For more information on the Madison River planned explosion: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/08/30/firefighters-once-blew-up-a-river-to-save-west-yellowstone-from-wildfire/

SP: All right, can I just get your name, year, and place of birth? 

MB: Mike Bryers, B-R-Y-E-R-S. Michael, if, I don’t know if you want to be formal. And I was born on September 9th, 1949, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

SP: Nice. And did you guys move up here when you were little, or did you start school in Colorado Springs?

MB: No, I moved up here to get away from Colorado. There was too many people moving in there.

SP: I was going to say, didn’t Colorado Springs kind of blow up? 

MB: Unbelievable. Used to be this beautiful city, and it just, yeah. But, you know, it’s a beautiful place, and easy, temperate climate. Everybody moved there. So I grew up on a ranch outside of Colorado Springs. And then we, when we were, I went to high school at Air Academy High School. My dad sold the ranch, and we moved down to, across from the Air Academy. And so they bussed us onto the base, like, well, we were not military. And so we weren’t, it was the only school. So they bussed us on there, and treated us quite badly, because we were not military.

SP: So you were like outsiders? 

MB: Yeah. And, you know, I had long hair, and I was the first long hair around, and I got kicked out a lot just for having long hair. So anyway, a couple years after I graduated, they let kids do anything. So it was a weird thing.

SP: You were the trailblazer.

MB: I was. I took it to ACLU, and they, I won the court case that I could go to school with hair – very short hair, nowadays, you would think. But back then, if you combed it down in front, you’re one of those damn Beatles, you know. And anyway, I won the court case that I could attend classes, but I could not go to any extracurricular activities. So I couldn’t be on the hockey team anymore. I couldn’t be in drama. I couldn’t go to dances, but that was okay. I just wanted an education. 

SP: So you made a big splash even younger? 

MB: Yeah, the Irish Rebel, you know. We were always in trouble. We had five, there were five of us kids, so we were ahead of the time, I guess, but especially up on the ranch, you know, we were kind of like now the only liberals surrounded by… But anyway, I moved here in the fall of ‘72, and we got to live out at Gerry Yedder’s place, and my girlfriend and I, I don’t know if you want to mention that. 

SP: That’s up to you. The stories you want to tell is up to you.

MB: Yeah, that’s the story. Anyway, I moved up here, and I fell in love with it right away, and I started working for an outfitter named Teepee Tom Hines, and he taught me a lot about packing horses, and so we guided hunters and photographers. So I started out as a wrangler. I worked my way up to guide, and then I became an outfitter on my own with my own string of horses, but now I’m the camp cook. So I’ve kind of, yeah, but had horses all my life until recently, and I miss them really bad. I, a girl rode by here today, and I was like, oh.

SP: I’ve always wanted horses, but I’ve never lived somewhere that, like, I had space for them, you know. So is that why you came up here because of what you were interested in? 

MB: Yeah, I was a mountain hippie, you know. I liked hiking and hunting and fishing, and you know, it was paradise, and quite different in the 70s, but they, you know, if you had a job here and you could work, you were part of the community. I thought they took longhairs pretty well here. There was always people that didn’t like longhairs, but you know, when you’re, I was on ambulance crew for a while and worked with the police, and they knew I was a hard-working guy that was part of the community, you know. When you take first aid and CPR and all that, you’re helping your community. So, and then a couple years later, I met, I saw this beautiful redhead on a bike, and I went, oh my gosh, I’m sure she’s Irish. Turned out to be English, but that’s okay. 

SP: We forgive her for that.?

MB: Yeah, you know. So, we got married and lived out there at Gerry Yetter’s, and that’s with the G, Gerry, and he was real good to us, let us live there, and I found the most beautiful place on the lake, and then we, her family owned the resort named Elk Lake Camp in the Centennial Valley, and we took over Elk Lake Camp, and a lot of people really thought we were, for one thing, crazy to go out there and live without electricity or phone, and nowadays they have it, and we had a generator, but we only used it at night because we had a bar, and, but anyway, we ran that. I ran a trap line and had an outfitter’s license and guided hunters for years, and then we moved back here to West when we had, we brought our first two boys in by snowmobile when they were a week old to a place without electricity or phone, so a lot of people thought we were crazy, but we learned it as we went. We had Dr. Seuss’s book on how to raise a child, and, you know, any problem, we could snowmobile out, you know, if we had to, but it was like 20 miles or more on snowmobile, so those were wonderful years. Just married, had a good business. We didn’t make much money. Nowadays they charge amazing overnight. I think we were charging maybe 25 for our biggest cabin, but they were pretty crude. They didn’t have electricity, you know, it was mostly locals back then that came to fish at Elk and Hidden Lake, but anyway, oh, and then we had a chance to, my wife’s dad sold the camp, Elk Lake Camp. So we took over Staley Springs Lodge for a year and lived in, on Henry’s Lake, but we had a kid ready for school by then, and maybe two, no, just one, but so we moved to west, and I worked as a carpenter, and then I started driving snowcoach.

MB: Tim Daley got me involved, and I still cuss at him for doing that, but I spent 40 years driving, 39 years driving snowcoach and hiking tours in the summer, so for me, you know, if I’d have been smart, I’d have got into maintenance in the park, but I had to be wild and free and be a guide, you know, because every day our boss would say, okay, these people want to see this, you know, Old Faithful, or they want to hike a certain place, so every day, usually, we would get to choose where we would hike, and that way we explored the whole park, and we would say to people, we’d look at the group, you know, a lot of families, and we, you know, you’d look at and see the children. If they were too young, you’d know that they could only hike a couple miles, and, you know, you’d try to take in Old Faithful or Canyon or as much as you could in a day, and sometimes you do week-long tours or bus tours. You’d have to step on a bus, so we did every different kind of park tour and really got to know the business, and back then, we could hike into thermal areas in the backcountry, and I think now it’s kind of a gray area. I know they frown on it for guides, but so we, I was lucky to be in there at a time when we were able to see the park like nobody can now. So a friend of mine, John Leshock in Henry’s Lake, bought a lot of the snow coaches from Alpen Guides, and he runs a tour to Mesa Falls and back, so get a hold of him. John, he’s, you should interview him. He’s an excellent person. 

SP: It’s beautiful back there, too. I went to Mesa Falls the first time a couple summers ago, and you know, it’s one of those things that’s super easy to miss, you know. Very easy to ignore, but beautiful back there. 

MB: Did you know that used to be the old highway? 

SP: I did not. 

MB: Yeah. It went through Warm Springs, and now that Mesa Falls road. You can look down and see the old railroad right away here and there on that road. Yeah, that’s, you know, I researched Hebgen Dam, and I actually have a copy of the 1906 survey of the dam, which I should donate to the library, but I met the family on a tour just by luck, and they happen to be the, what do you call it, the descendants of Hebgen, who designed the dam and Mesa Falls Electric, and if you go in there, you’ll see a plaque that says I donated a lot of stuff, the map and the history of Max Hebgen, and so I’ve always been interested in the history of the area. 

SP: And there’s a lot of it in this area.

