Grey Transformed - Rattlesnake Creek, Missoula, Montana

"But soon, he knew. It would come soon enough. And the gray November would be transformed into a bright sparkling wonderland of skiing and skating. Of snowball fights, and snow forts and snowmen, and angels made in snow that had fallen from the heavens."

- from A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, page 2

Bone Cold - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

"A damp wind was sweeping across the flatlands, carrying moisture from melting snow and ice, for hundreds of miles, and depositing it in their bones."

- from A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, page 96

Sky Post-Sorrow - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

"If it were possible to render sorrow, it would look like a November gale.

But, then like sorrow, it too passed and the new day arrived almost impossibly clear and bright, the sky a perfect blue."

- from A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, page 14


Tucked away as they are, the villagers in Louise Penny's fictional Three Pines community probably are not burdened with rampant power lines cluttering their views. But then, neither do they enjoy the compensation of Montana's ever-splendid sky. (And not just because they are, after all, fictional characters, natch!)