Glacier at a Gallop coming soon

Barring any major problems, the Hungry Horse News' first book should be available sometime next week. The exact arrival date for Glacier at Gallop depends largely on when the truck can get it here.

It's the first book we've ever published and for the most part, I'm happy with it. The book celebrates 60 years of favorites, outtakes and final edits from the Hungry Horse News archives of Glacier National Park.

About half of it is black and white photos, the other half is color.

I must admit, I went into the project a little naive. I thought, how hard can it be to put a photo book together? I mean, they're just photos, right?

Yeah, right.

For one, I pored over 4,000 to 5,000 negatives and prints in two months. Out of those, the project was narrowed down to about 160 photos.

I addition, many of the Mel Ruder negatives that were chosen were outtakes, which meant that finding information on the photo usually took a little good old fashioned research. It fact, some photos took a few phone calls and e-mails back and forth to Park sources to find out names, locations and dates.

Ruder was a master at the posed photo. They're so posed they don't even look posed. Rangers wore their round hats, everyone smiled and folks always looked like they were having a good time.

The sun always shined as well. Of course, I'm poking a little fun, but the reality is there are darn few Ruder negatives of rainy or gloomy days even though a typical December around here might see two days of sun.

Going through the Ruder negatives was by far the most taxing, but also the most gratifying portion of the project.

We don't have many of Ruder's negatives anymore - he gave most of them to the Park - but I'll bet you we still have some of the best of them.

The second most difficult portion was going through my own stuff. Compared to Ruder, I haven't been here long at all - just eight years - but I still have draws and drawers of slides.

Most of which, I quickly discovered, I don't like.

It's hard to pick through your own stuff. I tried to select photos that were somehow different. Like mountain goats in fireweed or a pine marten in a burned forest.

I also made an effort to get in as many of Glacier's predators as possible.

The book has black bears, grizzlies, wolves and wolverines. All of them wild. The only thing missing is cats - no lions, no lynx, no bobcats.

Hey, you have to have something to shoot for in the next book, right?

Hope you enjoy.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.