MB: Yeah, we, when we had the, before the ranch got bought by the Forest Service, which, lucky for us, you know, we had to move the house. When I moved the house, I put a bunch of cardboard in that old wood stove there, and as the truck went the one mile down the highway, the chimney was smoking to move my eternal fire to my next place, you know. It was pretty hard to move, very nerve-wracking, and we got it done in November, and it was 30 below by the time we got it down on the foundation. Oh boy, so this old mobile home here has been a lot of places within a mile of here, four different locations. Next time I’ll burn it, but being a Mick, you know, they were like talking they’re going to bulldoze it and get me out of here, and the Forest Service wouldn’t sign off on the land deal until I was moved. But I got it done. And here we are. It’s been about 20, it’ll be 24 years, I think, in September, October.

SP: It’s really cool to have a house that has that much history, though.

MB: Yeah, as the old homestead. So these are 1913 logs, and when I rebuilt it, I had a log chinking company do the latex chinking, and that really, oh, and this house survived the earthquake of 59, because it was right out in the field out here. 

SP: Wow.

MB: So this is the type of log cabin you’ll find around here. People would build them when they were proving up their homestead, instead of notching the logs like Blair does at the log yard there. They had a 1×8, and they put nails into the logs, and another 1×8, and the logs go on this way, and a 6×6 in between, and that way you could build a house in a hurry. So I redid it all, and put rebar down through it, and took it all apart, and put lag bolts instead of nails, and then all this is new. 

SP: You know what, though? It still feels like it fits, though.

MB: Yeah, I tried to make it like that. Because we had four boys, and the original was just from here to the bedroom in there, to the hutches, and it wasn’t big enough for four boys. And so I put it on, it’s got a full basement, too. But yeah, I learned a lot from the locals, and I’m glad you’re doing this, because I always lived around senior citizens, I guess. I took care of my grandpa when he was old, and so I’ve always taken care of some old person, it seemed. I had to promise my wife I wouldn’t anymore, because a couple of them have been very trying. Well, Mr. Yedder, here for the last four years, I’ve taken care of him, and we finally got him in a home where he can really be taken care of, although he went kicking and screaming.

SP: That was my grandpa, too.

MB: Yeah, we weren’t, Joanne Girvin and I, and Jill McCluskey took care of Gerry, and he got to be more than, you know, he kept falling, and he wasn’t eating, and so finally a doctor told us, he, yeah, you can’t go home, and they told him, you’ll get stronger in this place, and I think he still thinks he’s in a hotel. He’s 94, but I put in, I did a lot of stuff for him, so I feel good about it. He’s the guy that let us live in that cabin, and we got married in it.

SP: So how long was it after you came up here that you met your wife and got married? 

MB: Oh, uh, let’s see, about five years. 

SP: It’s pretty quick, move into a new place, and – 

MB: Yeah, and uh, you know, her family’s LDS, and they weren’t too happy about me, roping her out of the herd, you know, but I get along good with them, and yeah.

SP: I think that in the end, most parents just want someone that’s going to treat their kid good, so.

MB: Well, here’s the crazy part, so my dad and mom were divorced, and my dad came up here, and her mom was divorced. We introduced them, and they got married about six years after we were, probably, and they were married for 30 years, and so I didn’t have to worry about her mom not liking me, because she married into the family, and it saved my dad’s life, because he was a lonely fella, and was drinking more than he should, and she, being a Mormon, said, you know, I can’t have you doing that if we get latched up, you know, uh, and so we quit both, and one day, I was so proud of him. He said, well, it was love, you know, and love. That’s really sweet. I know, it saved his life, and after that, after he quit drinking, he was quite a wonderful person, and not the bar fighter he used to be, and so I’ll always be grateful to her mom, and so we took care of her mom for her last, I think, two and a half, three years, and she lived here with us, and so that was good. We learned a lot from that.

SP: And it, from the the other people that I’ve interviewed, um, it seems like that was just kind of an ingrained feature of the way that West Yellowstone used to be, was the community coming together, and, you know, families taking care of families, and taking care of friends, because everybody kind of was family, um, which was always one of the things that, when I was little, um, it still felt like that out here, and that was always one of the things that I really liked, which is why I wanted to come back out, back out here.

MB: I could really see it in the fire of 88. We were building this house, and it was fire from 180 degrees, you know, and the whole park on fire, and I was part of the crew that put up the irrigation line. As a matter of fact, I cut the line on the old ski trail so they could get semi trucks through there with the pipes to the Madison River to get enough water to save the town, and so I was the lead chainsaw guy to cut the trail, and I got down to Baker’s Hole, and there was the district ranger standing there scratching his head with his Smokey the Bear hat off, and he said, what are you doing with the chainsaw coming through here? I said, well, I’m making way for the semis full of pipe, irrigation pipe, and we’re going to blow a hole in the Madison River to get enough water to pump it and save the town, and he said, what? I said, I can’t believe you don’t know about this. He goes, no, but I’m going to go find out. I go, well, you know, the trucks are coming behind me here. 

SP: So we’re going.

MB: Just to let you know, there’s demolition on the way, so they brought in demolition crew, and they, because that part of the Madison River wasn’t deep enough, they put in a charge of a coil explosives, and the first charge didn’t go off. It went off, but it didn’t make a big enough hole, so this time they really put in a lot of explosives, and all the Idaho Plow Boys were standing out in this field, and I got underneath my truck, parked it the other way, and said, you guys better get out of the way. They’re like, it ain’t going to be much. Kaboom. There were rocks flying for a half a mile, and one of them, there was a truck full of explosives, a Ryder rental truck, and a rock about three feet across went through the roof of the Ryder truck, the back, and landed on all that explosives, and of course, you couldn’t, it wouldn’t work without an electrical charge, but all those Idaho farm boys were scurrying under my truck when the rocks started falling, and then we put up another one at Old Faithful to save the power line, and then we did another one up from Duck Creek up to the cemetery to save all the homes up on bear trap subdivision. That saved the homes there, and Clyde Seeley really did a great job organizing all that, but the whole community got together to put that pipe, you know, most, well, I won’t say most, but I’d never seen that many citizens out, young and old, working to save the town. 

SP: I was two, so I don’t remember it, obviously. I was two, but my dad shipped me, my mom, and his mom to Bozeman and was like, you know, if things go south, I don’t want you guys here, but he stayed behind to help with that, the pipe and all that stuff, so.

MB: You know, we had a baby due. Our youngest boy, Sean, was born on September 9th, and the fire was all around us, and I didn’t have the metal roof on this house yet, but we raced to Bozeman. We could see the fire all the way through the park. He was one of two that we actually had in a hospital. The other two we had at home, or a rental, or one was at our parents’ house in Bozeman. They lived up there, but so I left my wife and the younger boys, and I had my oldest boy, Micah, with me, and he was 11. We got to the park line on the north park there, and they said, you can’t, you’ll have to go way around. I said, well, my house is in danger, but we had a baby, and I need to go. He said, no, it’s closed. There’s fire on the road. You can’t go, and so I turned around, and I parked, and a few minutes later, I saw a line of fire trucks going through, and I got in line with them, and went around the thing, and so Micah and I drove through. They turned off at Fawn Creek, and we kept going. They didn’t know who we were. We were in an orange four-wheel drive pickup. It looked like maybe, but anyway, we got to the, we went over burning trees. They were on both sides of the fire. We had the old thing going about 90 to, you know, get through there, and we made it to the fire, the roadblock here by the cemetery, and the sheriff said, where’d you come from? I said, I came from Bozeman, but don’t let anybody else through. It’s terrible, and he goes, wait a minute. Tell me how you got in through here, and I go, look, just let me through. I got a house to save, so yeah. Well, you know, that was everything we had was here, and yeah.

