Imagine the pastures on the road out to the Retreat being covered with thousands of lambs and ewes. Not just a few thousand, but tens of thousands. Some of the sheep owners would run more than one band of sheep. Each band was 5000 head. My grandfather once told me a story of watching as one of the neighbors was driving his two bands of sheep across our pastures on the way to the railroad. My grandparents ran 600 pairs at the time and none of the herds got mixed. An impressive accomplishment considering it was only a few men and some sheep dogs. Looking south out of our big picture windows you won’t see sheep anymore. Sheep Mountain, just a few miles away, rises majestically above the Yellowstone River when you take exit 340 onto Highway 89. It’s just over the big hill to the south. My grandparents sold the last of their sheep in the late 1950’s as the height of wool production diminished after WWII. The US Government is the largest purchaser of American wool (20% annually). Wool is used in Navy pea coats, Army berets, and the dress blue uniform my son wore in the Marine Corp. There are still sheepherders and sheep near Big Timber, MT, where the high school mascot is the Sheepherder. My dad went to high school there, Class of 1956. There’s even a documentary called Sweet Grass about the sheep industry in this area. I named this house The Shepherd’s Retreat because it was the last house my parents built. My mom and dad, Dean and Billie Gilbert, began building the house in 1999 but the story goes back many more years. My grandparents, Les and Ruth Gilbert, bought this section of land in 1940 from the original homesteader. They had a ranch in Big Timber, and they needed more pasture to run the sheep. The spring water found on various locations around the section made this land very appealing. I remember my grandpa Les talking about how sheep made money two ways, the wool and as meat. Lamb was more popular back then. My dad was born in April 1938. At age 7 my dad and his brother Paul, age 9, watched over the sheep all summer long while on school break. My grandmother brought them food from the ranch in Big Timber only once a week. Being young and hungry and without refrigeration, they often ran out of food too soon. My dad tells a story of trying to bake a cake in the little oven of the sheepherder wagon using cocoa from the can. He said it smelled so good they took it out of the oven too soon. They were starving and they ate it hot and undercooked! Part of watching over the sheep was protecting them from predators. They had their dogs to give warning and they always had rifles. They were children protecting the livelihood of the family with lethal force. At the time it was mostly coyotes and bears. My grandfather said the eagles could take off with a young lamb. They’d sink their talons into the lamb’s back and off they went. Wolves were removed from Yellowstone Park in 1926 but remained in Montana another 10-12 years. They weren’t much of an issue for my dad. My grandfather and his peers of the time did everything possible to eradicate the species from this area. When wolves were reintroduced in 1995 my grandfather was appalled. My dad never got over it and was firmly against it. The US Government said they would remain in the Park. I saw a wolf out the south windows on top of the hill and my dad saw them many times. Visitors don’t realize that every time a wolf kills a calf the rancher just lost $1400. My dad’s entire childhood and adolescence was centered around the cycle of sheep. Lambing, summer pasturing, and sheering. You can see real tools of the trade under the elk mounts. The Lazy H Bar Y sheep brand is a rare item. Long irons used on cows are prolific, and there are two sets above the front door, but that sheep brand is special. Once my dad and uncle became adults my grandparents didn’t have the extra help. The wool industry was in decline. I believe my grandparents switched to cows because they didn’t need as much direct attention. My dad moved to Oregon to study diesel mechanics. After that he was in the US Army at Fort Ord, CA for 6 years. His time in the Army is a period he never talked about. Not because of war or combat, he never left California. Instead, it was because he hated the lack of freedom so bad. How do you go from roaming the hillsides and having the ultimate independence to living on a crowded army base? I think it was the same as prison to him. After that he worked in the US Forest Service making trails. I recently found his hand-typed orientation booklet for the USFS. Skipping time, he eventually moved to Georgia where his older brother was living. He was able to leverage his associate degree in Diesel Mechanics into a job with Southern Bell. A co-worker introduced my dad to my mother. They were married, literally, in the Summer of ’69. Not long after he was able to transfer to Mountain Bell in Eastern Montana, where my brother was born. And when there was an opening, he transferred to