As a passionate outdoor reporter for many years, Kris Millgate said there were moments that would cause her to step back out of objective “work mode” and become human.

Like the time she was nose-to-nose with a grizzly bear, and it woke up from its sedation.

“So what’s it like to go nose-to-nose with a grizzly bear? You’re going to pee your pants,” Millgate said. “I could never tell you in my news story that I peed my pants, but inside a book, I can tell you that you are so scared that you pee your pants.”

Millgate was talking about some of her personal experiences she has included in her new book “My Place Among Men — Misadventures in the Wild,” while sitting alongside the Snake River at Freeman Park last week.

Her first book tells the personal side of many of the stories she covered as an outdoors reporter. The book is due on shelves Aug. 6, and her first book signing event will be Aug. 7 at Great Harvest in Idaho Falls. The event is sponsored by Teton Land Trust. Millgate, who lives in Idaho Falls, has planned her first seven book signing events in Idaho before going out of state.

Millgate said the book grew out of answering the question, “What’s it like to be the only woman in the woods?”

“They wanted to know what it was like to be in that moment, and I realized that maybe writing inside of a news story wasn’t giving them that,” she said.

Millgate said because of her journalistic approach, she carefully kept herself out of her stories. In her new book, she puts herself front and center, in an autobiographical way. Sometimes the stories are awkward, sometimes humorous.

One tells how she stepped away from a huddle of men collaring a bighorn sheep to get a video shot of the animal being released. Microphones were still attached to men in the group and linked to her ear.

“In the huddle as I walk away I hear, ‘Where’s she going? Does she even know what she’s doing? Is she any good?’” she said. “It’s that moment when you kind of roll your eyes and think, ‘Honestly, is he really asking if I’m any good? He has no idea of what I’m really doing. He thinks I’m just this silly little girl running around in the woods.’ I heard somebody else in the huddle say, ‘You’ll know the answer to that when you see her story.’ I was kinda proud of that moment. I don’t know who said either statement.”

A goofier story in her book involves a hunting guide in New Mexico taking her to elk habitat that was recovering.

“I’ve never been to New Mexico, I don’t know New Mexico at all,” she said. “I don’t know this guide at all. Before the sun is even up we are hiking in single file, and we have to get into our spot before the sun comes up and he says, ‘I really wish you would fart.’ I said ‘What?’ He said, ‘It would make us feel more comfortable because we have a woman with us, and we would all feel more comfortable if you’d just go ahead and fart.’ I said, ‘I don’t fart on cue, but I will be so upset if you keep talking when the sun comes up and you ruin my shot.’ ”

Millgate started working as a general assignment TV reporter before she left college at the University of Utah. She bounced around to several cities across the U.S. for about 10 years. She and her husband settled in Idaho Falls, and she started the company Tight Line Media to produce stories for a variety of media and also do production work. Millgate is a lifetime member of Trout Unlimited and former commissioner for Idaho Falls Parks and Recreation. She’s a fly fisher, trail runner and youth hockey coach.

During her time at other cities, she always wanted to get back West. Unlike several other female TV reporters, she didn’t mind getting a little dirty.

“I was the only one that would keep boots in my car,” she said. “So I could go from court to a farmer’s field and get muddy, and I’d have the boots to do it.”

Millgate grew up in Utah surrounded by the Wasatch Mountains.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Do you miss those mountains because mountains don’t surround us here?’” she said. “I do miss the Wasatch Mountains, but I would not trade them for the Snake River.”

She grew up hiking the mountains with her father.

“My mother says I don’t have a danger gene, which is true, but my dad doesn’t have an internal compass,” she said. “We were always lost, and he would never admit it. I learned to follow him wherever he was going. It taught me persistence and endurance and patience. I use all of those skills in my job now.”

The book shows readers a personal side of many of the major outdoor issues facing the West today, such as public lands, grizzly bears, wolves and the loss of salmon in the West. It was stories such as these that pulled her into outdoor reporting.

“Those stories mattered, and you have to get dirty to get those, or you have to get cold,” she said. “There were days when it was 20 below, and my batteries were in my armpits, and the snot freezes in my nose. Some people don’t have any interest in having a workday like that. But I do. I think the stories that come out of the wild are just fascinating.”

Now with her new book, readers will learn her reaction to the experiences. Her human side.