SP: Yeah, dad said the closer that the fire got to town, he said it got really scary, and you know, people one day to the next weren’t really sure if anything was going to be left, so MB: Yeah, and we were living in town on Yellowstone Street, where the Holiday Inn is now, and we could go up on old Gus Terman’s roof, our next door neighbor, and watch the fire from his roof with all his kids, and it was, you know, we were getting slurry bombers coming over us, and you know, we had, as we were working on the irrigation line, which is now where the old railroad train line used to come through, so it was right across the street from our house. That was before, oh, all the new, you know, the lumberyard and hotels and all that new stuff was there. It’s not new anymore.

SP: We lived, you know, those trailers that are across the street from the stagecoach on Madison? There’s one there that’s kind of like orangey now. That was our trailer. That’s where we lived.

MB: Yeah, we were just a block over on the other side there.

SP: Almost neighbors, though I guess West Yellowstone being what it is, everybody’s neighbors.

MB: Yeah, you like to think of it anyway. Yeah. Anymore, I’m not so certain. Well, because, you know, once you don’t have kids in school, you lose a lot of contact with your neighbors, and now that we don’t really have the radio station, but it’s good to see we do have this newspaper coming out, because the town always had radio, newspaper, since I moved here in 72. They had baseball teams. We played softball. The kids played Little League. It was quite different. It was a lot more family-oriented, I think. So, I was the scout leader while my boys went through the system, the Cub Scout leader for many years, and I enjoy being on the library board, because it’s my way of helping the community, you know.

SP: I know we love having you. So, all the way back to when you first moved back up here, how did you find West Yellowstone? Like, of all of the other places you could have possibly ended up?

MB: I had a, my girlfriend’s (at the time) sister lived here, had just moved here, and they moved to Big Sky, and we thought, you know, well, I got a job the first night with a contractor named Ron Spainhower, and they were looking for carpenters in September. Everybody used to leave in those days for the winter, and I raised, I was at the old Gusher, where the pizza, Aaron’s Pizza Shop is, and there he was looking for carpenters, and I said I could. We were thinking of going to Alaska, and, but they were hunting elk right on the edge of town, and I said, gee, this is a pretty nice looking place. I, you know, and you know, the view, and I knew it was good country, and so it was really easy. I got, you know, so having a job right away, I decided to spend the winter, and then we decided, man.

SP: What did you think of that first winter?

MB: Well, we grew up in Colorado, where we had snow, and we thought it was really good. Yeah, I had a husky I got working in Canada, Siberian, so then we had two, and then we had more, and so we did skijoring, you know, we’d have them pull us on skis, and got in trouble in the park with that, but so it’s just, you know, we fell in love with it, but split up with her. She wanted to go back to college, and I didn’t. I was working for a horse outfit, and so I was pooping in tall cotton there, you know. I was like, oh man, this is, I grew up on a ranch with horses, and yeah.

SP: So it was just a really good fit for you?

MB: Yeah, yeah, everybody called me Liver Eatin’ Johnson. That movie came out right about then, and you know, I had long hair, and a beard, and a feather in my cap, and the clients, yeah, oh boy. So yeah, I was, we lived a great life. You know, like I say, I wish that now I look at it, and think, I should have gotten into maintenance, and had some kind of retirement, because being a guide, you know, having retirement, and you hoped you got enough tips to really make it, make it worthwhile, but every day I was out, out in Yellowstone.

SP: Yeah, and you really got to see some of the things that people don’t really, you know, get the best access to anymore.

MB: No, and it’s probably a good idea anymore, because you know, every time I took my boy and his family in last weekend, and you know, we saw, you know, people trying to pet buffalo, and put their hands in the water, and all the good stuff, and it just, I got tired of yelling at people, and getting flipped off, you know. I’m trying to help you, not, I don’t want to hurt your vacation by telling you.

MB: Oh, you know, just before the pandemic, there were a lot of Chinese tourists, and the women would flock around me, and want their picture with me, and they’d pinch me, and they’d grab me, and I thought, good lord, and I thought, well, at least they think I’m stud, I guess, or, you know, manly. Well, the last time I let that happen was a couple of them walked away, and as they walked, they went, oh, Sandy Claus, and I went, oh, well, that’s what they think I look like, so I quit, yeah, I quit posing with Chinese ladies.

SP: That’s so funny. See, and I was assuming that it’s because you’re so tall.

MB: Yeah, I thought so too.

MB: (looking outside) What a view, huh? When I built this house, I had help from a lot of people. Talk about community, and when I moved the house, a lot of people helped me out, and I really appreciate all the help we got, you know. We had a house mover come, but he just furnished the equipment. We did all the labor, so.

SP: Yeah, I was wondering that too, if you had kind of organized moving the house on your own, or if, you know, the community came together to help you out there.

MB: Well, I had a house mover who moved it the first time from the junction to where I first moved the house by the flashing light there on 287th, and he said he’d help me the second time, but he said, you know, he kept putting me off, and I go, well, you know, winter’s coming here, and I need to get this done, and he goes, well, I took on a big job moving the Rockefellers, all the cabins off of there. They sold their ranch, and I said, do you mean to tell me the Rockefellers have more poles than I do, and he said, yep, and I said, well, I’ll see you in heaven, Brother Lemon. He’s a good Mormon boy. But so I had to find another guy, and I did, and he was kind of hard to deal with, and we would have to pray about every half an hour, and he was reborn, you know, and I finally said, look, we got to get this done. Let’s just pray, how about once in the morning and then at noon, because at the end of the day, everybody wants to have a beer, but he would pray often, and, you know, maybe that’s what got us the house done, but no, so he furnished basically the machinery and the jacks and the big beams, you know, and they put the whole house on beams, put wheels on the beams, and pulled it over here, you know, it’s quite an ordeal.

SP: And this was the last spot, right? This is where it came to stay?

MB: I hope, you know, I don’t, I’m not, I’m too old to do it again. It’s, yeah, but it’s a really wonderful house. It’s warm.

SP: And all the history it has attached to it is just really cool. And it’s nice that somebody kept it and cared for it to keep it.

MB: The old guy that owned the ranch, Leon Atwood, he always wanted to make this ranch, this was the western boundary, and it went to the highway, that big barn where they build log places was part of it, and he wanted people to use this piece of land. And now a lot of people do, and so the Forest Service bought it. So hopefully they will never sell it and subdivide it like they wanted to do. So the whole community got together, even the people from West Yellowstone, because they wanted to put 1,200 homes here. And, you know, movie theater, gas station, store, hairdressing salon, and the whole community got together and came to the subdivision meeting at the fire station and said, no, we live out here. We don’t want another town out here. That’s why the people that did live out here then came to the meeting. And then the people in town said, we don’t want the competition of another village out here. We want to fill our rooms, and our restaurants. So there’s been different… They wanted to put a truck stop on the 191 at that corner there of 287. So, you know, as people get here, it’s harder to find a place. Now the lots are selling for huge amounts, so we were lucky to… We’re about 20 grand away from paying off $300,000 on it. So I wish we could just get over that. Oh man, there’s a hummingbird at the feeder. He’s just beyond that buffalo in the window, that next window. You know, last year we had maybe a dozen that would be here. This year we only have one. I don’t know what happened. I think they must come from all the way over at Parade Rest, those big cottonwoods.

