Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North, and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, he is also the author of One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, which won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award, as well as Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel, a collection of haiku and haibun poetry. La Tray is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025 and a former bookseller at Fact & Fiction. He writes the weekly newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana.

INTRODUCTION

2022, WESTERN MONTANA / xiii

CHAPTER 1

1977, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 1

CHAPTER 2

2019, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 14

CHAPTER 3

2011, PLAINS, MONTANA / 23

CHAPTER 4

2013, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 35

CHAPTER 5

2022, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 45

CHAPTER 6

2014, SIX MILE, MONTANA / 62

CHAPTER 7

2020, COUNCIL GROVE, MONTANA / 74

CHAPTER 8

2017, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 86

CHAPTER 9

2017, BROWNING, PABLO,

AND MISSOULA, MONTANA / 97

CHAPTER 10

2017, ULM, MONTANA / 109

CHAPTER 11

2021, HELENA, MONTANA / 119

CHAPTER 12

2018, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 138

CHAPTER 13

2020, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 149

CHAPTER 14

2019, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA / 162

CHAPTER 15

2019, FRENCHTOWN, MONTANA / 179

CHAPTER 16

2019, LEWISTOWN, MONTANA / 195

CHAPTER 17

2020, CHOTEAU, MONTANA / 210

CHAPTER 18

2021, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 223

CHAPTER 19

2019, MISSOULA, MONTANA / 236

CHAPTER 20

2020, GREAT FALLS, MONTANA / 248

EPILOGUE

2021, BUTTE, MONTANA / 266

NOTES / 273
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 285
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / 287