His present home in Big Timber, Montana offers a wealth of the background to aid in the fulfilling of the demand. Here, many tribes of indians lived and hunted; here, Lewis and Clark are more than distant 'textbook' names; here, the men of the fur trade were frequent habitues; and the Bozeman Trail is almost a backyard boundry. This is where Jack Hines has chosen to settle and to work for the rest of his life. There are, of course, the excursions into tipi living amont indian peoples, frequent wilderness pack trips and the like, to augment, experientially, the historic research, but all of the activities are focused upon an effort to honestly and feelingly depict the richness and deeply textured character of the west and it's adventurous past. 'I believe there are great things for our strained society to learn from the indians and the mountain men. If we were to gain the understanding inherent in the lives of the people, I think we could dispense with all of the dogma, law, pretentiousness and bureaucratic nonsense of our time and be much happier.

If we as people, could gain even a small measure of the self-reliance of the mountain man, the need for the infinitely superfluous elements of modern life would cease. Those are some of the thoughts that I would hope could be read into what I do in my work' says Jack Hines. 'If the message comes through to only a few, then I'll consider myself successful.' Jack Hines along with his wife, Jessica Zemsky, are founding members of the Northwest Rendezvous Group.