SP: So when did you start painting?

MB: I started painting when I was five, four, five. I’ve painted all my life. I’ve never been like a successful painter or anything. You know, I sell one now and then, but I guess when I die they’ll go for more. But I have a lot of paintings stacked up, so I enjoy it. It keeps me off the street.

SP: And are you self-taught?

MB: Yeah, well I went to Adams State College, Otis Art Institute, Long Beach State, and I went to MSU for a week.

SP: For a week?

MB: Yeah, back then their art department wasn’t too good, so I stuck with it for a week, but I went back to packing horses. So yeah, I feel like I’m self-taught because I like to paint nature, and at most the art school I went to, they didn’t like realistic. They wanted modern art, I guess. And so I had to fake it, you know, and throw paint on a canvas, and they’d go, oh wow, fantastic. And I’d go, yeah right, not for me, but as long as you like it and give me a grade.

SP: So you were in art school during the wrong movement, basically?
MB: Well, yeah, it was a really hard time to go to school. The sexual revolution was going on. It was an interesting time. And Liz is artistic too. She does dolls and birds.

SP: She brought in a Santa that somebody had ordered at the library, and so then I ordered one for my mom.

MB: Oh yeah, that’s right, yeah. So all of our boys are artistic.

SP: Oh cool, so the whole family is.

MB: Yeah, it’s a curse or a blessing, we don’t know. But my youngest boy, Sean, is an art teacher in Darby, Montana.

SP: Oh cool.

MB: And my granddaughter’s dad is a teacher in Anchorage, and he teaches, is it strictly home ec now? Yeah, he was a science math teacher, but he realized they didn’t have skills, his students, in middle school, and so he started teaching a part-time class, and then now he’s full-time, and I’m really proud of him because he’s really doing good work, you know, both of them, very proud of him. You know, I have two sons that are teachers, and I never thought it would be a combat situation. I worry about them, you know. It’s a crazy world. I went to Catholic school, and you know, the nuns were cruel to us, but we never wished, you know, we wished maybe they’d walk into a door or something, but you know, nothing too bad, just a light, a tack in the chair maybe, and then you’d get whipped, but no one ever thought about things like that.

SP: No, it’s stressful now. One of my friends just got an emergency teaching position and stresses me out. We’ve been friends since 2008, met in college, and that stresses me out a lot because, you know, it’s gotten serious, so.

MB: One day, Sean, Darby’s kind of a far-right area. A lot of Aryan nation types went down there, you know, after they got kicked out of Idaho or whatever, and you know, he had a pride flag in his room, and so many people complained that they didn’t want their kids, and you know, so he keeps trying to show everyone is welcome and all that, but I remember one day he said, he texted me, said, I’m sitting in class looking at the kid who’s probably going to shoot us all. He’s angry. His parents beat on him. I’m trying to work with him, and luckily he did, but you know, he got through to that kid, but it scared the hell out of me.

SP: But you know, if it makes a difference to even one person, good for your son.

MB: Yeah.

SP: That’s too much for me, though. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. No.

MB: No. You know, being in art in college, they said you can’t make a living at it, so you could be an art teacher, and so that’s what I trained for, but like you said, I wasn’t, it was better to be on a horse or pounding nails, even. I’m not a good teacher. I taught in my own way. You know, if I was doing a pack string, and I taught people what we were doing, and how do you, why you were camping that way, and all that stuff, and in the park every day, you’re teaching people.

SP: Yeah, and well, and sometimes pursuing your passion as a career can kind of lead to falling out of love with that passion, so maybe it’s better that you found something you enjoyed to do for work, and then art is your hobby.

MB: Yeah.

SP: I like that you’re still painting, though. That’s nice.

MB: I do it mostly in winter, because I paint in the basement, and I just can’t be down there when it’s nice out.

SP: No, especially out here. It is beautiful here.

MB: Yeah, we’re lucky that way. You know, our youngest boy, and he lives in the Bitterroot. It’s, you can’t buy a house there. People from far away buy it off the internet, and my three older boys, they were able, you know, they’re a lot older. They’re 11, the oldest boy’s 11 years older than Sean, and so they were able to get homes, but now Sean, he can’t find a home, and he’s a, you know, a teacher, wife, and two kids living in a trailer. He’s six foot seven, and he, her dad’s six foot eight.

SP: And how tall are you?

MB: Six four now. I used to be six five and a half, but shrinking. Wow. But the mutant gene for the Irish, that’s the viking in us.

SP: So your time guiding in Yellowstone, do you have a favorite story, favorite thing that happened?

MB: Oh boy. I had so many adventures. You know, every day was one. I can’t hardly think of one that it was like the best job in the world if you only got paid better, so during the pandemic, the clientele changed, and they became more angry and whiny, and they didn’t tip as well, and so it got to be harder to make a living, and I still miss it. I, you know, because every day you were in society. You had to be, you might be at Old Faithful Inn at lunchtime, and you had to be with the crowds and watching things, but I could get them away, and that’s what the most wonderful thing was. I still get letters from people, especially English and Irish tourists, about how much they appreciated it and learned, and, that’s cool, you know, because I let them know, you’re going somewhere. Very few people, as you will notice, we’re not going to see anybody where we go, and, you know, it was, oh boy, every day.

SP: So how did you decide where to take people? Was it based mostly off of their interests, or were there set itineraries?

MB: It was mostly where I wanted to go.

SP: So you were just kind of like, I’ll show you this cool thing, trust me?

MB: Or I would say, you know, I’ve never been, would you want to go somewhere, and we would explore it. Yeah, but I would look at the people, like if they had a five-year-old, no, we weren’t going. They would say, oh, this five-year-old, he can walk five miles. I go, no, no, ain’t gonna happen. We could try it, but I can tell you, we’re going to turn around at two miles if we make that, you know, because people think their kids can. And, you know, so I’d look at each group and kind of get an idea of what kind of dudes they were, and then go from there. And they’d always, generally, they would book either an upper loop or a lower loop, and so I could just go, okay, if we had to do a lower loop, oh, maybe we’d hike in the Hayden Valley to, no, I can’t think of the names of the damn places, to, what was it called? Well, anyway, somewhere off-trail, and look at thermals, and Sulphur Mountain was one of my favorites. I think it’s off-limits now, but always being on the edge. I’d let the ranger and his tour go through, like in Pocket Basin, and then finally they wouldn’t let rangers go in there with people, and so then they told me, you can’t go in there.

MB: I wouldn’t take little kids into a lot of places. Then for a while we were doing these very, we’d pick up a train in Idaho Falls, the American Orient Express, and do a three-day tour, or some days four-day tours, a couple days in Yellowstone, stay in a hotel in the park, and then stay at Jackson Lake Lodge for a couple nights and show them the Tetons. And so… 

SP: That sounds awesome.

