“Anytime you go out, take 'Willie' with you."
 
That was advice Ben Greenough gave his eight children.

“Willie” meant willpower, and his daughter, Alice, who traveled the world trick-riding, riding saddle broncs and steers, had plenty. 

It wasn’t your size that counted when riding broncs and steers, Ben instructed. One needed coordination and abundant nerve. 

All the Greenough children grew up on the family ranch —and all knew the cattle business and horses. Five of them — Turk, Bill, Frank, Margie and Alice — went on to the big time rodeo. Between them, they most likely captured every championship rodeo offered.

Alice Greenough was born in 1902 on a ranch near Red Lodge, Montana. Her father, a well-known pioneer, arrived in Montana Territory from Illinois in 1884. He met his bride-to-be on a trip back. (He was selling and breaking horses.) They homesteaded at Red Lodge where the family maintained the ranch until the early 1990s. Long before Ben died in the 1950s he saw the family name come to be synonymous with rodeo.

The Greenough family kept dozens of horses to ride and Alice fed cattle, roped then, and rounded them up. In her childhood, she developed the riding and roping skills that would later bring her fame.

Alice had seven brothers and sisters, five of whom would one day work in rodeos. The family became known as the “Riding Greenoughs.” Alice’s father, Ben, was a mail carrier. Ben was an orphan, who traveled from New York City to Montana at age 16 and found work as a cowboy. Alice worked closely with her father, milking cows, rounding horse, at sometimes, even helping him deliver the mail.

The open land of the West was Alice’s playground. “I can’t think of a day in those mountains that we didn’t have fun,” Alice once recalled.

Alice and her brothers and sisters were conditioned to withstand a rugged life. "Dad used to leave us in now camps for a month at a time. If we ran out of food we didn't starve. We killed grouse and ate wild berries. It was the survival of the fittest."

Alice started rodeoing while still in grammar school. "I cut class to ride saddle broncs in the local fair." 
When Alice was a teenager, she received her first job, assisting a local rancher who came to the Greenough house looking for help. She and her sister, Marge, also started riding in local rodeos. Alice mostly rode in races, occasionally even bucking broncos. One day Alice and Marge spied an ad for the “Jack King Wild West Show,” which was in need of bronco and trick riders.

Alice won the World's Championship in women’s bronc riding in Boston in 1933, '35 and '36 and again in 1940 in New York City."The saddle bronc event was closed to women after 1941;' it was said to be “too rough for the girls.” The last time Alice took part in the event, only 5 out of 22 women participants didn’t end up in the hospital. She and Margie were among them. "It was a hard life, but we could take it," she said, in 1969. "Today’s girl would probably fall in a heap."

An accident in El Paso in 1930 kept her on crutches until 1932 (she had a badly broken ankle). That year, she went to Mexico City to take part in the Rancho Charros, a Mexican fiesta held in the bull ring. "The Mexican people weren't surprised to see a woman bronc rider." She also rode bare back and rode steers. While in Mexico City, she met a Spanish impresario who was contracting bullfighters for a season in Spain. He saw her ride and asked her to go to Spain. She rodeoed in 40 of that country's largest bull rings. But a surprise awaited her. Spain had no steers to ride —only mature, fighting bulls. “Each bull I rode was immediately taken away to be fought and killed.” When she had trouble getting off, a torero caped the bull, giving her a chance to get off.

In her memoirs, Alice recalled that Spanish women seldom went outside alone and one day she went out in her rodeo costume, a teacher instructed a group of schoolgirls to turn away. The teacher didn’t want the children “to see a woman in pants.” Spain at this time was seething with rebellion. "One morning I looked out of my window and saw three men killed in the plaza. The rebels paraded the bodies through the streets.” She was happy to leave. 
 From Spain, she toured the South of France, and then returned to the U.S. and another season of rodeoing.  In a full life of professional rodeoing, Alice traveled throughout the United States, Spain, Mexico, Australia and to Canada mingling with royalty and the famous. She met the Duke of Windsor while he was still Prince of Wales. “He was a friendly, shy young man,” she recalled. Alice met him, and the late King George V and Queen Mary at the royal stables during a trip to England. 

