Freshest Blooming - My Neighbour’s Spring Crocus, Missoula, Montana

“And then the light changed, and the vegetation of the ground. It was April and the freshest flowers of the year were blooming under the trees.” - from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, p. 351

The Road To Town - Missoula, Montana

“Some of the changes in my life were imposed, and some were chosen - if by "chosen ” I may mean that I chose what I seemed already to have been chosen by, desire having obscured the alternatives. And each change has been a birth, each having taken me to a new life from which I could not go back. 

And I have asked myself, "Would I have known such births if, from Pigeonville or Lexington, I had taken one of the paths by which people get somewhere and make something of themselves? " But of course I have no answer.”

-from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, p.299

Horse Pasture - Grantsdale, Montana

"But through all changes so far, the farm had endured. Its cycles of cropping and grazing, thought and work, were articulations of its wish to cohere and to last. The farm, so to speak, desired all of its lives to flourish.

Athey was not exactly, or not only, what is called a "landowner." He was the farm's farmer, but also its creature and belonging. He lived its life, and it lived his; he knew that, of the two lives, his was meant to be the smaller and the shorter."  

- Wendell Berry, from Jayber Crow

Garden Rain - Missoula, Montana

“The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain.” - Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow