From Our Editor: Real Rustic

Darla Worden reflects on Mountain Living's September/October 2026 issue.

August 12, 2026

Darla Worden,

Photo: Portrait by Angela Howard

In our annual rustic issue, we are delighted to share artist Sandra Pratt’s new series of 100 barns. What is more rustic than a barn? As we drive through the Mountain West, we see these monolithic silhouettes still standing over the land. “It wasn’t built to be admired; it was built to work,” Pratt says, “and somehow that purposefulness is exactly what makes it beautiful.”

And that beauty is what inspired Jeremy and Krysta MacGray to acquire an Amish barn in Pennsylvania and repurpose it for their “forever home” in the Strawberry Park community near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Their goal was to make their home appear as if it had been built over time—like settlers who added rooms and structures as their fortunes, and families, grew.

The MacGrays used the barn’s antique wood, inside and out, imbuing their home with character from the oldgrowth lumber’s hand-hewn beams. Married for 22 years, the MacGrays have remodeled or built seven homes together, with this one being “the culmination of all the lessons we learned in the prior 20 years,” says Jeremy. A true rustic masterpiece, the home is on our cover.

In Livingston, Montana, a 1980s log home that “wasn’t very pretty,” according to native Parisian Fiona West, becomes French bohemia in the mountains with help from West and fabrics, rugs and wallcoverings from La Maison Pierre Frey where she is president. “I thought if I tackled it in a smart way, little by little I could transform this place,” she says. She applied her unique touch to every room in the house and the guest cabin. The result? Tres magnifique!

At the end of a road outside Cody, Wyoming, an L.A.-based couple found a secluded 85-acre ranch with a collection of cabins that had once been a dude ranch. Determined to create a retreat for their friends and family that was understated and functional, they worked with Bozeman-based Abby Hetherington Interiors and Miller Roodell Architects, approaching the project with respect for the land and the ranch’s history. Whenever possible they repaired rather than replaced, keeping new work restrained and the buildings’ history visible. Check out “The Ranch at the End of the Road” here.

During this beautiful autumn season, in the words of pioneers, “May your harvest and hearts be abundant.”