MB: They started out saying, you need to take, of course, most of the clientele were seniors. And that’s when I came up with the slack jaw rule. If that person, older person, could not keep his mouth shut, then they shouldn’t be on a hike. Because I noticed that they would send, people would sign up to take a short hike, and they wanted us to take them somewhere that was special. And so we started out in thermal areas in the backcountry, not too far, lower geyser basin. And I’d get people that were staggering over mud pots, and I couldn’t keep track of them. So I said, okay, you got to limit it to 10 people, or less, instead of 25. And often people would show up for the tour with extra people, and too many people for one guide. And they’d go, no, you don’t need, you know, we don’t need to… Oh, yeah, you do, because we’re in bear country, and there’s, you know, things… This isn’t downtown Des Moines, you know? Anyway…

SP: Yeah, the last thing you need is somebody tripping into a hot spring.

MB: Yeah, because then they would… I didn’t report a grizzly encounter because they would have shut it down. And now there aren’t any elk in there, I don’t think. Have you ever been up Rabbit Creek? It’s one of the coolest hikes in the park.  And you know where… Okay, you go past Grand Prismatic, and you get to that corner where the river winds around there, and there’s a pullout up there. And there’s one on either side of the road. And I park, like, on the other side of the road than Rabbit Creek. So Rabbit Creek comes in and goes into the fire hole just past that pullout. So if you pull in there on the south side of the road to Old Faithful, walk through the trees, and then you’ll find Rabbit Creek. And it has the most beautiful bacteria mat in it in the park. The colors. And it comes out of probably one of the prettiest pools. And you can look way under and see the bubbles of water. Oh, it’s fantastic. And then that’s where Tomato Soup Pools is, and only a few people know where those are. So when you get back there, you could follow through there for miles, for three miles, anyway, to the last thermals. And it’s bear country. But unbelievable hot pools, steam vents, geysers, and it’s a great area. That’s why I park on the other side and make it look like maybe I’m fishing in the Firehole down there. But when I took my boy in, there were three cars parked there, so maybe the word’s getting out. But anyway, you follow Rabbit Creek back in there. And there’s just bunches of beautiful springs. And then there’s a ridge line that, as you go farther south, if you get off Rabbit Creek and look at that hot spring, there’s other ones around there. And then go south, and there’s more. Then there’s this ridge. And up on that ridge, it’s hard to tell you where that is or to get up to it, but there’s a bunch of pools that are bright red, look like Tomato Soup, and only a few people know where they’re at. Like in the old guide days, a guide would say, do you know where Tomato Soup Pools are? And I’d say, yep. And they’d go, oh, you do know something about the park. But it’s a bear spray place. You don’t want to go by yourself. Yeah, that was one of the places I would take people.

SP: My mom and I, one year, I don’t even remember what year it was, but it was before the Fairy Falls hike became like super popular. And on a whim, we saw this little, like, because the sign that they had there used to be this little rickety, could barely make it out. And we were like, we’ve been all over this park. How have we never seen this? Like, how have we never noticed this? And so we did that hike out there. And, oh, so worth it.

MB: Yeah. But have you seen it lately? It’s a major trail. Because they, finally, enough people, a guy was killed up there on the west of that trail. People are taking the Fairy Falls trail to look at Grand Prismatic, you know? A guy was, climbed a tree to get the view, and it was a dead tree. Killed him. So, you know, then the park service had to, it’s all reactive, you know? But, um… 

SP: I did see they have that overlook trail there now. 

MB: Yeah. But now that makes so many more people go to Ferry Falls. It’s not the place it used to be. 

SP: There’s a huge parking lot there now, too. But when mom and I went, there was just a little pull out and a little sign that was like, Fairy Falls, this way.

MB: Yep. I loved it back then.

SP: Right. And what I really liked about it is the way the light filters through the trees. Really makes it look like fairies are dancing around. Because you don’t get that full rainbow effect, you just get the… 

MB: If you’re there at the right time of summer, the flowers and… It is fairyland. And I tell people… 

SP: And it was an easy hike, too. Me and my mom both.

MB: You know what I would tell people? I know there’s fairies, and it’s not just because I’m Irish. I would tell them, you know, one day we were having lunch here and I got up to leave and I fell down. Somebody had tied my shoelaces together and I knew it was those fairies. And they would go, get out of here. I go, no, God’s truth. You know, I’m a guide. That’s when you know somebody’s lying was when a guide talks, you know. When they move their lips, they’re lying. Because we were storytellers. The better ones were. Although I can remember a time I almost got in a fight with this guy. He was a snowmobile guide and he just was a hard guy to be around. Well, anyway, I was behind him at Fountain Paint Pots and he… You know, we let the other group. In those days, there weren’t too many people. Now there’s so many that you got to just do it. But back then, you’d let that group go ahead of you and do their spiel and look at things and move on and you’d, you know, you take your turn. And I got close enough to hear him. He said, you know, a moose can dive up to 300 feet and stay underwater for three hours. I was like, what? And then I went, I want to get closer to this guy and hear what… I can’t believe he’s telling people these things. And so as that little walk went on, my ears were open and I was like, oh my gosh. I can’t believe he told them that. You know, buffalo can… I was like, and they’re letting people guide that don’t have very much experience. But I was so lucky to work with a lot of good people in the guide business, you know. And sometimes people would… Like at one time, a writer came and he rode with, at that time it was TW Services, the hotel company in the park. Or maybe it was AmFac. But anyway, he rode with them on a ski tour and he rode with us. And he wrote in his article, go with Alpen guides. They’re the best. If you want to be on time, ride with TW or AmFac. But if you want a good time with some real good outdoorsmen, you want to go with Alpen guides. So they got angry at us, the guides from, you know. And I said, well, they would key our machines and cut our fan belts at Old Faithful. And we were like, hey, we didn’t write the article. Why are you taking it out on us? Well, you guys think you’re so cool. You know, we were.

SP: Well, you just did what people wanted.

MB: Yeah. Well, we showed them we had experience, you know.

SP: Well, you know, that whole thing being part of establishing core memories for people, that’s got to be cool.

MB: Yeah, it really is. Like I say, I still get letters once in a while. I met a Catholic priest when my brother was passing away in Billings. And I noticed he had a hole in his shoe. Father Houlihan it was. I says, Father, do you know how to throw the Houlihan? And he goes, what? I said, no, it’s a knot that a cowboy uses to lasso. It’s a Houlihan. Anyway, he gave my brother last rites. And I asked a nurse and she said, oh, he’s so poor. He’s a meritist priest. He doesn’t have a… He just comes here every day and helps and gives last rites. And he wears out his shoes and he can’t afford a pair of shoes. So I go, here’s 100 bucks. You give it to him. He probably wouldn’t take it for me, but you tell him to get a new pair of shoes. So after that, every month I’d send him 50 bucks. And he was a good Irishman right from Ireland, you know. So I told him, hey, if you ever want to come to Yellowstone, I would… You know, you could come and stay here and I would take you around. You know, he’s an older fellow, 85 probably. Well, he called me and he said, you know, my family from Ireland is coming, and could I take you up on that? I go, you bet. So they got a motel room and I took them for two days, took them around. And they still write to me. Yeah. And I took them aside and I said, well, did you know that your uncle here is a saint? They go, oh, no, not Uncle John. You know, I’m sure he’s a good priest, but he’s no saint. He’ll drink a shot of whiskey now and then. I go, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I said, oh, well, still, when my brother was dying, he had no expression. He was in a coma. So the Father Houlihan took his hand and to give him the last rites, my brother started smiling. And it made my hair stand up. And anyway, it was powerful. So until he died.

