“Spring is when you feel like whistling, even with a shoe full of slush.” 
            ~Doug Larson (columnist; deceased)

Though we are a quarterly magazine, we like to think of ourselves as “seasonal,” since Montana has seasons that are oh-so special—summer, winter, fall…spring?
Well, the truth is that spring presents a problem for us, because we are not really sure when it starts…or stops. Ask anyone in Montana about spring, and you will get a wide range of opinion.  Does it start in mid-March when the first bluebirds arrive? April, when some of the best skiing is yet to be tracked?  Does it stop in May, when wildflowers poke their shoots through the shrinking whiteness and your hiking boots fill with slush? Or June, when the mountains slough off untold tons of snow and ice?

You do see the problem, don’t you?

So, for us, we treat spring as more of a pleasant idea than a reality, an errant wish, a faint whistle in the wind. The other three seasons are hard and fast, quite sure of themselves. They announce their presence, in turn, with long days of sunshine, goldening aspens and harsh blasts of freeze. Spring doesn’t seem to care to announce itself, it rather timidly raps for attention with leafless branches, and departs just as suddenly, when we one day awaken to bright green fields and achingly blue skies. What happened to spring?  No one seems to know.

Yet, we do our best at Distinctly Montana to cover the period from March to June with what we call our “spring issue,” which means a more seasonally eclectic editorial approach to the joys and wonder of our Treasure(d) State.

We invite you to this issue with a measured confidence that we do cover the spring season, somewhere, sometime over the next three months.

Just don’t ask us when it starts or stops.