302 Cokedale Road, Livingston, MT 59047

Montana Living magazine called Parks Reece "Van Gogh meets The Far Side." This is the house where that aesthetic has evolved over 37 years. Reece started building in the 1980s with help from friends and never entirely stopped. Park County's inaugural Artist Laureate spent close to four decades working this log home the way he works a canvas, in layers, over years. His trout, his wildlife, his gift for adding levity to gravity, all of it is built into the home. Wrought iron railings bend into cattails. A steel panel cut into the balcony railing reproduces his "Balancing Fin and Yang," two trout circling nose to tail with a fly fisherman atop in endless pursuit. A radiant-heated concrete floor is washed green and blue with three trout coming up through the water, reflecting the same fascination with how a fish shifts color in changing light that started his career in Gardiner in the 1970s. Out back, rocks with glass eyes rise from the grass, like brookies to a dry fly. A hand-built...