Hopeful - Missoula, Montana

"...I can only imagine the pile of requests languishing on some ignored [Congressional] desk...My army is fading before my eyes. I am holding it together by sheer will and God's grace..."

"With all these trials, what keeps the men here?"

He considered this a moment. 
"Hope. 
 Hope is its own army and carries its own weapons.
 Without it we will surely perish."

-The novelized George & Martha Washington,
   in Washington's Lady by Nancy Moser, p. 290

Moonlight And Mountains - East Missoula, Montana

"...The moon hangs between the mountains like a searchlight, making a path through flimsy clouds. I breathe deeply...The mountains, knit together seamlessly, form a black velvet fortress around me. The dark sky lightens to a shimmer of silver on the mountaintop, like a window shade that can not reach the sash to keep out the light. The details are clean - bare branches with fluttery edges like curls, and strong black veins in the trunks and branches of the mighty pine trees. I am so small here...."

- from Big Cherry Holler by Adriana Trigiani, p. 43

 (BTW, seriously losing track of time in this book series - & I love it when I read something precisely perfect for a recent photo!)

Perspective (Zoomed Out) - Missoula, Montana

“Life is about perspective and how you look at something... ultimately, you have to zoom out.”

-Whitney Wolfe Herd

Roaming Rocks or River Bank Ice Scape - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

“It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.

There are two other possibilities: 

   one is paperwork, 

     and the other is nostalgia.”

-Frank Zappa

Lovely Moment - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

"Sometimes it is enough to be near something lovely.
It doesn't require possession;
 nothing has to come of it,
 nothing need be created from it.
Let its purpose be
 to exist solely as a thing of beauty
 and provide joy."

- From Tony's Wife by Adriana Trigiani, p. 428

Holding Up The Winter Sky - Lolo, Montana

“I prefer winter and fall,

 when you can feel the bone structure

 in the landscape---the loneliness of it---the dead

 feeling of winter.

Something waits beneath it---the whole story doesn't show.”

- Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)