In Montana last summer, near Chico Hot Springs, I caught a fish. My first fish, a trout. It's a seductive
experience this, drifting in a boat under the enormous blue sky, floating your line on the water, and waiting
for the hot sun to draw the fish up towards the surface. The Yellowstone River runs undammed, the tall blue
mountains come down to the river banks, the river light turns the high prairie gold. Fishing isn't normally
my kind of thing, and neither is the outdoors. Montana, though, has an allure unlike any other place.
It's not just the scenery, not just the vast ranches folded into the landscape where, hidden from view, the rich and famous live - and there are plenty of them out here. You roll it around your mouth - Montana - and you believe in the myths: the legendary gold strikes of the 19th century; the fabulous mining towns; the libertarian crazies of the 20th; the desperate clashes between the settler and Indian; the cowboys and the epic landscapes and the vast spaces.
There are 800,000 people flung out across a state almost the size of France. I'm in thrall to Montana, to
Paradise Valley in particular (Paradise by name, paradise by nature), and to Chico Hot Springs (charmed, in
the literal sense).
This is the most beautiful place I've ever been, this part of south central Montana where they filmed A River Runs Through It, and where there's some of the best fishing on earth. By most standards, the area remains remote, but Chico Hot Springs, the resort itself, is urbane, stylish, funky and full of oddball charm.
The centerpiece at Chico is the 100-year-old green and white inn where some of the older rooms still go for $49 and are pretty basic. There is also the new wing and lodge with elegantly appointed and much more spacious rooms. There's a lobby, complete with vintage furniture. Chico has Montana's best restaurant, and in the bar you'll find a great martini. Next door, the pool is fed by the hot springs and the saloon stays open late. Out back are some horses that are as safe as bicycles to take you on pack trips into the mountains, and there are fishing guides to take you down the Yellowstone River. In the winter there's cross country skiing; in summer there's Shakespeare on the lawn.
As much as anything, Chico gets its good vibes from the owners, Mike and Eve Art, who spread the joie de vivre with a deft hand. There's no stress here. This is not the Montana of crazies on the ridge or wackos in the woods; this Montana is more sandals than cowboy boots, more wine racks than gun racks, but never precious. Chico is not for everyone: there are no gold taps in the bathrooms, no TV's in the rooms or phones, and no room service. Nothing is organised, either - fishing, riding, hiking - unless you want it, and you can still get breakfast at 10. If you want a fancy dude ranch with meals at set times where the kids can be programmed from dawn until dusk and the cabins are rustique a la mode de Ralph Lauren, there's the gorgeous Mountain Sky Guest Ranch. Or for somewhere a little more authentic and less fancy, try the Sixty-Three Ranch. But, there is something ineluctably delicious about Chico Hot Springs, and it's not just the rack of lamb. After a few days here, you slide effortlessly into just being. It's one of those places where you fall in love not so much with the rooms or the food or the possibility of catching a glimpse of a star in the dining room, but with a peculiar sense of wellbeing and good times. But isn't this celebrity valley, here in Paradise where Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Turner, and Peter Fonda have land? Aren't there a cluster of well-known writers passing through - Tom McGuane? Richard Ford? Isn't that Harrison Ford in a baseball cap in the dining room at Chico? Jeff Bridges? Rip Torn? Nobody stares. It's a live and let live kind of place, and the community carefully protects the stars living near by.
Chico is changing. So is the valley. Old-timers say that the area is getting pretty fancy; there's a golf
course opening soon. This is a part of the West that's on the fence, trying to decide if it's going slick and
suburban or if it can afford to stay the same. In Livingston, the nearest substantial town (population 7,500) a
couple of new restaurants compete with the local bars, among them the stylish Livingston Bar and Grille, owned
by Russell Chatham, the valley's world class painter. In Emigrant, the village nearest Chico (population about 50),
a gourmet deli has just opened alongside the saloon and the fishing store. I don't come to Montana as a kind
of stopover for the sociology of change, though, I'm not worried, not yet. This is a huge state and most of it
is very, very empty. It's the fourth biggest state in the US, after Alaska, Texas and California. Eastern
Montana is open prairie where the wind howls across the grasslands and the sky is as endless as the ocean.
It's the central and western part of Montana - where it hits the Rockies - that's most spectacular, from Chico
in the south central part up to Glacier National Park, where it hits the Canadian border.
The sheer size and scale of the American West - and nowhere is it bigger or grander - is astonishing. The endless horizon, the way you can drive for four or five or eight hours and never see a soul except maybe some antelope or elk or a grizzly. Parched, you can stop for a beer and a burger in a one-horse town where there's always a Stockman's Bar. You can approach Montana in different ways: book a dude ranch for a week or two; head for one of the national parks; fly into Bozeman or Billings or Missoula and just keep driving. Or, like me, you can just hang your hat at Chico Hot Springs and take day trips wherever and whenever you fancy.
Head south 30 miles from Chico, and you come to Yellowstone, America's oldest national park. With its wildlife and wild backroads, this is an Edenic park for hikers and campers.
There are also geysers and hot springs spewing up from the weird moonscapes that cover part of the park, the most legendary of them all, Old Faithful, just across the border in Wyoming. To the west of Chico, there's great ski country. Nearby are fabulous mountain drives, including Big Beartooth Highway, which has been called the most beautiful road in America. Drive to the top and there are crystalline mountain lakes at 10,000 feet. In spring, the wild flowers are startling, and there are places where wild horses roam.
If you're lusting for culture, there are the university towns, Bozeman and Missoula, where there's jazz and theatre and restaurants with hanging plants on the wall and salsa on the table. Me, I like the strange old towns better. Butte, for example. This was once one of the richest towns on earth, made famous as the world's biggest source of silver in the late 19th century and copper until the 1930's. This was a swaggering, self-important, political town full of Irish, Poles, Italians, Slavs and Chinese crammed into the houses built on the roller-coaster hills. You can see the remains of the great houses, the civic buildings, the brothels and the Berkeley Pit, the open copper mine that's so big, it's visible from the air. Butte's evocative seediness is its pleasure, and there are plenty of bargains in the secondhand (call them antique) stores. For lunch, there's always fajitas served in a restaurant in the lavish old bank building whose halls were once made of marble with a guard on every door (as the old Union song goes).
I love Butte's heroic desolation. I like Great Falls in the north central part of Montana, too, the place where Lewis and Clark famously pitched their tents on their way to open the American West in 1805. A four-square railroad town with pristine little red brick buildings, Great Falls has an annual state fair in August where you can bet on a nag at the races or eat cotton candy or buy a pig. After I lost some money at the races, I stayed at a motel that cost $35 and dined at Eddie's Supper Club on the biggest steak I've ever seen.
In the morning, breakfast was at Tracy's, a 1950s diner where you can eat steak and eggs or pork noodles 24 hours a day - the Chinese were here to build the railroads - and eavesdrop on the cowboy chat. Everyone smokes. And then I'd head back to Chico Hot Springs for a few more days of doing absolutely nothing. Nothing, that is, when I wasn't catching one of those fish. Or lazing on the lawn. Or drinking up some of the wine cellar. Every summer, I leave Chico thinking: "Should I move? Should I make the affair permanent?" and "How soon can I get back to Montana?".