Columns
Explore Daily Inter Lake Columns featuring local sports commentary, outdoor adventure stories, lifestyle tips, and community perspectives from Northwest Montana.
Giving Together: Turning Tax Season into Opportunities for Students
On a spring morning in Kalispell, a group of elementary students huddle around a table, testing a small robot they…
After the pen comes the pitch
As the minutes speed by until my turn, I am alternately amused and jealous of the quicker wits in this classroom at Flathead Valley Community College, the host venue for monthly gatherings of the Montana Screenwrit…
Stellar jumps, sprints — and hoodies
Covering track and field is not supposed to hurt, but here I am nursing a swollen knee and it wasn’t for any sort of, you know, effort.
The Recession Queens
In 2009, when my daughter Talia was going to college in Seattle and living in a dorm, my sister and I concocted a scheme (Actually, my sister Barb recollects the getaway was solely my idea and that I was the one wh…
Marker effort drives for safety
“Someone said, ‘We need to get with this white-marker program,’” Bob Bigler remembers of that American Legion meeting in 2005. “Well, I could help with that.”
Spring water safety
During the last couple of weeks there have been three tragic drownings of local folks enjoying some of Northwest Montana’s rivers and lakes.
Taking the long way home
Nine years ago, after my husband had completed work on an 18-month job in New Jersey, I flew out there to join him on a cross-country road trip back to Montana
Love of trees takes root
Kalispell Parks and Recreation pulled out all the stops for the 150-year anniversary of the tree-dedicated day in the United States.
The hummingbird, the opossum and the tarantula
Few would consider southern California a hotbed for wildlife — at least of the natural animal/plant kingdom variety.
For officeholders, the ears have it
The 2022 race for Flathead County commissioner has four contenders in the upcoming election. What makes it such a hot seat? I also wondered, What does a county commissioner do all day?
Food, a universal human right
I had intended this column to be about my memories of Easter Sunday growing up in Columbus, Ohio.
Some jobs start after the buck
“You and I, we could sign up and ride in the rodeo next weekend,” emergency medical technician Kim Vierra told me about the amateur rodeo staged between Kalispell and Whitefish.
Turkey season
It’s springtime in the Flathead. Similar to the fall season, the outdoor person has many choices of what to do in the great Flathead outdoors.
A belated tribute to a musical ‘heartbreaker’
Like most everybody, there are all kinds of music I like and keep on my personal playlist — from classical to classic rock — which doesn’t get fed much new material these days; I seem content enough to listen to th…
Break out the gloves and eye black
A dozen years as a head football coach in California and another 18 as an assistant at the high school and college level have prepared Mark Kessler for this moment. Girls flag football is coming to Montana this Au…
Mad skills soar in the skies
The hardest part about attending the Flathead Audubon Society meeting turned out to be finding it.