She said that she and Marge worked in every state except for Maine, Vermont, and New Jersey.
“We had a lot of fans,” said Alice. “Little kids in school would pretend to be us when they’d ride their stick horses…”
In 1934 she again went abroad, this time to England with Tex Austin, a great rodeo producer of that time. Of all the countries she had visited, Australia, she once said, was her favorite. Her first trip was in 1934, when she won the women's bronc-riding event in the Melbourne Centennial show and entered the Sydney Royal Show. In 1939 she returned again, this time to defend her World Championship title in the Sidney Royal Show. She found the Australians a western ranch type people at heart — “rugged and easy to get along with.” 

Her mementos from the Land Down Under included a pair of kangaroo leather boots made from the hide of a kangaroo she hunted with a shotgun. 

Alice taught the actress Dale Evans, the wife of Roy Rogers, how to ride.  She worked in pictures – made two in 1938, but according to her, “You have to sit around too much. There’s too much waiting for shots.” In addition to the Hollywood venture, the rider lassoed herself a bit of fame in journalism by writing magazine articles, one of which entitled, "What a Cowgirl Wants.”

In 1942, the year after the saddle bronc event was closed to women, Alice and a Tucsonian, Joe Orr, bought a rodeo of their own. They operated it for 14 years. Alice produced it, ran the office, arranged contracts and rode broncs in every rodeo they presented.

A reporter summed up Greenough’s life and energy in 1945: “Predawn rising, getting breakfast for the family and hired hands, cleaning up the ranchhouse, lending the boys outside a hand with branding or bronc busting, cooking a noon meal, then designing  and making riding clothes, and in season, canning,  preserving and salting down foods.”
Before permanently relocating to Tucson in the 1970s, she started the Historical Museum in Red Lodge. She filled it with memorabilia from her own family. Even in retirement, Alice kept nine hours a day at Wall's Livestock Supply and every chance she would get, she’d go down to her brother Frank's ranch at Sahuarita. 

In 1975, Alice was the first person named to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. In 1983, she was named to the Cowboy Hall of Fame. “The rodeo life was a good life,” she said at the induction ceremony.  

She died at her Tucson home in 1995 at age 93. 

Brian D'Ambrosio is a writer/editor living in Missoula, Montana. D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 300 articles and five books related to Montana history, people, and travel.

I must admit….there’s something nostalgic about ice skating on an outdoor rink. I love feeling the brisk winter air ruffle my hair. I love how the ice groans and pops on warmer days when you skate over it. I love the way small leaves and twigs get trapped when the rink is flooded which leaves them as decorative stamps about the ice. I love embracing skating the way it originated. Whether it was on frozen ponds, lakes, rivers, parks or alleyways, ice skating was born outside.

The outdoor rink at Memorial Park in Helena was where my dad first taught me how to skate. I don’t have much memory of that first day but no doubt I teetered out uncertainly from the warming hut like a newborn fawn onto the ice. From sunny afternoons surrounded by friends and styrofoam cups of hot chocolate to mild evenings alongside my father, the amber glow of the street lights and a wooden hockey stick in my hand, Memorial Park was my childhood ice rink and the one I will always remember.

Some years later a fancy indoor ice rink opened on the outskirts of town. It seemed as though my days of skating outside were over. Once you’ve skated on the smooth, glossy ice of an indoor rink, after all, it is admittedly hard to go back to the humble and bumpy ice you grew up on. But you never quite forget that winter breeze tagging along beside you as you glide across an outdoor rink.

Two weeks ago, I celebrated my 30th birthday. And I chose to ring in the next decade of my life by paying tribute to my childhood wonder of skating outdoors. With my husband, Andy, by my side, we ventured north to skate on one of the most pristine and majestic outdoor rinks on earth.

Lake Louise.

The first time I saw a photograph of the mountain lake, I was stunned. It didn’t seem possible that a place so beautiful could really exist in this life. With steep mountains rising up on three sides, the turquoise waters of the lake seemed perfectly protected. From the moment I first saw that photo of Lake Louise, I knew I had to venture there to see it in person someday. 

On lazy days at work when I would daydream about future vacations and adventures, I often pulled up more photos of Lake Louise to fantasize about. The day I saw my first picture of the lake in the winter, was the day I decided the time of year I would visit. The trees and mountains were coated in thick bundles of snow. And the lake…..the lake was a blanket of white save for a large square that had been plowed out for skating. Even just looking at a mere photo of it, it looked to be the rink of dreams for anyone who has ever played hockey or ice skated for fun. 

Nine hours of driving brought my husband and I right to the very banks of the lake I had so longed to see. And I had the privilege of first seeing it with my own two eyes on the day I turned 30. 

