What To Expect

Wednesday, October 7 | noon – 1:00 p.m. MDT
Painting Fall Fruit with Artist Jenah Mead Spend your lunch break painting berries and other fall fruits with Artist Jenah Mead. Jenah will walk you through her artistic process and show you how to use value, color, and details to make your artwork come alive. Choose your subject from a colorful array of Montana fruit, such as a branch of snowberries, serviceberries, or rose hips. Jenah will answer questions and share her favorite materials, tips, and tricks.

Nature Storytelling Night

We’ve brought together some of MNHC’s friends, volunteers, and founders to share personal stories centered around the natural world. Get ready for an entertaining, humorous and heartfelt night of nature stories!

Meet our storytellers!

Ellen Knight grew up in the countryside of western Arkansas, where her parents treated her with benign neglect, leaving her free to roam afield to her heart’s content. That time yielded a lifelong love of the natural world…and here she is today, still loving it! But in the interim she earned a degree in zoology from Colorado College and an MA in Environmental Ed from U. Michigan. She and her husband Bob moved to Missoula in the dark ages, 1971. They were instrumental in the beginnings of Five Valleys Land Trust and Ellen helped found MNHC. Ellen’s two primary work/volunteer interests were environmental policy and natural history education. Throughout, there were friends and mountains, hiking seriously or ambling and poking about. Now she encourages her grandchildren to be curious and to value the whole earth.

Jackie Wedell is a transplant to Montana via Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, North Carolina, and Nevada.  Having lived in flat places, she never wants to live far from mountains again.  Jackie spent her career working with children first as a clinical child psychologist and later as a school psychologist.  She has been an MNHC volunteer since shortly after retirement and her move in 2012 with her husband, Edward Monnig, back to Montana, where they raised their two sons.  Jackie’s story is about an early experience in the backcountry with two small children.  She tells us that there are many other stories of adventures with children, but assures us that all serious injuries requiring ER visits were the result of adventures that her children had undertaken on their own – without parents.

Edward Monnig has worked as an ecologist for the US Forest Service and held a variety of positions in the agency including District Ranger on the Kootenai National Forest and Forest Supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. He enjoys a variety of backcountry activities including skiing, backpacking and hiking, whitewater boating, and just aimless wandering in our wildlands in pursuit of birds, native plants, and geological wonders.   After retiring from the Forest Service, Ed and his wife Jackie returned to Montana where they had raised their two sons.  Ed served on the MNHC Board of Directors from 2012 to 2019.  He now has the privilege of exploring the natural world with his grandchildren.

Larry DePute is a graduate of Stanford University. He lived in Alaska for 39 years before moving to Missoula.  Larry retired after 35 years as a Family Practice Physician Assistant. He is also a commercial pilot, a certified flight instructor, an A&P aviation mechanic, silversmith, lapidary, and jeweler.  While Larry may have set a few bones during his time as a Phyician Assistant, he probably didn’t assemble entire skeletons., but that’s what he does as a volunteer for MNHC. Starting from a box of bones, he painstakingly recreates articulated skeletons of birds. You may have seen his work at the Montana Natural History Center, like the American white pelican soaring over the exhibit hall or the bald eagle that greets you by the front door.