Spring Greens and Mountains - Mission Mountains, Montana

Layers of so much greenness near Flathead Lake, Montana, from the ongoing spring rain! But further Southwest, persistent precipitation provoked state of emergency flooding - along with an outpouring of  Big Sky sized kindness to assist families in the flooded communities.  We live, at times, precariously on the fine edge between extravagant  beauty and the fear of too much.

Mission Mountains Marsh Melody - Near Ronan, Montana

“The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.” - Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), The Log of the Sun

Nestled - Bitterroot Valley, Montana

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words  - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

-C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Weight of Glory

Late Grape Hyacinth Beauty - Missoula, Montana

“The beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us, coming through matter.”

-Simone Weil (1909-1943)

Light-Seeking Effort - Missoula, Montana

“Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.”

-Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)

The Road To Town - Missoula, Montana

“Some of the changes in my life were imposed, and some were chosen - if by "chosen ” I may mean that I chose what I seemed already to have been chosen by, desire having obscured the alternatives. And each change has been a birth, each having taken me to a new life from which I could not go back. 

And I have asked myself, "Would I have known such births if, from Pigeonville or Lexington, I had taken one of the paths by which people get somewhere and make something of themselves? " But of course I have no answer.”

-from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, p.299

River’s Influence - Yellowstone River, Livingston, Montana

“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Nature

Still Wintery Sky - Near Wilsall, Montana

I’ve been hoarding this evocative quote, but the timing is now quite perfect, both to honour an inspiring author AND because it is still snowing fiercely in Montana…!

"I wiped my hands on my apron and went to the window. Outside, the prairie reached out and touched the places where the sky came down. Though the winter was nearly over, there were patches of snow and ice everywhere. 

I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. 

But they couldn’t." 

-Anna Witting, in Sarah, Plain And Tall by Patricia MacLachlan