Between checking in to our room, exploring the hotel and sitting down for a bite of dinner, we didn’t get a chance to test our blades against the ice until darkness had fallen. With our hockey sticks in one hand and backpacks slung over our shoulders bearing our skates and a handful of pucks, we finally walked out to the edge of the rink. There wasn’t another soul on the ice that night. It was as though the mountains had shuffled everyone else away to deliver me the perfect birthday gift. 

Sitting down on a wooden bench with our sticks leaned up against a snow bank, we started getting ready. I don’t think I’ve ever laced up my skates as quickly as I did that night. After tugging my hat down low over my ears, I grabbed my stick and staggered across the snow to the rink.  

For the next hour or so Andy and I skated back and forth across the rink while passing a puck back and forth. The night was a dark one but I could detect the faint glow of stars overhead. In the distance, I could just barely squint out the mountains with help from the white snow that shone through near their peaks. The sounds around us were few but exquisite. There was the thwack of our stick blades hitting against the rubber puck, the swish of the puck gliding over the thin layer of snow atop the ice, and the slicing sound of our blades as they left their mark on the ice. Other than that there was just the sound of the mountains and of the earth around us….the kinds of sounds God wishes we’d be still enough to hear more often.  

At one point during our skate, I paused and stood with my stick resting up against me while I turned my face skyward. The biggest smile I’ve had in a long time spread across my face. I found myself offering prayers of thanksgiving for such a perfect night. No cake or party in the world could have topped that birthday gift. 
A week after returning home, I found myself lacing up my skates again for my weekly hockey game at the rink. The indoor rink. As I took my first step onto the ice I glanced around. I was surrounded by dull metal bleachers, white boards dotted with black scuff marks from pucks, and blinding LED lighting overhead. While there was a familiarity and comfort to the room for me, it lacked the peace and harmony I had felt when skating under the watchful gaze of the Canadian mountains and stars.

I have no doubt that I will return to Lake Louise someday…next time with my dad so we can skate under the stars together just like we did when I was little. While I wish every experience skating could be as special as that one, I am thankful for the rareness of such moments. Otherwise, I wouldn’t appreciate them as much.  

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.

Spring is in the air, even with lingering snow. The tips of aspen trees are plump with budding leaves, spring bulbs are pushing through the ground, and gardeners are placing seed orders while tending to seedlings started indoors. By the time Montana’s short growing season commences, gardeners are bustling to make the most of the short and sweet growing season.
 

Fourteen years ago, while moving to Bozeman from Kansas City, I declared to my Dearest, “I’ll never have to garden again because everyone knows that wheat, potatoes, wildflowers, barley, and noxious weeds are the only things that grow in Montana.” Wrong!

It took a few years of Montana living to grasp the possibilities and discover the Montana Zen of Gardening: work with nature –don’t think you can control it. I am a lifelong gardener. I began cultivating flower and vegetable gardens as a toddler, thanks to a Northern California childhood overseen by a taskmaster Dad who insisted on growing everything that California’s climate and soil allowed.  California is not Montana. I’ve lived many other places, and have amended literally tons of soil, planted more trees than imaginable, and pulled so many weeds that I began yoga just to counter balance the effects on my back. At one point, in Kansas City, I semi-jokingly considered forming a “Gardeners’ Anonymous” organization as I was incapable of passing a flat of zinnias or pansies stacked on a rolling cart outside the grocery store without lugging a few home. I figured in Montana I could retire from gardening and be content with my interaction with nature by simply watching the ever-changing sky, doing outdoor activities, and observing nature. Wrong again.
 

My fingers literally itched to be digging in the dirt, even knowing it was rocky. My eyes longed for flower beds framing our home. I began noting the array of thriving plants in both rural and urban yards. Driving into Philipsburg one Spring, I became intoxicated from the fragrance of lilacs. I never seen so many lilacs, at such improbable heights, heavy with vibrant blooms. Montana’s weather favors them and extends the bloom time. Reality dawned on me—there are plants that thrive in Montana just as there are people who thrive here. If you look at gardens, you’ll notice iris patches, fields of poppies, columbine clustered under trees, and old fashioned shrub roses blazing in red or yellow. Numerous vegetables prefer our cool nights and soil: spinach, carrots, peas, lettuces, beets, and green beans to name a few.  Just don’t waste your time on tomatoes unless you are stubborn or wish to prove you can defy all odds.
 

