Flathead Lake Kayaking - Big Arm, Montana

Pre-1894 start of Labour Day (Canada and USA):“Supervision was harsh and punishments were handed out to those who talked or sang as they worked.” -Investopedia Term Of The Day

Well, I would have been in constant trouble on the singing charge, for sure! Feeling fortunate to work in present-day North America, for this and so many other reasons.

Wherever you are, hoping you are safe and finding beauty and gratitude somehow.

Experience Calm - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

“It has become my way to dispense with incessant seeking in favor of stumbling upon answers. In the words of Picasso, "I find, I do not seek.” No longer desperate to know every outcome these days I tend to wait and see, a far more satisfying way of being that lacks specificity and instead favors experience over analysis.”

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p. 163-164

Wonder More - Ladybug - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

“Here, where much more is hidden than apparent, I am reminded that a companion to mystery is peace; that knowing less and wondering more offers expectancy.”

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p. 163

Small Mysteries (Ladybug 2) - Flathead Lake, Big Arm, Montana

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

– Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), from Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

Genuine Ladybug - Flathead Lake, Big Arm, Montana

“ “But I no longer want to edit my behavior, twisting myself up like a pretzel.“ 

“You won't ,” she assured me. "Now that you've tasted the other, you won't go backwards. It'll be better than ever, you'll see. Just let whatever comes flow through you and then away.  

Everyone is after the same thing, y'know. It's called intimacy. The only way to experience it is to be yourself.” “

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p.138

Sunrise Reflection - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

Big thanks to early rising Sissie #3 for this glorious shot - a purrrfect pairing to a quote I’d been saving for just such a day!

“Why do men lie prone in their beds,” she murmured, “and the great glory of God washin’ the hills with holy fire?”

- From the 1953 short story “She Went By Gently” by Paul Vincent Carroll (1900-1968)

Smoky Sunrise Bloom - Big Arm, Montana

“But I believe if you tell a story, it's like sending a nightingale into the air with the hope that its song will never be forgotten .”

-from This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, page 443

Balanced Camping - Big Arm, Montana

The rightness of grasses not mowed to conformity, shrubs and willows allowed to spread within mostly natural inclination ...there’s something about the ...mmmm...I hate to say ‘balance’ but maybe more at ‘compromise’ of this cheek-to-jowl coexistence between accessible wildness and the minimal human constraints in the best kind of campground.

It feeds something in me. Perhaps it mirrors my own inner seeking - like water seeks its level - to be simultaneously unfettered yet at rest within this life season’s constraints. 

Looking Through - Big Arm, Montana

“As if being me

were a problem, I sometimes 

crave a solution.”

- haiku by Richard Bauckham