Local journalist, author and publisher Dale Burk is a Montanan who has heard the “call of the wild” and spent much of his life trying to convey what he’s heard to the rest of us. Finally, in a work that has been long in the making, we have an account of Burk’s life-long conversation with the wild.
It’s a book tapping the pulse beat of a life spent in the wilds of Montana in which the author recounts many of his encounters or “brushes” with wild things – wildlife, the landscape, trout, wild land and wild rivers and sometimes wild people, plus, literally, life and death – and how they all shaped his work as a writer.
Issued by Stoneydale Press of Stevensville, “A Brush With a Wild Thing or Two in Montana” is a 200-page book with a foreword written by author and longtime bookstore owner Barbara Theroux of Missoula and a front cover painting on the theme of wildness done by Missoula artist Monte Dolack.
A third-generation Montanan, Burk grew up in a logging family in northwestern Montana and recounts in his book a number of episodes out of his youth in that part of the state, including the opening chapter in which he writes about a boating accident in which his uncle, Frank Graves of Eureka, just home from the horrors of combat in Europe in World War II, saved Dale’s life and thereby enabled all the other “encounters” in the book to take place.
“This is a book others have been encouraging Dale to write. A book that was to tell his story and tell it, it does,” Theroux wrote in her Foreword. “Dale is a storyteller so it should be no surprise that his memoir gives colorful insights into how wild places and things shaped his attitudes, writing and life . . . at age 12 he had his first piece published and he never looked back.”
During his high school years in Eureka, Burk was editor of his school newspaper, where he came under the influence of famed educator Donald Boslaugh, and at the same time worked as a correspondent in that area for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell. Later he was a journalist in the U.S. Navy, where he served overseas including a three-year stint as Navy press representative at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo, Japan; then upon his return to civilian life as a reporter for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell; several years following that in public relations jobs in Columbia Falls and Butte; and then a 10-year run as a reporter, columnist and editor on the staff of The Missoulian in Missoula, Montana. During that time, he received a number of regional and national writing awards for his reporting on natural resource and conservation issues and became the first Montana writer to win a prestigious Nieman Fellowship for Professional Journalists to Harvard University in 1975-76. Since he left The Missoulian in late 1978, he has continued to work as a writer-photographer, writing books and freelance articles for various national publications and run, with his wife, Patricia, a regional book publishing firm out of Stevensville. Dale is a graduate of the University of Montana (1971) where he majored in philosophy with a minor in English.
His book also contains many photographs illustrating the stories. Sample chapters include his “brushes” with potentially dangerous things like wolverines, grizzly bears, lightning and mountain blizzards, colorful back country packers and camp cooks, hunters and fishermen like the famed Fran Johnson of Butte, a special chapter involving Dale’s beloved Big Hole River, and the efforts by many people, like the late Loren Kreck of Columbia Falls, to formally establish the Great Bear Wilderness in northwestern Montana. He also writes of his involvement in the early days of the effort to establish the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (he was and is the first public member, No. 4, of the RMEF), and, in the book’s final chapter he explores his spiritual growth out of experiences in the Montana wilderness.
“A Brush With a Wild Thing or Two in Montana” was issued in 6×9-inch softcover format, retails for $19.95, and is available in many book stores, sporting goods stores and gift shops as well as direct from Stoneydale Press, 523 Main, Stevensville, MT 59870, or on its website, www.stoneydale.com.
Special signing events have been set up in the Bitterroot to highlight the release of the new book:
• Friday, April 6th, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Valley Drug at 301 Main in Stevensville. The signing is part of that community’s First Friday celebration for April.
• Tuesday, April 10th, 6 p.m., a reading and signing event at Chapter One bookstore at 252 West Main in Hamilton.