Gardening in Montana has challenges. The zoning maps—which tell you how cold it gets as far as plant tolerances-- say Montana ranges from Zone 2 to a narrow slice of 6, with a majority of the state being a Zone 4. Don’t believe it. Montana is unpredictable. It can hail and snow in July.

 
Temperatures can drop a degree a minute and the soil can be so cold that roots shrivel. The winds have been known to crack a tree right down the middle. Then there are the critters. Most gardeners expect rabbits, squirrels, and deer. In Montana, there are elk. Big, voracious, mow-them-down-elk. And little, tiny awful voles. You see vole damage in lawns when the snows thaw and spaghetti-shaped mounds crisscross the lawns. Voles took out my entire first orchard in Montana, gnawing a circle around the diameter of every tender apple, pear, and cherry tree I had painstakingly planted. No one had instructed me that if you want an orchard you must wrap the base of the trees to thwart the pesky critters and then cage the trees with wire so the deer and elk are unable to shred branches.

A fellow gardener shared her adage on planting perennials here: “The first year they die, the second year some try, and the third year they thrive.” I often say, “Gardening in Montana is either an act of optimism or a sign of insanity. Sometimes it is both.” The key, I have discovered, is to pick plants that love it here.  Build your garden around hardy, resourceful plants that can stand up to nature when it is being a bully. Use ground covers such as creeping thyme, sedum, and creeping phlox. Vines such as Virginia Creeper, Boston Ivy, and beautiful flowering clematis will take off and take over if you’re not careful. I am particularly fond of peonies and daylilies and now have countless varieties returning to greet me each spring. I offer this advice: look for plants that do well in Zone 3. If you insist on a temperamental, fussy plant, position it close to the shelter and warmth of your home, cover and coddle it, and don’t cry if one year it just gives up trying. When I notice a plant is struggling, I relocate it, as even a small garden in Montana has micro-climates.

I am into the seventh year of my current garden. It thrives, as does my soul. We harvest a bounty of vegetables starting with spring lettuce, I cut bouquets from my flower beds, and can Italian plums from the orchard. Far more than you imagine adapts to Montana growing conditions. Numerous blogs, books, and publications are geared to sharing knowledge about high altitude, Rocky Mountain gardening. I’ve found that gardeners tend to be generous people, willing to share their knowledge, divide up their plants to offer you some of their favorites, and direct you to their trusted growers. Now, time to finish up my seed order. I do love Lincoln peas.

Sally Uhlmann is a real estate agent and co-owner of SU Platinum Real Estate residing in Bozeman, Montana. Since 2003, my family and I have enjoyed life in Montana. Throughout my life, there are constants: loving my family, friends, and community, enjoying trekking to remote places in the world, being involved in non-profits, gardening, and always cooking. Most of my clients end up at my house, enjoying fine wine and dining on organic vegetables straight from the garden, eggs from our chickens, and sunsets that rival any in the world. In my opinion, there is no place better than Bozeman, Montana. 

The time is 3:25 A.M., January 28th. Roughly an hour after we started pulling a calf. Now, mind you, this is the first time I have ever had to pull one, and let it be noted that this is a very sad documentation of my life on the farm.

As of 1:05 A.M. this morning, I had noticed a heifer starting to calve. How she was positioned, I had a difficult time seeing what exactly was going on, but I could make out what I had thought to be two hooves out, but one looked as if it was the complete opposite way from the other(one was down, one was up, it appeared). Even though this doesn't make a lick of sense, that's what I had figured and waited for her to push some more and make progress. I go to check the other pen, and see one of my bosses old cows had calved a nice sized bull calf. I drag him into a makeshift pen made up of three panels in the corner, and make way way back to the barn pen and observe the heifer. 

It is now 1:15 A.M.. she has made her way to the hole in the side of the shed that we use to observe calving cows and heifers. I now see what I thought was two hooves is actually a hoof down as it should be, as well as the nose poked out and it's tongue hanging down as low as the hoof. Being a good hired hand, I do what I was told to do and wait and check on her every 15 minutes to watch for progress, however I do not leave the side of the shed. 

It is now 1:30 A.M. and I start feeling anxious because I know something isn't right; the other hoof needs to be out as well, or it could be stuck in the pelvis of the heifer(mind you, this is their first calf so their body has not yet adjusted to giving birth to a calf), so I call my boss and explain to him what is happening. He feels that she may need more time, so to watch her for another half hour for any progress, and to call him back if there wasn't any. I go back to the shed to watch again.

