A float trip down a beloved river explores what might be at stake if a proposal for a copper mine by its watershed becomes reality.

By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON

In a state lousy with world-class waters — the Yellowstone and the Gallatin, the Madison and the Ruby, the “Mighty Mo” and Norman Maclean’s Big Blackfoot River — the Smith River may be the river that Montanans love most.

There is a good chance you have never heard of the Smith. The river lies far from Yellowstone’s Technicolor excesses, in north-central Montana, where the tourist maps don’t point. It gathers itself in the Castle Mountains and flows north for 120 miles between the Big and Little Belt mountains, accumulating miles and grandeur as it cuts through limestone canyons and flows over brown trout and past black bears rooting in high meadows. A few miles south of Great Falls it merges with the Missouri River.

The Smith is not the easiest river to float, which is one of its attractions. Between the boat launch at Camp Baker and the take-out at Eden Bridge, 59 river-miles downstream, there is no public entry or exit. You must surrender your outside life for the four or five days it takes to float down the Smith and give in to the river’s moods and its rhythms.

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from on .

Honestly, we went to Iceland to catch big fish. It was that simple. We wanted to bask in the late Arctic sun while bringing a dreamy meter long Atlantic salmon to hand. We wanted to drink whiskey afterwards, go to bed and do it again everyday we could. What surprised us wasn’t our ability to check the aforementioned mission off the list, it was the insignificance that those goals held compared to what we ACTUALLY discovered. The Chase: a tiny film is an ode to the friendships and experiences shared while chasing our passions.

The Chase is a short film that we feel encapsulates the most important part of us going to Iceland last summer. Yes, we made a 45 minute film and a festival edit that has toured the globe but this minute and a half is the soul of what we did and discovered. This is exactly what we’d like to share with you.

Presented by Patagonia.com

Full story on The Cleanest Line: http://www.thecleanestline.com/2015/07/the-chase-a-tiny-film.html

Yow: Icelandic for Yes! Available now: icelandicforyes.com

The Chase: a tiny film
By RC Cone

by Mika McKinnon

The Bahamas are simply gorgeous in this latest astronaut photograph from the International Space Station. The delicate ripples on the sandy ocean floor, gentle texture of muddy islands, and clean cuts of deeper ocean channels make this more of an idealized painting than real life.

If astronaut Scott Kelly is going to keep sending home photos like this, he can live on the International Space Station for longer than his one-year mission. It’s not just beautiful; it also contains a myriad of tiny bits of science to observe.

The seafloor ripples along the lower right corner are generated by the swash-backwash of shallow water waves pulling on loose sediments in the daily play of wind waves. Their wavelength is proportional to the wavelength of the surface expression of the wave and the depth of the water as the waves drag more fiercely on the ocean floor in shallower seas.

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