SP: Your brother must have recognized something in him.

MB: Yeah. And when he let go of my brother’s hand, he quit smiling and he died. And my brother Steve and I were there. So I went down and got a bottle of Jameson. And we gave my brother a few shots, you know, and figured he’s getting cremated. You might as well give him some fuel. Well, the nurse came in at like two in the morning. She goes, what are you doing? You can’t have alcohol in here. And I said, well, it’s a wake. And if you can’t sing a song or say something nice about him, then go on with it. You know, the Irish came out and this is our last goodbye to brother Jim, you know. So she goes, well, I guess it’s OK. I says, well, you might want to shot yourself here at the end of your shift. And she goes, God almighty, I do. But anyway, I would send old father Houlihan a little 50 bucks or 100, whatever I could spare, you know, till he died. I’d never, you know, it was a powerful thing. I got tears in my eyes because my cousin died yesterday and I just got a call. And we were in a lot of trouble together as young guys.

SP: That’s who you’re supposed to get into trouble with, though, your cousins. That’s what they’re there for. 

MB: He was a city boy and we lived on a ranch. And so he would, he knew Colorado Springs, you know, wasn’t that big of a city then. But, you know, he knew how to, we’d sneak out at night and go to drive-ins, you know, just stuff like that, nothing criminal. But then he’d come up to the ranch and we had a big Hereford bull that you couldn’t go in his pasture. He’d come after you. And so we knew that you could take a jean jacket and bullfight, you know, and throw it. When that bull came up, you’d throw your jacket. He’d go after the jacket. He’d go after movement. But we wouldn’t tell our cousins that. Until my dad, saw one of the cousins flying through the air after getting butted. And that was the end of that. Well, it was city life and country life coming together, you know. God love him.

SP: So once you moved up here, I guess there wasn’t anywhere else that you wanted to live, to move, to go.

MB: You know, it’s a wonderful world out there. We love southern Utah. We love Escalante the best. I wish we could buy a place there. And we love the coast. We love Alaska. But here we are in God’s little half acre here. So I have a pile of dirt out there. And one of the neighbors said, why you got that dang pile of dirt out there? I says, well, I have five and a quarter acres here. And with that pile of dirt, it’s five and five sixteenths. She goes, what? And I go, well, it’s an Irish thing. It’s my ground. And I use it for a trade item, you know. But there is a lot of history here. 

MB: First time I saw Lynn was in the Frontier Bar with my girlfriend and I were in there having one.

SP: My mom managed that place for a while after they moved here in 79. 

MB: Wow. I did a lot of work on it.

SP: She loved the Frontier.

MB: Yeah. When Huck had it, I did a lot of remodeling on it. Anyway, we’re in there. And these big jocks from Pocatello ISU were in there with their leather jackets. They were being rowdy, and Huck said, get them out of here, Lynn. I go, oh my gosh. You know, I didn’t know him at that time. I go, geez, should I volunteer to help the guy? I don’t really want to get in a fight. But this one guy against all these jocks, he mopped the floor with those guys.

SP: Completely unsurprised. 

MB: Man, I was like, I want to be his friend. 

SP:He’s awesome.

MB: Yeah, he helped me with this house.

SP: Absolute heart of gold.

MB: Yeah. Oh, gosh, I love Lynn. And I worked with him for years, driving snowcoach for TW. Yeah, he’s a great one. And Tim, you know, no one knows the history anymore besides Tim, I don’t think. There might be. 

SP: Well, I did get to sit down with Jack Whitman. So yeah, he had some good information for me. Yeah.

MB: I asked Jack if he had any old photos of this because they lived right there, you know. Jack lives right there. And he said, no, my mom, her name was Moni, wouldn’t let us keep anything with so many kids. She wouldn’t let us have photographs or keep anything. She threw anything away that was, and I went, oh, darn, you know, I’ve been looking for photographs of what it looked like when I was out there. The guys that built it were the McCourtneys, and they were Irish. They were poachers and moonshiners. I went, that’s right up my family line, you know. Yeah, there were bullets, we found bullets and bullet holes and shotgun pellets. It was a wild place, probably.

SP: Well, I imagine if you were going through that process of like homesteading and it could get a little wild.

MB: Imagine, no power, everything by hand. And there’s a bunch of stuff that we found through the years with the metal detector where the house was built. Hanging out there, bicycle wheels.

MB: Last year, Liz was on, did you hear her bear story? I think I, no. But she was hiking on Cougar Creek over here with the four dogs. And I’d always say, you know to carry bear spray. I don’t want to, I have four dogs. They’ll protect me. So she’s out, way out there, you know, a couple miles from the road in April when the snow is still pretty high, spotty. And a black bear comes out of the woods and chases the three younger dogs away. And we had the old poodle, Bella, back then. And she was rickety. And that bear came back after Liz and the old dog. And I think it knew that dog was old. Because it kept going after the dog, and the dog was in between her legs. And she grabbed a stick and was beating on this black bear. And it kept coming. And she would scream. And she lost her voice. And the other three dogs ran off to the car. The bear chased them. And they didn’t know what to do. So they went to the car. And so the old dog, she got in the woods out there. And if you’re out there in the piney woods and it’s cloudy, you don’t know where you’re at. Because you don’t know which direction you’re going. She got, you know, mixed up with the bear chasing her around the trees. And it kept coming and coming for about 10 minutes. So finally it went away. Then she went, I don’t know where I’m at. She couldn’t hear cars. So she was way out there. And because I’d always tell her, you know, listen for the highway. Anyway, the little brown poodle Clover came back and found her. And showed her where the car was. She kept barking. And Liz went, oh, that’s Clover. And so she screamed. And Clover found her. And that big asshole Yellowstone was sitting by the car like, oh, I’m sorry. So now she carries bear spray. So having four dogs is not necessarily the answer.

SP: Now I got one of my dogs as a pit bull, and I know for sure, with no shadow of a doubt, if a bear came up, he’d be gone. He is the biggest chicken. I have never had a dog that was as much of a chicken as that pit bull. And he is like a meaty 65 pound. You’d look at him and go, oh yeah, you’ll be safe. He’s protective. Chicken. Biggest chicken dog I’ve ever had.

MB: You know, before every black bear she’d see, they’d chase it and he’d run, and they would come back like, yeah, I took care of that, but this time the bear chased them. Oh, one time my friend Tim and I were, we were hunting out in the flats back when you used to, the logging roads were out there. And we were running over the little trees and it was so cold, 30, 40 below, they would break them off, and that way we keep the logging road open. Now they’ve closed them off, but we got into the old Ham’s Cafe and there were two Indians standing outside of there and we got out of the truck and one of them pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and said, bear chase you through woods? And they were looking at the dash and all the broken trees hanging off of the old pickup, you know, and I think I said, no, we chase the bear. They laughed and walked away. It was, you had to be there.

MB: Man, you know, it got not so wild when they shut down all the, it took us like 40 something years to learn all the logging roads. You know, you could cut firewood back then and find dead trees. After the pine bark beetle, you know, when I first moved here, you couldn’t find a dead tree. Then the pine bark beetles, I think came in 78, 79, maybe, and town, you wouldn’t have believed, well, you remember maybe how many trees used to be in town. It was a forest in there, and now there’s not that many trees.

