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

Open To Imagine - Bitterroot Valley, Corvallis, Montana

“Yet are these things more difficult to accept than that all of existence came out of a single, random moment when cosmic gases exploded? Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children and open ourselves to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so .”

-from This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, page 444

(Big thanks to Sissie #3 for this glorious walking scenery shot!)

Morning Walk (aka Adventure) - Missoula, Montana

All of 25 degrees Fahrenheit on this brisk Missoula, Montana, morning - and there are people out running IN SHORTS!!! Guessing (since I have no desire to know from experience) that running provides a whole different personal climate (although that one girl’s legs were pret-ty bright red....).  

Call me a wuss, but for me it’s the  classic toque-gloves-scarf combo until temps are waaayyy above freezing! One less thing to distract from the same goal as when we were kids kicked outdoors to amuse ourselves - stay balanced (on whatever was available) or the (imaginary) alligators will get you!  

(Warning: Walks that turn into flights of fancy may also occur among adults!)

Unintended Canvas - Missoula, Montana

Fences stand with great intent - 
to keep in, 
to keep out, 
to keep safe,
to shield...

And despite focused planning, they may stand, too,
as an unintended canvas 
for those who subscribe to these words from a renowned ponderer: 
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.”  - Henry David Thoreau