Wildness Reflected - Mission Mountains View From Ninepipe Wildlife Refuge, Montana

“What would the world be, once bereft 
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, 
O let them be left, wildness and wet; 
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), 

from Inversnaid 

Sun Up, Shore Bright - Peterson Lake, near Big Fork, Montana

“ …Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me 

keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be 
astonished.…”

— Mary Oliver (1935-2019), from “Messenger,” found in Mary Oliver’s collection Thirst

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.)

Looking Further - Ice & Stone 6 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

And this is the last of these shoreline dreamy-ice images, hoarded and savoured a bit too long unto myself, like that last perfect bite of your favourite holiday food. But even with furious snow/hail/rain flurries today, spring persistently advances and fresh views await.

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.)

Fading Treetop Frost - East Missoula, Montana

“We followed a trail into the hills on the eastern edge of the wide valley, our view dominated by the backdrop of mountains dark with the hazy purple-blue of distant conifers.“

 -Thunder Voice, Sam Keaton Series by Sigmund Brouwer, p. 95

Long Sweeping Hwy 12 View - Near Garrison, Montana

 “An old cowboy once told me that memory rides a quiet horse, taking you to the tops of high hills with long sweeping views. Well, this quiet horse would be riding until the day I died, with a view so pretty it would always pain my heart.” - p 299, Sun Dance (Sam Keaton, Legends of Laramie) by Sigmund Brouwer

(Click here to read first-person bits about Garrison, Montana.) 

Flathead River below SKQ Dam - Polson, Montana

Last weekend’s stunning end-of-summer Montana days were perfect for the short hike above Se¿lis¿ Ksanka Ql¿ispe¿  fka Kerr Dam. (…to offset scrumptious waffles at Good Coffee Roasting Co / Whistle Bake Shop in Polson, MT - yummm!)

Big Sky Glory - Sunset Over Missoula, Montana

Sunday evening’s sky awash with glory…

Big Sky Smokey Clouds, Big Blue Tractor - Near Ronan, Montana

Construction driving delays near Ronan, Montana, allows the fire-season (darker) version of “stop and smell the roses”…a rather strange dichotomous beauty in the flawless big sky span intersected by roiling wildfire smoke morphing into fluffy high cumulus clouds….

But the prayed-for rain is coming…

Glorious Morning- East Missoula, Montana

A wee Montana field weed allegory :

 Even the tiny wild morning glory thrives in opening its weedy little heart to the sun each day, then later wrapping in to its core all that sustaining warmth and life, ready for what’s next to come.

Aerial Big Sky Mountain View - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

“Seen from the sky the arid landscape lay, a lovely thing. The plains were gold and purple, the clouds cast great blue-black shadows, there were toy boxes in a dark green patch that marked the oasis of an occasional ranch house, and near by the jade-green circlets that meant water holes. So, in the almost unbearably brilliant blue sky, they soared and roared aloft in a giant iridescent bubble.” - Giant by Edna Ferber, p. 35

Near Mountains in Snowfall - East Missoula, Montana

I repeatedly marvel at the intimate nearness of the surrounding mountains of the Bitterroot and Missoula valleys. It brings peripherally to mind C.S. Lewis’s portals that transport from a must-get-through mindset to an entirely different perspective that stirs the soul to wonder. 

(And yes, we are still getting random snow this week…!)

Snowy Spring Day - Kootenai Creek - Near Stevensville, Montana

“…one is inclined to quess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of the mountains than on their tops….” - John Muir (1838-1914)

Getting Closer to Yellowstone…& Spring - Near Livingston, Montana

“…Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone - we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation.…' “

-Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Ch 27

Wisdom On The Wind - Near Alberton, Montana

“His wisdom came from deep wells - from the things that had been known to the generations that had gone before him. It was fashionable to put all that knowledge behind us, to think that only our modern understanding counted for something, but that, she thought, was so wrong, so wrong.  We were not the first people to tread where we now trod;  countless ancestors had come exactly this way.  And although their footprints might have been blown away by the wind, we could sense  their presence if only we opened our eyes and ears to it.  And we could hear his voices, too, if we listened hard enough.  We could hear their warnings, their encouragements, their advice - if only we turned our heads to the wind and heard the voices, faint and distant, that the wind carried.  We could hear.”

- The Joy & Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 40-41

US Hwy 135 Sunset - Clark Fork River near Paradise, Montana

 #794 - Things I Love About Montana: 

Even on a no-stops-allowed schedule, Big Sky majesty meets you right along the well-beaten path. 

(Safety first, tho’ - the perfectly placed turnout allowed a quick smell-the-roses stop where maximum sunset reflection mirrored the thankfulness overflow in my heart.)

Nestled - Bitterroot Valley, Montana

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words  - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

-C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Weight of Glory

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

Full Spring Ahead - Bitterroot Valley, Montana

“…but if you never do, don't be discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all . . . They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness." “

-Mrs. Allan to Anne, Anne of Avonlea, Chapter 15 by L.M. Montgomery