Field Notes
I Hid a Camera Inside a Tree. I Never Expected This!
Getting the shot meant making the camera part of the landscape, and then leaving it behind.
Zack Clothier
Zack Clothier is a Montana photographer, naturalist, and skilled animal tracker who has spent more than two decades documenting the wild. Through The Wild Journal, he shares the fieldcraft, stories, and hard-earned lessons behind his photography.
Stories
The Wolverine I Wasn’t Supposed to Find
In the high mountains of Montana lives a creature with a formidable reputation, a predator said to be capable of driving grizzly bears away from their kills. Gulo gulo, the wolverine, is without a doubt one of Montana’s rarest predators and one of the true symbols of the alpine
Stories
Breakfast in Bear Country
You haven't really lived until you've heard a grizzly bear roar while eating breakfast at your backcountry campsite. What started as a peaceful backpacking trip quickly turned into a wild morning we won't soon forget. Earlier that week, my wife Cortney and I had
Field Notes
The Bear's Message
From the Archive
Midnight Symphony
Some nights give you photographs. Others give you memories. This one gave us both.
Stories
The Camera is Merely the Tool
The camera records what happens. Everything that makes the photograph meaningful begins long before the shutter is pressed.
Field Notes
Tracking is the Art of Seeing
If you've spent as much time in the wild as I have, you're going to learn things that nobody else knows. At this point, I can predict with a high degree of confidence whether mountain lions are using a particular area simply by studying a topographic
From the Archive
Crowning Glory
There are times in nature when everything seems to come together perfectly, if only for a brief moment.