sharing printed photographs.  Albums become the finger prints to your family’s history, the lives of parents and grandparents. They remind you of the growth of children and grandchildren. I have several albums put together by my grandmother, everything labeled in her tight, careful, cursive script. 
 

What is the most simple approach to preserving images? Choose your best and print them. It’s best not to wait until you have time to edit them. Find a photo album and write descriptions while all the detail of who, what, when and where are fresh in your mind. If you want to do something more with your images later, you can. But waiting until tomorrow to get around to it becomes a habit that can make saving memories harder for you.
 

There are many different approaches to organizing images and organization is essential with digital imagery. One approach that might lead to a successful album creation is simply to take the time to add the best images from each month to a folder marked by month and year and print them. Even the busiest of us can make this approach happen. 
 

Choose a photo album that will work for you and make sure that it’s archival. Then, add the photographs you’ve chosen in order by month. You can mix in non-photos that you want to remember — a postcard from somewhere (they do still make those) — a recipe, or a movie or concert stub. 
 

The act of putting an album together helps bring memories alive in and of itself. It’s like savoring a good meal or having a coffee date with a friend. It brings up emotions and emotions are essential to being human: Sadness, Anger, Fear, Love, Grief, and Happiness. Every one of them.
 

Some albums include areas to handwrite in photo descriptions. Some don’t. But even with the ones that don’t, you could write a description on a piece of paper and slip it in to a pocket. Archival pens allow you to do that on the back of the images themselves. Your handwriting will have resonance to someone down the line, too, possibly even yourself as you age. 
 

Now, choose an album for your collection. Pioneer makes a wide selection from scrapbook style to slide-em-in pockets.  Some pocket albums are “bi-directional,” which allow you to slip in photos taken in landscape or portrait style. 
 

Some albums are expandable so you can keep adding pages to them. Albums with a fixed number of pages can create a boundary for how many images you can put in that album. Sure it’s true that some months you may have a lot of photos but other months, maybe not.  You can  average it out from there.  The finite number of pages and pockets helps with that process of choosing images to print and then slide in to your monthly folders. Don’t want that limit? Add pages. 
 

There are specialty albums that are super simple to create and share. For instance, with “Pinchbooks,” fold the cover back to open the spring-clasp, slide in photos (all of the same size); release so that the book snaps closed; share.  Pinchbooks come in a variety of sizes — 14! — and can be reused and recreated with the same simple process. 
 

With photo albums, it’s not how they look, it’s that they exist and are at hand for you and your family to enjoy. Keep them out where you will browse them — and where you can grab them on your way out the door in an emergency.  
 

The time to begin your photo album for 2016 is now. Right now. 

 Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation. A Healing Arts  Practitioner, she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Integrative Healthcare. She says, " Health is resiliency, a zest for the journey. It’s  about coming awake to the joy of being alive. As a practitioner, its a privilege to facilitate that healing process, to help weave new  patterns of health & well-being. “ And by the way, healthier, happier people help create a healthier, happier world. 

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Somehow I missed the part in our wedding vows that stated the outdoorsman morphs into a different animal every season of the year based on the mating seasons of wild animals. What this basically means is that I get to see what every kind of horny animal acts like, except in human man form. Lucky me, it happens to be turkey season. Let your imagination run free with what that simple statement could entail, and I promise it is worse in real life. The gobbling, the strutting, the dirt scratching, the beard flaunting and the hen calling…Help!

It is a peaceful Sunday morning and I am all nestled in my warm bed, excited to actually have one day to get to sleep in…Well at least until my pack of barbarian children wake up! So anyways…I am lying there, half awake when all of the sudden the outdoorsman jumps up and is standing on the bed making this God awful racquet. Let me tell you, that is one hell of an alarm clock. So what is the outdoorsman doing you wonder? Apparently spring turkey season is upon us. Apparently he heard a tom gobbling outside of our cracked window. Apparently you simply must gobble profusely out the window and jump on the bed like an escaped mental patient at this time. Seriously, he pressed his face against the window screen so hard he had screen indents on his nose. I almost can guarantee that is not how the professionals turkey hunt…

Just sayin’…

So now the horny turkey man is awake and fired up to go get him some “turkey hen”; this meaning that he has put on his full suit of turkey hunting camouflage, has drank an entire pot of coffee while gobbling out the kitchen window, has a second pot brewing for his time spent gobbling in his blind, has black stripes across his cheek bones, and is blasting Luke Bryan’s “Huntin’ & Fishin’” song.

Do you know what nails on a chalkboard sound like? Well that is basically what a hen turkey call sounds like. There is this little “stick” scratcher thing that looks kind of like a pencil and then you scratch it on this little round “chalkboard”-like plate. The sound is horrifying and gives any normal person goose bumps and makes them cover their ears. To an outdoorsman, this is like Mozart. Lucky for me the outdoorsman decides it is time to alternate between tom and hen calling. I really think that my ears might be bleeding.