Livingston, MT as soon as he could. And now I’m here. My dad’s story continues. The so-called Baby Bells were created (divested) in 1984 after the parent company AT&T was sued for antitrust. We were living in Bozeman, MT and my dad was still working for Mountain Bell. Mountain Bell had to split a certain amount of its workforce, who would become AT&T employees. My dad and his crew were lined up one day in the company garage. A foreman, went down the row and declared “Mountain Bell, AT&T, Mountain Bell, AT&T…” And just like that, my dad became an employee of AT&T. Soon after he was told AT&T employees would be based out of Denver. My parents were absolutely devastated by this announcement. By now my dad had been working for ‘Ma Bell’ for about 17 years. The economy was still trying to recover from the recession in the 1970’s. Alternate jobs or a new profession were not readily available. My parents made a very tough choice and we moved to Denver County in Colorado. For me and my brother, the move was a shock and an adventure. I went from 7th grade in Bozeman to 8th grade in the Denver Public Schools district. I was exposed to things and people I had never experienced before. I remember in Bozeman one of my friends, Danny Kohn, was out of school in early December for a week. I was absolutely mystified by the concept of Hanukkah. We just weren’t exposed to variety. Imagine being that sheltered and moving into a school system like Denver? My brother and I became a minority fast. Naïve kids from Montana should have been easy targets, but nothing ever happened. As a result of experiencing diversity, I have been able to make the best of friends from every culture imaginable. And I love learning new stuff all the time. While living in Colorado, my parents eventually bought a house near one of the most famous music venues in the world, Red Rocks Amphitheater. Life settled into work for them and high school for my brother and me. My mother worked in the insurance industry in Montana. She didn’t have much opportunity beyond being a secretary. In Colorado she earned certifications and got better jobs. I know my brother and I experienced a new world in Colorado and my mom made sure we saw the best of it. Mom took us to our first two concerts at McNichols Sports Arena. Neil Diamond (May 31, 1986) and Michael Jackson (March 25, 1988) My mom saved the program from the Bad Tour, which I found in 2022. I’ve been addicted to live music ever since and have attended over 200 concerts now. My mom made sure I would never become a drug addict. I’d never be able to afford the concerts I’ve been to if I had to support any bad habits. It worked out because now I’m a pharmacist and the profession sort of frowns on it. My mother, Billie Jo, was from Atlanta, GA. She went to Murphy High School a little more than a mile from downtown Atlanta. What possesses a girl to leave behind a thriving metropolis like Atlanta to move to the Big Sky country? If you’re reading this story, go look out the windows. My dad brought my mother to this spot for their honeymoon at the end of June 1969 and they went camping a half mile away from this house. My dad and the beauty of Montana weren’t the only things that brought her to Montana. She needed something new. Atlanta in the 50’s and 60’s must have been wild. The ‘Third Klan’ was increasing its membership to oppose the Civil Rights Movement. The cities were growing rapidly, and Hartsfield Airport became the busiest airport in the world (still is followed by Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver International, and Chicago O’Hare). These things seem dramatic, and it might make sense that she would want distance from the tumultuous atmosphere. I believe she left Georgia for a much simpler reason. She wanted an escape from her parents. I know almost nothing about my Georgia grandparents or her childhood. She rarely spoke of her history. Now that she has passed, I have learned more about her past from her life-long friend Mary Ellen. They were in grade school together and I wouldn’t know much about my mom’s family if not for her. My dad continued 7 more years as an installer of business telephone systems in Denver and retired from AT&T after 25 years (my brother has the watch). Time to go back to Montana? Nope! My parents moved to the Florida panhandle in early 1991 to be near their dearest friends, Mary Ellen and Johnny Chastain. That little sojourn back to the south was short lived. Summer heat was crushing. They had left Georgia in late 1969 and chilled out in Montana and Colorado for 25 years. When they say you can’t go home again sometimes it’s because of the heat. They moved to Billings, MT, and I joined them a while later when I moved away from Colorado in 1992. My dad and I worked together at MetraPark where they have the Montana State Fair. Another musical side story. Sometimes the only way I can mark life’s events is by association with concert tours and dates. I saw Metallica on the Wherever We