Lift Your Eyes - Absaroka Range, Livingston, Montana

Over the river (and Interstate-90, and miscellaneous mountains…) and through the woods …and you’ll eventually arrive at Yellowstone National Park. (In its early 1900’s heyday, you could gray trip to the Park on the tourist train direct from the Livingston, Montana depot.)

Route 66 House On The Hill - Butte, Montana

As a whippersnapper, The Best Husband Ever watched the TV show Route 66, admiring the cool cats who travelled the USA in their cool Corvette.  A few months back, we stumbled across the series on Prime and watched a couple episodes for nostalgia sake, including Season 2, Episode 1 filmed in Butte, Montana. On our jaunt to Butte last weekend, we found the episode’s iconic boarding house still in good shape and just up the hill from the Mother Lode Theatre. Travellers to Butte can stay there and enjoy the Big Sky hilltop views of  Continental Divide mountains and the graduated hues of Butte’s historic open pit copper mine. 

Stage Set Up - Mother Lode Theatre, Butte, Montana

Balcony view of the band stage setup for 406 shows off some of the many gorgeous lines and 1923 design details in Butte, Montana’s historic Mother Lode Theatre. (Click here to see ceiling detail at top of photo.)

Looking Up - Mother Lode Theatre, Butte, Montana

Unexpected beauty found looking up in the top balcony of the Butte, Montana historic Mother Lode Theatre. Great Made In Montana show in progress with Butte’s own Ken Rich opening for 406 and The Tomcats.

Looking Further - Ice & Stone 6 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

And this is the last of these shoreline dreamy-ice images, hoarded and savoured a bit too long unto myself, like that last perfect bite of your favourite holiday food. But even with furious snow/hail/rain flurries today, spring persistently advances and fresh views await.

Looking Into - Ice & Stone 5 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

"Sometimes a man walks into the night and does not understand why he cannot see. He blames himself for the dark he is in.” 

- Henry Meloux in Manitou Canyon, p.107, by William Kent Krueger

Almost Silence - Ice & Stone 4 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“He didn't hear anything except flakes settling on pine and hemlock needles, a sound that was almost, but not quite, silence.”

-from Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Seeing Inside Out - Ice & Stone 3 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“For the world is--allow us the homely figure--the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature.” - George MacDonald (1824–1905), in 1867 essay The Imagination: Its Function and its Culture

Close Observance - Ice & Stones 2 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“I draw, not to annoy people, but to amuse them, or to make them see things that are worth observing and that not everybody knows."

-Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) to brother Theo (1857-1891) in 1882 

(Thanks to Ingrid Schaffner for Iincluding this quote in her lovely & instructive book The Essential Vincent van Gogh.)

Letting Go - Ice and Stones on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“The truth about strong emotion is that it's difficult to sustain. Despite how victimized we feel, it's hard work hanging on to anger, even when it's tinged with righteousness. Holding a grudge against someone is (sometimes) more trouble than it's worth.” - Kinsey Millhone in R Is For Ricochet by Sue Grafton (1940-2017), p. 231 

Night Burgers - Missoula, Montana

Food truck yumminess! Gary’s Local $6 Burgers are open late enough for a fast and easy supper   - AND right by the library! Practically perfect in every way…

Reflecting On River and Life - Maclay Flats, Bitterroot River, Missoula, Montana

“Rivers are magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering and subconscious dreams, thrills, fears. People stare into the moving water, captivated, as they are when gazing into a fire. What is it that draws and holds us? The rivers' reflections of our lives and experiences are endless. “  - Tim Palmer, in Lifelines

Frosted Glory - East Missoula, Montana

"…the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does … a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being." -John Ruskin (1819–1900), in Modern Painters, Vol. III   1856

Sun-kiss Burns Off the Fog - East Missoula, Montana

As much as I dread driving in it, I love the beauty fog brings - it softens everyday realities, and  graces the trees with an other-worldly reminder .

Frosted Walk (and Then More Reading) - Missoula, Montana

“During those long afternoon walks in nature he came to believe that one must shut the mouth and open the eyes and ears, for nature only asked of him to look, listen, and attend.

After the walks: more reading.”

 -Young C.S. “Jack” Lewis, in Once Upon. A Wardrobe, by Patti Callahan, LT p. 166

Winter Sun and Frost - East Missoula, Montana

“…"You don't have to

prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready

for what God sends." I listened and put my hand

out in the sun again. It was all easy…..”

 - William Stafford (1914-1993) from his last poem "Are You Mr. William Stafford?"

(Thanks to Maria Popova/the marginalian for her ponder of  this bright light.)

Winter Leaf Frost and Amazement - Missoula, Montana

“… When it’s over, I want to say: all my life 

I was a bride married to amazement. …” - Mary Oliver (1935-2019) from her poem When Death Comes

Frost At Eventide - Missoula, Montana

“The day is gently sinking to a close,

Fainter and yet more faint the sunlight glows…

Where Thou art present, darkness cannot be,

Midnight is glorious noon, O Lord, with Thee.”

-

The Day Is Gently Sinking To A Close (1863) by  Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885)

(Thanks to Julia Spencer-Fleming for this poem opening her fourth Fergusson/Van Alstyne mystery To Darkness and To Death.)

Frost and Red Rose Hips - Missoula, Montana

Contrasts draw us in, as with red rose hips amidst  slender frost-outlined branches in the lingering evening light.

Cotton-Woodsy - Maclay Flats, Missoula, Montana

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods."
 -Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Riverbank Path At Maclay Flats, Bitterroot River - Missoula, Montana

“... By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.” —Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), The Wind in the Willows)