Run(Walk) For The Luck Of It - Missoula, Montana

Big thanks to Run Wild Missoula for coordinating today's Run for the Luck of It 5&7K, and to Washington Corporations for sponsoring employees. Great turnout for this top 'o the mornin' run/walk - with costumes!

(No, I did not run - bite your tongue! Rather, I enjoyed a brisk walk around Missoula's downtownish neighbourhoods.)

Seed Shine - Missoula, Montana

It's official: my hiking season is closed until the first summer heat wave.

Why, you ask? Particularly since nature daily beckons with all her springly wiles, "Come closer!"??

Well, The Best Husband Ever - who does not traipse about in nature - found a tick on his person.

If that doesn't give you the heebie-jeebies, you've a stronger constitution than I, my friend. Or you've never had this brand of sneaky little creature tickle your neck a couple of days after you were last in their terrain. (Shudder!) And you haven't seen the giant tick at the Ravalli County Museum's historical display of Rocky Mountain Tick Fever research.

On the bright side, I suppose this qualifies as is a sure sign of spring.  Which I will happily enjoy from the safe distance of concreted city streets, and a few select treeless, grassless hilltop trails. After I vacuum the house (and husband) one more time.

Letting Go - Missoula, Montana

"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem." - Rollo May (1909-1994)

Fresh Layers - Near Superior, Montana

"...In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art 

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes."

- from 'The Layers' by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)

Pines a la Sunlight - West of St. Regis, Montana

As much as I relish calming grain land views that pull your worries out and away to the far horizon, multiple hours driving through eastern Washington was enough to last me a while, & I was glad to see Montana's tall and greening pines again.

Winter Thaw - Missoula, Montana

"Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass."
- from 'Thaw' by Edward Thomas

Intersections - West of Superior, Montana

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, 
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.” - Wendell Berry