May Roam Tour in Denver on February 6, 1992, and again February 8th when they announced a 3rd night. The 3rd time I saw Metallica was June 6, 1992, after moving to Billings. I had a front row seat on the rail. MetraPark was not huge, so the Snake Pit was just 30 yards away. I was in ecstasy. I saw Metallica a 4th time in 1992 on September 19th on the infield at Mile High Stadium. This was a delayed date when James Hetfield had burns on his arms from the pyrotechnics at their performance in Montreal on August 8th. On their website for this September date, it lists Other Acts: Guns ‘n’ Roses. Talk about throwing shade. So, the year I moved back to Montana from Colorado I saw Metallica 4 times in 7 months. My hearing has not been the same since. My mom created who I am. It might be easy to assume she was some kind of southern conservative who wanted to make sure the status quo down south never changed. Quite the opposite. Her eyes were wide open. She taught me not to discriminate in music because you can’t discriminate with people either. She took me to Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson. We listened to Willie Nelson, John Denver, and Glen Campbell. She loved Kenny Rogers, ABBA, Alabama, George Strait, and the Bee Gees. In a strange twist, my dad listened to Faron Young, Sons of the Pioneers, and Marty Robins, but one day he showed up with Simon & Garfunkel, A Concert in Central Park. I eventually stole that tape cassette from him so I could memorize every word. I love every one of the musicians I just mentioned. The reason I bring this up is because my mom loved Metallica and Guns ‘n’ Roses. I had an influence on her too, and I’m very honored by that. If you go look at the stack of CDs near the Bose radio, you’ll find them there. She would listen to songs from Appetite For Destruction and the Black Album while she quilted. When you’re looking out those windows for deer, elk, and coyotes, just imagine all the hours she spent next to those windows down in the Barn end of the house running her sewing machine. She taught my son Addison to use a sewing machine in that same spot. If you wonder why there are 7 Alexa speakers in the house, it’s because music is the joy of life and when you use all 7 it’s like a concert hall. My parents were in Billings and the work situation for my dad wasn’t great. I stayed in Montana, but they moved back to Colorado and my dad came out of retirement and began working for US West. Over the next few years, the company became Qwest, and finally Lucent. My memory of the timeline is a little cloudy. I began attending Montana State University-Billings in 1998 and graduated 3 years later with a BSBA degree. I was busy! My dad retired again. He received the miniature grandfather clock you see on the bookshelves and another gold watch for 30 years of service. I think union rules required Qwest/Lucent to count the time he worked for AT&T. He loved the clock and he used to wind it religiously. It has stopped working a few times now and was sent to a horologist to repair. Now we can’t find a horologist anymore. He gave the 30-year watch to me. It’s a beautiful Wittnauer Laureate. He never wore it. Like many men, he stopped wearing a watch the day he retired the second time and never put one on again. When I was attending MSU-Billings, my parents moved from Colorado back to Livingston, MT after about 4-5 years of being away. This was about 26 years after the last time they lived in Livingston. I was born in Livingston April 27, 1972 (my dad was born there on the exact same day 34 years earlier in 1938, about 1 block west of downtown) and they moved to Clyde Park soon after. I’ve never thought about it much, but my dad was about 60 years old when the house plans began. The 20 acres where the house is at were legally separated from the rest of the section my grandparents purchased in 1940 and raised sheep. The foundation was laid in 1999 and I was there the day the Styrofoam forms were filled with concrete to build all the walls. My parents moved into the basement as soon as it was possible. The remainder of the house was built above them. During the previous fall my dad was working in the basement getting it ready to move in. He was working by himself on top of a ladder using a pneumatic nailing gun to attach plywood to the ceiling. Somehow, he put a nail through his thumb and into the ceiling. He told me it took 3 hours of working that nail back and forth before he was able to pull it loose. My cousins and I were around a campfire at the end of July 2022 and one of them began telling the hilarious story of my dad nailing himself to the ceiling that day. That’s how my dad related the story. It became humorous because you have to laugh about it later, but he almost died that day. The house didn’t have heat. It was getting dark and the wind cools everything down fast. He was up on a ladder with no way to be rescued except himself. Working that nail must have been horribly painful. He had to be in shock at some point. Once he got loose, he never even went to the emergency room. He went back to the house in Livingston because he was hungry, and he needed to get back to my mom, so she knew why he hadn’t made it home before dark. He never did go to see a doctor. My dad was the toughest man I ever knew. If you’re sitting on the living room couch where the coffee table is at, he was right underneath. In January of 2000 I helped my dad install all the upper cabinets in the kitchen. It was damn cold. The furnace wasn’t installed yet, and my parents were living in the basement using propane heat. Those cabinets are just as beautiful now as the day we installed them. My brother Dan fixes the hardware occasionally, but I think those cabinets are solid. When you look around the house and outside you see some common themes. There are many rocks and telephones. My dad’s job took him all over Montana, Colorado, and Georgia. Before we moved to Colorado my dad spent most of the prior year flying back and forth to Denver. He was the foreman on a crew that had the responsibility for installing the Merlin Telephone system on all the military bases. He spent 9 months installing phones at the Air Force Academy, Peterson Airforce Base, Fort Carson, and NORAD inside Cheyenne Mountain. Most of these are US Space Force now. My dad was installing the phones where the nuclear arsenal of the United States was controlled from. Cheyenne Mountain is also known as the most secure facility in the world. AT&T still owns or controls most of the fiber optic and 5G networks, so his job was a ticket in the door. It must have been a surreal experience. He told us stories of having lunch with the AFA Commandant, which sounds cool. At NORAD he’d have lunch with generals and then go back to work with an armed escort that watched every movement he made. In Montana he was all around the northern areas of Yellowstone Park. When we lived in Clyde Park, he wouldn’t get home until 9pm some nights because he would have to go to Cook City or some ridiculously faraway place like that. In those days you didn’t eat supper until dad got home. Sometimes along the way he picked up rocks. He would take us places where we could pick up garnets in the gravel off the side of the road. When E-470 was built in Jefferson County on the west side of Denver he would go and walk where the giant earth movers and equipment were excavating the roadbed. He found dozens of prehistoric clam fossils. Look on the bookshelves and you’ll find one. It’s about 6-8 inches wide, gray, and has ridges. His telephone collection is better than most museums. I wish I knew all the stories of where he got these phones. My son would say his grandfather’s phone collection, and some of the rocks, were ‘tactically acquired.’ That’s a very useful term that anyone with a military background might recognize. Some of our guest reviews talk about the phones or the guests write me private notes about how seeing the phones and the other artifacts enhanced the experience of being at the house. People can’t see what it’s like until they are here in person. I would love to give more history and tell more stories of my parents, the house, the rolling hills around it, and about my family (the first member of our family arrived in Park County in 1899), but many of you have probably lost interest by now. I don’t know much about how my dad felt about Georgia. He hated the Army, but he loved Northern California and Oregon. He hated Colorado. My dad, who rarely used foul language of any kind, had a special name for the Colorado license plates when he saw them. He called them “fuckin’ greenies.” You could hear the bitterness in his voice. He hated the traffic, the endless cities, and being around so many people. He went to movie theaters and concerts to make my mom happy, but he felt claustrophobic everywhere. My mom grew up in Atlanta and Denver just didn’t have the same impact on her. For him though, nothing on this planet could hold a candle to those hillsides between this house and the horizon to the east. My mom was happy returning to Montana after the second time they lived in Colorado. For my dad, the return to Montana and building this house was an escape from everything he didn’t care to be around. If you are standing in the yard and turn around 360 degrees, you don’t see any sign of civilization. That’s exactly how he wanted it. No other neighbors or houses. No roads, tall buildings, or traffic. I think many of us would struggle out there where the only sign of civilization is the glow on the horizon created by Big Timber to the east and Livingston on the west side. But for him it was the perfect place for the shepherd to make his final retreat. He was born in Livingston in 1938 and he died a few blocks away in 2021, a few days before we would share another birthday together. I still miss my mom and dad in the worst way. With this house their memory lives on. Judson Gilbert Barre, VT August 10, 2023