Breaking Through Frozen - Rattlesnake Creek, Missoula, Montana

”They have no idea that sadness can freeze more than just your joy and break more than your heart.”

 -from The Letter: An unforgettable novel of love, war and secret kept for generations by Ruth Saberton

Promising Winter Hollyhock - White Sulphur Springs, Montana

“I used to feel sad on New Year's Eve, clinging to the old year, never wanting it to be over. I avoided good-byes for the same reason, clinging to what was, simply because it was known, whereas the future was unknown and therefore to be worried over. How much fear has controlled my life . No longer!

... I pat my firm thighs and promise to banish further negative thinking...I raise my glass to being big, beautiful, feminine, and forever changing, promising to work with my bones and flesh. After all , bones make new bones if they are exercised, skin sheds itself to make room for fresh flesh, muscles untangle and restore their strength. I truly have rejoined the human race.”

  -Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, pages 90-91

Small Facts - Grant Creek, Missoula, Montana

“Beside the grand history of the glaciers and their own, the mountain streams sing the history of every avalanche or earthquake and of snow, all easily recognized by the human ear, and every word evoked by the falling leaf and drinking deer, beside a thousand other facts so small and spoken by the stream in so low a voice the human ear cannot hear them. “ — John Muir (1838-914, Mountain Thoughts

Snow-capped Clarity - Missoula, Montana

“It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.”
—  Simone Weil (1909-1943)

 (Thank you,  Tim Ferriss for this hmmmm-provoking gem.)

UM Griz Football Famous Fan - Missoula, Montana

All kinds of fans came out of the woods to support the hometown team. Go Griz!

Into The Gap - Jocko Falls, near Arlee, Montana

“There's this gap, Jack. This opening between the story it is and the story I had wanted it to be - that's where the pain is, and that's where God came in and where I now hope transformation can happen.”

“For too long we avoided that gap, didn’t we?”

“Yes. I turned way from it with every preoccupation known to man. But no more.“

Jack donned his tattered grey fisherman’s hat… “Whenever you’d like to talk about it, you know, our friendship is big enough even for the sorrow.”

 

—Patti Callahan in Becoming Mrs. Lewis (the audiobook is quite lovely!)

Sunlight Falling - Rattlesnake Creek, Missoula, Montana

“The second day in Oxford arrived, luminescent, the honey hues of sunlight falling from the leaves to settle on the grass like spilled paint. The air was as clear as glass and soft as cotton.”  - from Becoming Mrs Lewis by Patti Callahan, Chapter 12 

Full-Fed - Big Hole River, Near Wisdom, Montana

“ ….as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river...this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All as a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. “  -Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), The Wind in the Willows
(Thanks again to Sissie 3 for sharing meander views!)