Something Else Than Ice - Rattlesnake Creek, Missoula, Montana

“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, ‘What else could this mean?’”

- Shannon L. Alder

Iced Tree Lines - Grant Creek, Missoula, Montana

"One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it." - Alec Wilkinson, The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

Cottonwood Corridor - Missoula, Montana

Falling in the creek (almost) is not quite like falling in love (for real).
But they have their similarities.

The good news is I did not fall in the creek yesterday - which would have been hilarious, since not life threatening this time of year, but terribly inconvenient to my hectic afternoon at work.
The little outcrop of tree debris and ice - which I heartily poked with a stick to be sure it wouldn't sink - lured me with promise of a better perspective; a low leg stretch brought it in reach. I just didn't count on a camera arm extension adding too much teeter to my tottering islet. Oh, plus I let go of my designated safety branch attached to the big, sturdy tree. Enter flailing, stage right (where is my safety branch?!); exit with a less than spectacular topple onto my right hand - which also cradled my phone/camera/music source, thus bending my headphone jack, cutting out sound to the left earpiece. BUT neither I nor phone/etc embraced chilly water ie. good news.

Which circles back to falling in love - really!
From my (dry) point of view, here are a few parallels:
- the glorious possibilities of in-loveness can addle our sound judgement and even nudge us off balance from a more cautious perspective. Thus, It's a good idea to (metaphorically) poke future scenarios a little more aggressively and with a sturdier stick
- sometimes a stretch out of your comfort zone leads to a clearer perspective
- alternately, sometimes how far you have to stretch is a big fat clue that this is not a smart choice
- we often try to do too much in the limited special time we set aside, instead of simply being fully present in a beautiful moment - and then we miss out on half of what we need to hear.
- when falling ends in a bad landing, we are somewhat shaken by realization that it could have been much worse, and mentally promise ourselves to never again be this stupid - well, at least not this exact version of stupid. 

That's all I've got.
But perhaps you can cull a few more similarities, from your own near-fallings, love-  or  other-ward? I'd love to read your comments, below!