Random Shots

The Wanderings of a Montana Writer

The author poses the rhetorical question: “So how did this book come to be? How did this collection of articles and stories wind up in one place in this book?” At a local bookstore in Livingston, Montana, a group of writers were talking about compilations of people’s work and do they have any merit. Yes, they do, was the conclusion – and thus John Holt has culled this marvelous collection of his articles and musings from a number of publications. It’s like a philosophical travelogue, fishing and surveying the wilderness with a man who knows a brown trout from a bull trout from a golden trout. “I broke the book up into sections called Long Running Madness, The Environment, and Big Sky Journal. Before each story I added a brief explanation of how it came to pass, public reaction, random thoughts, and/or various pratfalls that occurred along the way,” he explains. “Unlike an athlete who is usually finished by 40, writers can continue to grow and mature provided they work at it and don’t bow down and worship the twisted god alcohol as I did some years ago. I’m still alive, mad as a hatter, mad as hell about the destruction of wild country and still trying to learn how to speak my native tongue.”