Crystalized - Missoula, Montana

“White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Go Griz - Missoula, Montana

It’s gonna be a hot time in the big town tonight as Missoula gets ready for the University of Montana Grizzly football team to host San Diego’s Toreros in tomorrow’s playoff game. Depending on the outcome, tomorrow’s match could be the last on-the-job game for retiring Griz coach Mick Delaney, revered as an all-around great human being, as well as a noteworthy football coach. Go Griz!

Holiday Cheer....? - Missoula, Montana

Oh, the indignity!

To his credit, Maestro was a very forbearing feline model for varied costumes, under the supervision of my youngest niece, during the pie course of our early Thanksgiving gathering. (Yes, the reindeer was only the beginning....)

Gotta love a good cat!

Holding Fast - Missoula, Montana

"...test everything, and hold fast to what is good..." - Paul the Apostle, from 1 Thessalonians 5:21

Iced Streambank - Missoula, Montana

"winter beginning

a bird's voice follows

a frozen stream"

- From the book “White Crow Haiku” by Anna Holley

Overlooking East Missoula, Montana

“The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what ‘the story of the trees’ would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.” - Author unknown, quoted in "Quotations for Special Occasions” by Maud van Buren, 1938

Patient Wanderers - Missoula, Montana

“It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!” - John Muir, July 1890