Crossing Bird Creek: A Land Ethic for Montana and the New West

Bird Creek flows unmarked through E. L. Kittredge’s Montana ranch, making discovery difficult for even the most dedicated traveler. The creek once appeared on maps as a thin line, barely visible in a maze of county roads. Now, like the creek itself going underground in drought, that line has disappeared from official Montana state guidebooks, omitted to simplify the map for tourists wedded to interstate highway travel. Defiant of the mapmaker’s current reality, the creek still runs, even if sometimes unseen. But the creek has whispered its secrets to Kittredge and her family for decades, and she seeks larger meaning from it, in all its fraught complexity. Using the creek as her literary lens, Kittredge grounds her essays in hope for a “better year next year.” As she explores an increasingly contested West, one where new settlers encounter both acceptance and deep resentment from those who came before, she advocates adapting to new ways of seeing, knowing, and being―all vital for a sense of belonging and place.