Time crawls by slower at this point than I have ever experienced. I believe I will never experience anything slower time wise than the following half hour. Each minute feels like an hour has passed as you anxiously wait and watch for any sign of progress whatsoever. The entire time, the heifer is bellowing out heavy and powerful shouts of immense pain.

Think of this parents, as if you are watching a life threatening surgery of your child that you are gifted the power of the hand of God, with the restriction of timing being a factor. The longest half hour of my life to this point and time has passed. I call my boss back.

I tell him that I have not left the shed peep hole for the entirety of the half hour he told me to wait, and tell him that she needs the calf pulled, so he has me kick the three heifers in the barn out, leave the doors open, and open the head catch to prepare for the heifer's first and possibly last battle of a lifetime. He gets dressed and leaves his house. The time is 2:15 A.M.

As my boss arrives around 2:25, he gathers the chain as well as two hooks. We wrap two loops around the legs of the calf in specific spots to allow for the best leverage in terms of pulling. We move the calving heifer out from the shed and into the barn. We make her go in a loop on the inside so we can push her into the head catch to position her properly to pull. She gets locked in, and the work now begins. The time is 2:35 A.M.

My boss realizes that the other front leg isn't out, so he reaches into the heifer to find out where the calf's leg is. It didn't enter the pelvis properly, causing it to hit the bone and slide downward, making it so the heifer couldn't give birth naturally. As my boss attempts to readjust the calf, the heifer let's out a bellow longer than I have ever heard, and it hit me like a blast to the chest. The feeling of her pain resonates in my entire body and fills me with a very heavy sadness, as you know this is going to be hell. Right when my boss starts to make the slightest progress the heifer rolls onto her side, and all we can do is get to work pulling.

The hook and chain we use to pull calves aren't heavy or bulky, but they are incredibly strong. As I sat down to pull while my boss starts to make room for the calf, the handle sits in the palm of my right hand, ice cold. My boss signals me to pull as hard as I can, and the handle digs into your palm like a set of spikes being stabbed into them. I continue pulling, digging my feed into the hard packed straw. I give it my all for a full 10 minutes, and the calf slides out. The time is 2:55 A.M.

As the calf lays there motionless, my boss goes to work trying to revive what little bit of life may be left in this little creature. As he does his thing, I have a wave of nothing but what I can describe as the weight of the world crashing down onto my chest. The sadness sets in, as a few tears roll down my cheek. I know already that all hope is lost. The calf is dead, and there isn't a thing we can do about it. My bosses have claimed that there hasn't been someone who has cried after they have lost a calf after pulling it, so in a year of many firsts, chalk this one up too, for me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried after I worked my ass off to try and save this calf. I have spent the last 9 months doctoring, feeding, breaking ice for water, and moving these heifers and cows on a daily basis. I don't care what anyone says, these cows and calves are my children, and I love them all very much. There aren't any words that can describe the sadness I feel right now, knowing that I was gifted with the power of having the hand of God, being the ultimate determining factor of whether the calf lives or dies. I had worked my ass off pulling as hard as I could for a solid ten minutes to save this little creature, and come to find out, we had failed. We failed the calf, we failed the heifer. I failed them both.

The world is a very harsh place, but it also has very high points as well. Without the highs, the lows mean nothing. Without the rock bottom lows, the highs mean nothing; yin and yang. People want to say that we don't care for our cows and that we mistreat them, but what they don't know is that at this very moment as I write this, there is a 22 year old 250 pound man who is very sleep deprived who is crying over the fact that his efforts in trying to save this calf failed. I did my absolute best, and I failed it. So, before someone tries to claim animal cruelty, get them to come down to the farm on a cool, early, starry morning in eastern Montana, and get them to go through the hell I just did and try and claim animal cruelty then. I'm sorry I failed you little calf. Here's to tomorrow where the day may be brighter than the day before.

It is 4:05 A.M. on January the 28th, and it's time for me to make another round, and to hopefully welcome another newborn calf into the world.
 

Born and raised in Helena. Johnathan has been separated at least one generation from farm work, if not more. Prior to moving to Hysham in April of 2016, he hasn't had any agricultural experience whatsoever. So, with that being said, he has numerous stories written about what life is like with these unique circumstances.