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"View Slideshow\n\nA late-summer afternoon in Paradise Valley, Montana. The mercury&amp;#39;s breaking records, it&amp;#39;s shooting star season, and Becky Crockett McGuane Fonda (direct descendant of frontiersman Davy, former wife of novelist Tom, present wife of actor Peter) would very much like to sleep outside in the Fondas&amp;#39; tepee. There is, however, the small problem of the black bears in the apple orchard. The heat has depleted the bears&amp;#39; food sources in the mountains, and the Fish and Wildlife people think the animals should help themselves to the apples. Which would all be well and fine\u2014Terry Connie Francis and Lake Speed, the Fonda Labrador retrievers, would tree the bears if they posed any threat\u2014but in the meantime the Labs are barking their heads off, and who could sleep through that?\n\nJust another day, you might say, in Paradise.\n\nIn the popular imagination Peter Fonda will always be linked with Captain America, the renegade biker he portrayed in Easy Rider. Fortunately for him, the image is not entirely out of sync with the man. Fonda (son of Henry, brother of Jane, father of Bridget) seems born to be at least a little bit wild. Witness Don&amp;#39;t Tell Dad, his tell-all family memoir. Or the roles he tends to play\u2014a North Dakota sheepherder in this winter&amp;#39;s Wooly Boys, an errant cowboy in the rerelease The Hired Hand, an exceptionally sleazy record producer in The Limey. Or the place he calls home, a working ranch located roughly 1,000 miles northeast of Hollywood.\n\nFonda was a divorced father of two living on an 82-foot ketch when, in 1974, he appeared in a movie written and directed by Tom McGuane\u2014and met his second wife. With-in a year Becky Fonda, who had been living in Livingston, Montana, and is something of a free spirit herself, had purchased a sheep ranch for the two of them just outside Yellowstone National Park\u2014sight unseen by Peter. &amp;quot;There was a wonderful old log cabin that had these huge blue spruce trees all around and the best views in the valley,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m not into feng shui, but it had that angle, with a hill in the back and a creek on both sides.&amp;quot; Fortunately, he shared her enthusiasm for the place. &amp;quot;I said, Oh, man, a log house. Incredible.&amp;#39; I&amp;#39;d always wanted to live in a log house.&amp;quot;\n\nThe two-bedroom cabin was built in the 1930s and was once owned by Dan Bailey, a physicist and fisherman of some renown. Along with the original homestead house, a barn and some outbuildings, it sat on a section of land over-looking the majestic Absaroka and Gallatin mountains. &amp;quot;There were sheep living in the homestead house when I first scoped it out,&amp;quot; admits Becky Fonda. &amp;quot;But the cabin was in pretty good shape.&amp;quot; De-spite modern touches like linoleum floors, the cabin retained much of its charm. &amp;quot;Peter was looking at the walls one day. He took a flashlight and a saber saw and cut a square in the lath and plaster and went, Aha!&amp;#39; There were just these beautiful honeyed logs underneath.&amp;quot;\n\nThe sheep were evicted\u2014the Fondas now grow hay, barley and rye in addition to apples\u2014and Becky laid out gardens for her prizewinning peonies. They restored the cabin&amp;#39;s log walls, removed the linoleum and added closets, another bedroom and a mudroom. Becky Fonda set about making the house &amp;quot;toasty&amp;quot; with Navajo rugs, heirloom furniture, vintage light fixtures, photographs by Edward Sheriff Curtis and paintings by local artist Russell Chatham, and Roseville and Indian pottery. Personal effects crowd the homey rooms\u2014photos of friends and family, porcelain hand-painted by Becky&amp;#39;s grandmother, Peter&amp;#39;s collections of old black-powder guns and Hawaiian steel guitars (he is known to jam on the porch with neighbor Jeff Bridges). &amp;quot;If you sit on a sofa, there will probably be a dog next to you, and it will be a Lab,&amp;quot; says Becky Fonda. &amp;quot;Everything is built for comfort.&amp;quot;\n\nUnlike most of Livingston&amp;#39;s higher-profile residents, the Fondas have always lived here year-round, braving the severe Montana winters to raise two sons from their previous marriages on the ranch. &amp;quot;It was pretty interesting, moving from a ship in the tropics up to the mountains where it gets 40 below,&amp;quot; muses Peter Fonda. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;d get a snowblower in front of my tractor and go out and blow snow just to go to the market.&amp;quot; But, he maintains, &amp;quot;it was a fabulous place for the boys to grow up. They got all of that country space and cleanness\u2014and the best powder in the West.&amp;quot;\n\nBridget Fonda would visit from L.A. during vacations, and the extended Fonda clan still gathers here every Fourth of July. &amp;quot;Jane&amp;#39;s kids and our kids get together, and we go to the rodeo and have cookouts and go fishing and camping and hiking,&amp;quot; says Peter Fonda. Did we mention the Road King in the driveway? A big gleaming bike with a license plate that reads 2DBONE, the Road King affords long back-road excursions like the trip Peter Fonda recently made to Milwaukee for Harley-Davidson&amp;#39;s 100th birthday party. &amp;quot;I belong to a motorcycle club called the Uglies,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Most of the Uglies go out for long-distance rides on couches, meaning they&amp;#39;ve got the soft seats, the bags, the radios. The Road King,&amp;quot; he insists, &amp;quot;is more of a hair-in-the-wind bike.&amp;quot;\n\nStill, maybe it&amp;#39;s age, maybe it&amp;#39;s his wife&amp;#39;s rose-hip jam, but Peter Fonda shows a few signs of mellowing. &amp;quot;This is the longest he&amp;#39;s ever been in one place in his life,&amp;quot; says Becky Fonda. &amp;quot;When he comes home from a shoot, I can always hear this little sigh come out of him.&amp;quot; No disagreement there. &amp;quot;To sit down in a lawn chair and look up at the mountaintop and watch the golden eagles teach their chicks how to fly,&amp;quot; says Peter Fonda, &amp;quot;it&amp;#39;s absolutely unique. We can park our lives here, as it were. For a while, anyway.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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