This book covers Mills’ life from his days spent as a youth growing up on the Rocky Mountain Front, and its 18 chapters take the reader through his life spent in that wild setting. With often humorous stories about the people he worked with and packed into the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wildeness areas, the book also chronicles his years of shoeing and breaking horses, working on cattle ranches in the off-season and, finally, raising a family and starting a business when money was short. Mills survived many broken ribs and other bones over the years, as well as broken marriages and often worked seven days a week for months at a time — and admits that sometimes he drank too much at night.
“But it was work I loved that included working with horses, being outdoors and living on the beautiful Rocky Mountain Front. Few people have witnessed the things I have nor enjoyed life more,” Mills said upon the publication of his book. “These are things that money just can’t buy.”
The book carries a subtitle of “75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front” and its 18 chapters and many photographs feature such stories as growing up under hardscrabble circumstances, encountering and working with interesting people, dealing with occasional life and death situations in the wilderness, handling horses and mules and an occasional grumpy guest in the back country, and throughout the book, a loving relationship with the animals he used to pursue his life work — saddle and pack horses and mules and elk.
A Foreword to Mills’ new book was written by Hal Herring, a contributing editor at Field & Stream magazine, who has covered guns, hunting and conservation for that magazine for two decades. Herring, who also makes his home in Augusta, lauded Mills new book for its realistic presentation of a life spent in the wilderness.
- Author: Ron Mills
- Foreword: Hal Herring (contributing editor, Field & Stream Magazine)
- Copyright: Stoneydale Press, 2018
- Format: 6"x9" Paperback, 168 pages