SP: Yeah. In our old pictures from when, because mom and dad moved here in 79, 78, and a lot of our old pictures, it looks like they’re in the middle of a forest. Yeah. No, no, that’s this town.

MB: Yeah. The streets were dirt. For a long time. I think it was the year of the fire. They put in sidewalks, maybe somewhere back there.

SP: But my aunt worked at Ham’s for Gus, who I’m trying to – They have a very similar personality. So they just played off of each other. And she, to this day, says it’s one of the most fun jobs she’s ever had. 

MB: I love Gus. But we were neighbors with Gus and his boys grew up with mine. Yeah, we love Gus. 

SP: Baby Gus comes to the library all the time.

MB: Yeah. I’m so proud of Paulina.

SP: She’s amazing.

MB: You know, so I remember the first Mexican was Herman Vasquez. And now his family has Yellowstone Chinking.

SP: Yeah.

MB: And Tim gave him a job and taught him how to drive, got him a green card. And it’s so great to see that family. All their kids are just, they speak better than any kids that weren’t Mexican.

SP: And that Yellowstone Log Chinking Company, they do phenomenal work. Yeah. They made that library look like new. Yeah. And Paulina is doing twice a week tutoring for the kids now.

MB: Do you know Jeff Henry? He wrote a lot of books. Like, oh, pull out that bottom book on that stack. And if it’s handy. That’s like, that’s, I guess that’s John Leshock book. But let’s see. Oh, okay, well, go to the third one from the bottom, and that’s Jeff Henry book. I’ve got five paintings in that book. So Jeff was the one who was going to do the book of Yellowstone history that I did all the paintings for and couldn’t find a publisher. Yeah, I feel like I know his name, but I can’t. You know, he wrote a good book on the Inn. He’s written a lot of books about Yellowstone. Let me find you one of my paintings in there. 

SP: Yeah, please do.

MB: I’ll do the grand prismatic one.

SP: I’m not artistic in that way. I write, but I always kind of feel like us creatives gotta stick together. You know, we’re the ones trying to make the world a more beautiful place.

MB: He just wrote his first novel and he’s getting, what’s his name? I always want to say Peabody. He’s a writer about Yellowstone. Oh, crap. I think he’s probably in, oh, what’s his name? God, out of my mind. I can’t think of a famous writer. Let’s see, where are my paintings here? So I was glad to, at least he used them in his book. Let’s see, this book here, 150th Anniversary.

SP: That’s a nice book.

MB: It really is. Here’s one of Indians making points up on top of obsidian cliffs. I used to take people up there, but now it’s illegal. But I’d make sure they wouldn’t steal any.

SP: I do remember when I was younger hiking up to the top of one of them and not being able to do that anymore, which is a bummer, because there’s a lot of that stuff that I did with my dad in the park that now, you know, there’s so many restrictions now, I can’t go relive that nostalgia. And Firehole River, the swimming area there, has been closed for, yeah, forever. And we used to go there every weekend.

MB: Here’s the grand prismatic one from the other side, from the Fairy Falls side.

SP: Oh, beautiful.

MB: Osborne Russell, man, I love that book. You know, that’s the book that got me turned on to Trapper and Osborne Russell. Man. 

SP: I didn’t know that you had paintings in here. That’s really cool.

MB: Yeah. Well, I can’t be mad at Jeff because he’s, he shovels snow in the winter. He’s the caretaker for Delaware North. So he’s been in the park forever. And oh, gosh, he’s been doing photo books. He was a photographer for years and years.

SP: I feel like I know him, and like, if I saw his face, I’d be like, oh, yeah.

MB: You might. You know, he, yeah, he’s been around a lot, especially in the park. He’s, you know, I had the same ranger after us forever.

SP: After you?

MB: Yeah. And I got two tickets from this ranger because I talked back to him. They were stupid. One was for idling more than three minutes. It was 40 below. And I had this little old ladies group, one of 92 years old, 40 below, and I started up my coach and he jumped out from behind. You’ve been idling more than, that’s $150 fine. I go, bullshit, safety first. Nope, you’re getting a ticket. And the whole park, you know how they’re on the same radio frequency? The whole park heard that I was up against the wall. He frisked me and checked if I was wanted. You know what cops do, and I, you know, the whole park was like, Mike Briars? He’s the best guide in here. I got apologies from every department because of that. Then I got another one for stopping in the road. A wolf had run in front of me and I didn’t want to run over it. I kind of wanted to because I don’t like wolves. I didn’t thend, you know, I mean, like to watch the elk herd go to nothing. It was really hard. I bet I saw more elk killed than anybody in there. You know, I watched them come in and get established, and that was hard to watch. Hear elk screaming. I knew they belonged here, but couldn’t they have waited till I died? I fed my family. My boys didn’t eat beef or pork until they… 

SP: That is one of my all-time favorite pictures because it’s such a like cultural, you know? Yeah. And West Thumb is my favorite basin in the park.

MB: You know, I found a few artifacts just on the other side of the fence from the boardwalk where the old campground used to be.

SP: Oh yeah?

MB: There’s a huge old campground there. All the paved roads are still there, but that, you know, that was all a big Indian campground there. There’s a painting of mine. The Dome Survey. The lake froze up and he hauled a boat and they were going to do the Snake River. So that’s the Absarokas there.

SP: That’s beautiful.

MB: Dome Survey and all the horses making a living in the snow.

SP: So did you prefer the park in the summer or in the winter?

MB: Hmm, you know, how about if I said fall? Because people started leaving. It was still pretty darn nice, you know? Well, I loved all seasons. We didn’t, we don’t get spring really. But, you know, you had, You had deer fly season where you couldn’t go into a thermal area. They would eat you up. Then you had, after that, you had deer flies, and then you had horse flies. And being a horse person, I knew how miserable they could be during those times. Then, on my days off, I would ride the park. We would do pack trips into the park. So we were in there, a bunch of us. We were called the Burnt Hole Gang. After this valley, you know, the trappers called it the Burnt Hole., and people would go, Why do you, what’s that mean? Do you eat too many hot chilies or what? And I’m like, no, never mind. It’s historical, but so yeah, we, not many of them are alive anymore. I got them all into horses and they bought horses. So I had this 500 acre ranch, and the old guy that owned it said, do whatever you want. If you rent space, if you board horses, I would want the money. I’d go, cool. So I had sometimes 30 horses on here of people’s. I’d have maybe five or six of my own and they would never use them, and so I would say, hey, I’m going on a pack trip. Would you mind if I used your horses? And they’d go, no, keep them in practice, use them. So I had this string of horses that weren’t even mine, but, you know, I didn’t lose any. I always worried about that. You know, I hate to borrow things because that’s when it’ll go bad.

SP: That sounds like the dream.

MB: It really was. My poor wife had to live through it, and I don’t, you know, now I look back and I think, how did we do a horse trip a week? And having all of us had children and most of us did. Different times. We had jobs and we’d plan our week around a horse trip and tell the boss, I can’t work that day or those two days or whatever, and our boss was one of the people that loved to ride. So, yeah, it worked out great.

SP: It makes a really big difference when you have a boss that kind of understands you. You know?  Like with Michele. You know, like, it’s nice being part of a team that works together. Instead of, yeah, a boss that pushes everything off onto.

