Wild Montana Sky and Mission Mountains - Approaching KMSO, Missoula, Montana

Always happy to return home to the wide and wild Montana skies - and gorgeous new snow on the Mission range this trip! (At least I'm pretty sure those are the Missions...please correct me if I'm wrong here!). 

Pop-Up Mission Mountains - Ravalli, Montana

Never gets old, whatever the season - that first pop-up view of the Mission range upon cresting Highway 93's winding hill just past Ravalli, Montana. 

"I think back to ... the dry summers when Father and George and the other homesteaders watched as cloud after cloud dragged across the Rockies and the tufts of rain would catch on the distant peaks and be of no help to their fields." - The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (1939-2015), p. 46-47 (lg type)

Spring Cloud Wave Over Mount Sentinel - Missoula, Montana

"And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time."  -Wendell Berry, from Jayber Crow, p. 205

Sound of Music Trail View - East Missoula, Montana

My advance apologies for the catchy ditty about to be stuck in your head, but this photo view point really IS called The Sound of Music Trail.... 

(And the surrounding Missoula hills were, indeed, alive with the sound of music as hundreds of people of many area churches united to pray and praise over our city at summer's end!) 

Tansy At Twilight - Maclay Flat, Missoula, Montana

Pack in a lawn chair and sit awhile, cool your dusty, summer-hot feet in the Bitterroot River, maybe even at this same perfect spot on Maclay Flat just south of Missoula, Montana. 

“The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. “ — Chinese philosopher

Not Earned - Echinacea / Coneflower - Missoula, Montana

"Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action."

-—Dallas Willard (1935-2013), Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984, 1993, 1999), 194.

Looking Up - Autumn - Leaves - Missoula, Montana

“She looked up. The sky was without cloud, a dome of lightest blue filled with air, great swirls and eddies of it, which you could see — just about — if you stared long enough. She breathed in deeply, and felt the fine dry air fill her with a buoyant optimism.”

-Mma Ramotswe, p. 85 in large type edition, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novel by Alexander McCall Smith

Worth the Wait - Mailboxes, Near Kalispell, Montana

Big thanks to Sister #3 for today’s musings & Big Sky view during her recent Montana meanderings. 

 Rural mailboxes captured my imagination, reminders that some things in life are worth waiting for. 

"I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There's something about that person's breath and hands on the letter." 

-Diane Lane in interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, Sept. 26, 2008

One Road In - Tally Lake, Near Whitefish, Montana

“[He] drove the threads of back roads and gravel lanes that knitted the farms and hamlets of Black Earth County together in a loose fabric of commerce and community. “ -The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger , p 103 (Lg Type)

—Click here for more about Tally Lake in Western Montana—-

Past And Present - Hilltop Above the Dearborn River, Montana

“My mother brought this up in the first week after my father passed away. In a time like that, the past meets you wherever you turn. The days do not use their own hours and minutes, they find ones you have lived through with the person you are missing.” - Jick McCaskill, in English Creek by Ivan Doig (1939-2015), p. 333

Mountain Layers, Aerial View - Somewhere Over Western Montana

“It still floors me, how the mountains are not the same any two days in a row. As if hundreds of copies of those mountains exist and each dawn brings in a fresh one, of new color, new prominence of some feature over the others, a different wrapping of cloud or rinse of sun for this day's version.” -Jick McCaskill, in English Creek by Ivan Doig (1939-2015), p. 77 

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. 

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.

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.)

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)