I wait a few more minutes, praying for relief, when I hear him stomp out the door and head to his blind. Thank you sweet baby Jesus. I get up anyways, because by now I am definitely awake. I get up and dink around the house and figure I am free for the day when all of the sudden the outdoorsman comes running into the house, feather stuck in his hat, toting a dead tom over his shoulder. He is as happy as a pig in sh##!

All I have to say is that I hope that the 6 a.m. gobbling and hen calling will be over now…Yes; I do know that is wishful thinking. Sigh!

Thankfully my outdoorsman is only a horny turkey at sunrise and sunset for a few hours. I hope that that is the case for you as well. Good Luck!

Hot Tip: Keep your windows shut and your ear plugs in.

Kristen Berube lives a crazy, laugh-filled life with her outdoorsman husband Remi and their three camo-clad children in Missoula, Montana. A graduate of Montana State University and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, she loves being a mom and enjoys hiking, fishing, and camping. “Confessions of a Camo Queen: Living with an Outdoorsman” is her first book. It is available for purchase at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1560376287/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

A few weeks ago my husband proposed an idea he had heard from a co-worker. Get a group of four friends together, each pick your two favorite places for a burger in Bozeman. Write a riddle for others to guess where it is. Meet up, share the riddles, determine the places narrowing it down to four. (Everyone picks two in case there are duplicates!) Go to each restaurant, order a hamburger and have it split four ways. After you’ve eaten it, head to the next place until you’ve tried them all. At the end put them order of your favorites and compare. It sounded fun for many reasons. Number 1, you get to try different hamburgers and as a mostly vegetarian who still loves a burger this was a perfect excuse. Number 2, you get to feel like you’re on a Food Network show commenting about how the “avocado really upped the flavor,” or the “homemade bun was a game changer”. Number 3, it’s something different to do. It changes up the usual going out with friends. Last weekend we met up with our best friends and decided to give it try. Here we go…

The plan was to meet at White Dog Brewery, everyone ready with their riddles for their two favorite burgers. But, first we had to make a visit to the Heap Burger food truck, knowing we wouldn’t be able to make it there later because they close early. I’ve been hearing amazing things about this place so we knew it had to be a part of the challenge. After explaining to the very helpful gentleman what we were doing, he encouraged us to order the monthly special…The Mountina. The hamburger was topped with green apples, caramelized onions, apple-Pernod reduction, lettuce, tomato and Mountina cheese. It didn’t take much convincing, he had me at caramelized onions. We took it and met up with our fellow burger eaters to start. The group verdict on this one? Yum. Everything tasted so fresh and the homemade bun added to it. The apple wasn’t everyone’s favorite and some thought the caramelized onion made it a bit too sweet but definitely a great way to begin.

After solving all the riddles, we had our schedule set for the rest of the evening. Next up was a surprise to me…we left downtown and made our way to Brewsker’s. I was instantly skeptical. We ordered the Mack Jack…it had pepper jack cheese, bell peppers, onion and thousand island dressing. Interesting. We found a seat in the low key lounge and waited. Now the ambiance here isn’t much but the burger blew me away. The meat melted in your mouth and the thousand island was just old school fun. I could see now we had some serious competition going on.

The last three places all had been picked by more than one person. At this point we knew we couldn’t possibly eat at all three so we narrowed it down to two. We also knew trying to get a table on a Saturday night at our next choice, Over the Tapas without a reservation just to order a burger wasn’t the best idea. We solved the problem by calling and ordering it take out and then taking it with us to the last spot…The Baucchus. Our lovely waitress said it was fine to enjoy it there since we were ordering food and beers (gotta love Bozeman). From Tapas we had the beef sliders that are topped with goat cheese croquettes. You gently crush the croquette on the burger and the goat cheese oozes out. Oh. My. Goodness. Deliciousness. As my best friend said “the crushed balls crushed it.” (We may have been a couple beers in by this point). Because they were sliders we each had our own rather than split them and it was a good thing because otherwise there may have been fights over it.

Last was the Hippie Burger with a side of curry fries from the Baucchus. This burger is topped with my favorites…artichoke hearts, avocado and goat cheese. i can’t think of anything better to put on a burger (except maybe goat cheese croquettes!) At this point I was getting so full, but it didn’t stop me from finishing my quarter of the burger. Along with a healthy portion of the curry fries. So good. After we were done, it was time to deliberate and make our decision.

We each wrote down in order our favorites and once we all finished we compared. The winner…Over the Tapas beef sliders with Brewsker’s coming in second unanimously. I was surprised that we all picked the exact same because throughout the night we all had varied opinions. We left that evening very, very full, making promises to do it again because there are other places we know have amazing burgers. There is just only so much time in one night (and enough room in ones stomach). There’s also talks of doing the same thing with other foods…pizza and tacos topping the list. And, ice cream! That’s a perfect summer one. Yes, I do believe we have a fun thing going on here. Good food, great company and supporting our favorite Bozeman places. Win, win, win.
 

Angela Jamison is a native Montanan and she grew up in beautiful Bozeman. I'm the mother of two girls and write a blog about our life here and taking i
n the simple pleasures of family and food.