Beards & Mustaches | A mark of the true Montana outdoorsman?

They prickle those who wear them and tickle those who kiss them. They're a statement of fashion, or an image of rebellion. They're distinctly Montana, untamed and rugged, though others aren't forbidden to wear them.

"I've probably had a beard or a mustache for 10 or 15 years in one combination or another," said Dan Blythe, a Helena hydrologist, while toting a sack of groceries from the Real Food Store. "My wife has never seen me without a beard, so she must think it's all right, I guess."

It's all right in Big Sky Country, where beards serve as scarves but without the metro sexual flair. Ernest Hemingway wore a beard and so did "Liver Eating" Johnson, and no one's calling them pretty boys.

Down at the Blackfoot Brewery on a Friday night, beards are hardly a dime a dozen. Those who wear them hoist stout beers as thick as midnight and talk about the hunting season, the bears they've encountered in the wilderness, and tasty new recipes for the five-point buck they bagged in November.

It's stew and sausage mostly.

They're the linemen at the power company and the butchers at the grocery store. They sell Subaru all-wheel drives on the West side of town. They work at Canyon Ferry Dam regulating the runoff from 15,000 square miles of Rocky Mountain runoff -- out where a man can still wander and wear a beard with pride.

"I like a little facial hair," said Kim Ryan, mixing cocktails behind the bar at Miller's Crossing after a splendid winter day. "It's sexy on the right person. It's a Montana thing. It's outdoorsy."

Ryan says she digs a man with a soul patch, but then she turns red in the cheeks and doesn't say why. Her mom was big on a guy named Magnum, the mustache wearing, Ferrari driving PI better known as Tom Selleck.

"It's just that scruffy, I don't care, I'm just a dude kind of look," said Ryan. "It's sexy on the right guy."

But not every guy is the right guy. Beards were a sign of wisdom and knowledge in ancient Greece, though Montana women don't typically fall for the philosopher type.

Peter I of Russia levied a special tax on those who wished to grow and keep a beard, perhaps because he couldn't grow a beard of his own.

Bob Villa has never been seen without a beard, and neither has Jeremy Morgan, at least for the past several months.

"My beard was way down to here and I had it braided, but I wanted to do it wider so I could do two braids like Captain Jack Sparrow, because my last name is Morgan, so everyone calls me Captain Morgan," said Morgan, showing exactly how long his pirate beard used to be.

Blackbeard the Pirate wore a beard, too, just like Morgan does today. So did "Mic the Scallywag" and the gunslinger "Big Steve" Long who went to the gallows in 1868.

In 1893, Montana Gov. John Rickards was the last governor to sit for an official photograph with a beard. Territorial governor Preston Leslie, however, came closer to resembling Col. Sanders of fried chicken fame in his official photograph snapped in 1887.

Leslie's beard, however, was a far cry from "Wolverine whiskers," the fu manchu, or the stilleto beard. To wear them -- any of them -- you need an alias and a tough-guy persona, a pickup truck, or a dog with muddy paws.

If nothing else, a playful wife or girlfriend will do, so long as she appreciates the time you took to grow the hair on your face, becoming a real Montana outdoorsman, or so it's been said.

"I always try to shave, but my wife -- she never lets me," said Kris Anderson, sporting a beard that's slowly consuming his goatee. "She likes it because it tickles."

Let it grow, Anderson, let it grow.

Join the club

Did you know Helena has an official beard-growing club? Check it out at www.bruigher.com