“Inside those stories there’s a moment where I stop what I’m doing, and even though my camera is still rolling I step back as a human and look at the moment and think, I’m on top of a beaver dam and looking at the first Chinook I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. “I’m human right then, I’m not a reporter. You feel things in a different way when you flip from work mode to personal mode. Those moments go into the book.”

A project, started in 2012 and employing more than 100,000 hours of labor to spruce up, rehabilitate and rebuild the Jenny Lake area in Grand Teton National Park, has finally been completed.

With a snip of the ribbon earlier this month, national park officials and the Grand Teton National Park Foundation celebrated the refurbished Jenny Lake area, the park’s most popular destination.

Leslie A. Mattson, president of the Grand Teton National Park Foundation noted a long list of changes from exhibits, to kiosks, to the walkways under your feet.

“Everything is going to be different,” Mattson said. “The central area where the visitors center is and the store there has all been redone. There are interpretive exhibits outside. There’s a bronze relief map of the mountain range, there’s interpretive elements that talk about the history of climbing the Grand Teton. The visitors center has been updated and redone inside, it’s absolutely beautiful.”

She said there also are some interpretive elements and access to the lake shoreline from the visitors center is also disabled accessible.

Also, heavy revamping was done to eroded trails around the lake and rerouting and refurbishing trails from the boat dock on the west side of the lake to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point.

“There was an area on the hike to Hidden Falls where four points of the trail were all intersecting and it was very confusing,” Mattson said. “In fact the rangers called it “confusion junction” because kids would get lost there. They might be ahead of their parents and the parents didn’t know which way they went. That’s been eliminated.”

The park said in a news release that work completed reduces congestion and ambiguity by creating suggested directional trails, larger boat docks, increased restroom facilities, and designated areas to rest and take in the stunning views. Mattson said an old bridge has been replaced with an “absolutely beautiful” new bridge.

“Jenny Lake’s trails, bridges, key destinations, and visitor complex have transformed into a portal for discovery and now allow people with a wider range of abilities to connect with the park in meaningful, memorable ways,” the park said in a news release.

Park trail crews specifically worked to improve drainage of rainwater and snowmelt on Jenny Lake trails to fix erosion. Some trails suffered from rocks and tree roots being exposed by years of use and erosion.

One of the trail sections that benefited from the revamp was the route to Inspiration Point.

“That is a lot of intense rock work by the trail crew here,” Mattson said. “It’s been made safer and easier for people to access that. It’s still a wilderness experience — it is a backcountry — but it’s much easier and safer than it was.”

“The transformation that has taken shape at Jenny Lake … would not have been possible without the incredible public-private partnership between the foundation and the park,” Mattson said. “We cannot wait for visitors to experience the renewed Jenny Lake area.”

The foundation raised $14.5 million and the National Park Service contributed more than $6 million to make the transformation a reality.

The Tex Creek Wildlife Area east of Idaho Falls is set to grow by 1,552 acres after a land acquisition was given the go-ahead.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commission recently approved the land deal during its quarterly meeting held in Grangeville. Also approved for purchase was a 232-acre parcel of grass and shrubland about 10 miles northeast of Boise adjacent to the Boise River Wildlife Management Area.

The new acquisition in East Idaho butts up against Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area about 20 miles east of Idaho Falls.

“It’s on the south end of Tex Creek, kind of off the Kepps Crossing Road,” said Gregg Servheen, Fish and Game wildlife program coordinator. “Those additional acres will provide that amount of public access to Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area.”

Servheen said the area was previously grazing land and has kept its natural habitat characteristics.

“It will be providing for normal spring, summer and transition to winter range needs for wildlife,” he said. “For big game, in particular, it will serve as winter range and transition range for deer and elk. This will help improve the ability of Tex Creek to keep and hold those animals during winters and such.”

Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area is a combination of Fish and Game property, Bureau of Reclamation land and state land managed by Fish and Game. Its current size is about 34,000 acres. Much of the area surrounds Ririe Reservoir and land south of it.

The purchase price for the two properties is $1.96 million. It will be paid for using Bonneville Power Administration mitigation funds. The mitigation funds are a result of a settlement deal between the state and Bonneville Power Administration for impacts to fish and wildlife associated with the Columbia River Power System.

“It’s pretty frequent we get folks come to us want us to look at purchasing land,” Servheen said. “Lots of them are interested in protecting habitat and helping wildlife.”

To find a map of the Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area online, go to idfg.idaho.gov/old-web/docs/wma/texCreek.pdf.