MB: Yeah, that’s how snow coaching went when the company got sold. The quality went down and the machinery went down, and so I didn’t like to drive those big things. Yeah, because the bombardier would blow the doors off of them and you could go around them, you know, you could get there and they’re always mad at us because we’d blow by them. You know, they had a hatch up there that would open up and two of them, and so we would always wave out the hatch at them as we went by and they’d be giving us the finger as we went by.

SP: So how many people could you comfortably fit in one of those?

MB: Eight. 

SP: That’s a good group. Because I feel like when you’re guiding, if you go too big with it, people kind of miss out.

MB: Well, now those 32 passenger buses, when they get to a place and there’s more than one, all of a sudden you’re wanting to get out of there. There’s too many dang people there for winter, you know. Now it’s a big yellow freight train going in there. 

SP: Well, 30 people, if you’re part of that group and you’re at the back, you can’t hear anything that the guide is trying to tell you.

MB: Don’t they have speakers in there? 

SP: I think on the bus, but once they’re out.

MB: Oh, yeah.Oh, man, I’d see people wandering away and I’d go, hey, go with your group. No, no, you stay here. Get back on the boardwalk.

SP: I know it’s hard enough to wrangle to eight people, 10 people. Can’t imagine 30.

MB: One day, have you ever heard of Women of the Wild? Wow.They used to be up on, they used to be on the Madison Fork and down that way, a lot of women. And I think it’s in West now. But I worked on, I took a ranch out on the Madison, West Fork of the Madison. And the lady was one of the one that formed the group and they would hide places. I told her, you know, I would give you a day to take a small group of women out like eight, and she goes, well, yeah. I don’t know if I can get that many to sign up. I go, oh, well, perfect. The fewer, the better. I’ll show you a place you won’t believe, and so I got to the Nez Perce Bridge and a couple of them met me there. I told them where to meet me, you know, and we’re going to hike in the lower geyser basin from there. I think the road was closed. They were paving it or something. So we, and at that time it was legal. And so the head interpretive ranger pulls up Les Inafuku, and he goes, and he had a whole line of cars behind him, and they all pulled in there. I go, what’s going on, Les? He goes, well, all these ladies are looking for you. They’re going to go on this hike. And I go, well, I only signed up for eight of them, and I volunteered to do it. He said, well, there, when we count them, there’s 28 of them. And I go, well, he goes, well, have a good time. I go, Les, why don’t you tell them you’re on a mission and you come with me? No way. That’s too many people, too many women. And I go, well, okay, but so I made it, you know, and I didn’t lose any. You know, you had to go back and help them across. And I took them on a fairly hard where you had to walk on a log across the stream. You know, they were falling in and laughing. And a couple of them were taking a little bit of something. I go, ladies, don’t drink while we’re here. Oh, it makes it better. I go, well, if you were smoking weed, I’d say yes, but not alcohol. Jeez. But, yeah, every day was a new and interesting thing. You never knew what you’re going to run into, and then, you know. 

SP: Yeah, that sounds like such a cool job. 

MB: A lot of it was, oh, it seemed like, oh, I had one group call the boss and tell him that I was a racist, and I went, wow, what would I have, you know, because we realized when things changed, the clientele changed and got more angry or whatever happened. We know what happened, but you couldn’t tell a joke anymore because it would offend somebody. I said, well, what did I say? And he said, well, it was you went by another wreck. And it was Chinese people again like every day. Every day I’d see a wreck of Chinese people in a suburban they rented. One day I saw them floating down the Madison on the Riverside Road out in the middle of the river and they were all waving and I just waved back. Nothing I could do. Bon voyage. But anyway. Enjoy your free rafting trip, I guess.Yeah. I had said when I saw the wreck, I said, there is another DWA. And they said, what’s that? And I said, driving while Asian. And that was enough. I keep a journal every day for the last 47 years. 

SP: How nice. 

MB: Yeah. This is for seven years crammed into small writing. But I did it after my first boy was born. And so I went back in the journal and I looked at that day. And we’d seen a grizzly. We’d hiked. We’d had, you know, everything you could want in a Yellowstone day. But I mentioned that that was a Chinese wreck and instantly it was wrong. So, yeah, it just got to be where, geez, it wasn’t that much fun anymore. People were crabby and angry. I don’t know. There’s a change in our society. 

SP: Well, it became OK to have that attitude. So what changes have you seen in West Yellowstone over the years that you didn’t particularly like?

MB: Oh, the loss of, you know, the newspaper, the radio station, the sports, the softball, Little League. The radio station was a real bummer. You know, in the early days when I first moved here, I had a friend that worked there. After we’d do a day’s carpenter work, he did a radio, a shift. And there were about maybe 50 records, 45. And, you know, he played the same stuff over and over, and I remember we snuck in Wildwood Weed. You remember that one by Jim Stafford? Listen to that on… Look it up. Wildwood Weed. It really stirred up the town and we had to quit playing it, but I can hear one of those songs now, Jolly Green Giant. You know, all country. Almost all country. We’d try to sneak, try to do different radio type shows. Because there were a lot of young longhairs here that worked. And it was really… We had music. Yeah, we had the Beaver Creek Band. We had the West Yellowstone Philharmonic. Gosh, we had music, and it was a really fun town. You know, I grew up in Colorado where ski towns and, you know, carpenter jobs were where the ski towns were. There was a lot of stuff going on then, you know. Radio stations using wind power. Just, it was a changing world in 1972 when I came here. It was really an interesting place. It doesn’t seem as much art and music anymore.

SP: Mom said it used to be a real kind of party town, and she was like, it’s gotten a lot more family friendly these days.

MB: I’ll tell you, there used to be strip joints, gambling. Oh man, Main Street was wild. SP: Yeah, she said it was like when they moved here, even in 79, she said it was like moving to the Wild West.

MB: Yeah.

SP: And that was part of what they loved about it was that it was so different from where they… 

MB: You know, and we tried to get out of town as soon as we could, but, you know, it was, like you say, an interesting place. A lot of young people. You know, and I’m kind of out of it at my age. I don’t, I can’t stay up and watch the fireworks anymore, and I go to the concerts.

SP: They still do a good job.

MB: They do. They kept the dogs awake. We can hear them from here. Oh, wow. And there’s a couple good ones out here on the lake too. Yeah. Matter of fact, all the neighbors were… I was up all night looking for fire because I’ve had that before when somebody on this side of the house lets off fireworks and then isn’t careful with it when it almost got burned at the other place. 

SP: Oh, what are some of the changes that you liked that have happened over the years in West Yellowstone?

MB: Well, of course, you mean like looking at what’s going on right now?

SP: Yeah, between now and back when you moved.

MB: I mean, it’s changed pretty, quite a bit from then. But, you know, once you get your kids out of the school system, you kind of lose track of what’s going on, especially living out here. And so, yeah, I like to go to the library. So the library is one of my things that I’m really excited about, and, you know, I think we have a lot of good people here still. It’s a good place to live.

SP: And then do you have any advice for new people moving to town that want to make this home?

MB: Well, best of luck buying a place or even renting a place. It’s always been a hard place to rent. Even back when I moved here, it was kind of hard. Not in the winter, because in the winter, everybody’d leave, but come summer when the employees would get here, it was hard.