FROM THE 2023 MONTANA POET LAUREATE...

Winner of the 2018 Montana Book Award

and the 2019 High Plains Book Award




“La Tray is a perimeter man, seeing the reality in wildness yet dealing the best he can at
rec­onciling truth in nature.” - Barry Babcock author of Teachers in the Forest







This book is a collection of poems and essays from the writer’s experiences of travelling through landscapes both wild and civilized. They speak with delicate simplicities ranging from the death of a favorite pickup truck, to the joy of hitting the trail with a four-legged companion. There are also profound observations that range from realizing he has become an aging hippie in a Carhartt vest, to the exhilaration of following the tracks of a grizzly in fresh snow.

Illustrated by: Mara Panich