Bitterroot Mountains from Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge - Stevensville, Montana

Perfect pockets of sun and shadow - plus a lovely side of laughter among friends! -  made for a gorgeous fall ramble at the Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge. 

(I THINK that may be St. Mary's Peak in the background...  not as simple as I'd hoped to logic 

our this peak's location on a map.... please comment if you can confirm or deny.) 

Cotton-Woodsy - Maclay Flats, Missoula, Montana

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods."
 -Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Still Snow In Them Thar Hills - Bitterroot Mountains, Hamilton, Montana

A delight-full upside of these lingering rainy spring days is the extended viewing season of snow-capped mountains. (But I'm plenty ready for more sunshine, pretty please!)

 

A Good Day For Fishing - Bitterroot River, Hamilton, Montana

(Look close for the two fisher-persons, a bit left of the bend on the grassy right bank...)

"He told us about Christ's disciples being fisherman, and we were left to assume...that all great fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."   -Norman Maclean (1902-1990), in A River Runs Through It

On Light, Spirit,Hope - Marias River, MT-I-15, Near Shelby, Montana

"Light...illuminates both things we want to see and don't want to see....Light is energy you can't touch or corral, which is also the nature of spirit....Light, candles, full moons magnify spirit that is in the wings...." 
-Anne Lamott, p. 21 of Almost Everything

Gorgeous Autumn Gold - Grant Creek, Missoula, Montana

In case I didn't mention this recently, we've been having the best kind of gorgeous autumn, as you can plainly see in this sun-gilded shot of Grant Creek right in the middle of Missoula's industrial north-end segement.

Pocket Of Clear - Missoula, Montana

The 

wind 

whirls and 

whittles out 

pockets of clear

amidst besetting 

haze

-ch

Treetop Silhouettes- South of Hot Springs, Montana

"Blue sky, golden cloud ...
What a feeling of forever!
The languid tree-tops
lithely remain mysterious.
A sign, you would think..."

-  Alberto Blanco, from "First Star", page 83 of 

Dawn of the Senses: Selected Poems of Alberto Blanco

River Weeds And Wildness Yet - Turah, Montana

"What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet." - from Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Wide River, No Hurry - Missoula, Montana

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day." – A. A. Milne (1882-1956), Pooh’s Little Instruction Book 

Shadows Stretch To Shore - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

"Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Hoping Forward - Missoula, Montana

"I leant upon a coppice gate 

      When Frost was spectre-grey, 

And Winter's dregs made desolate 

      The weakening eye of day. 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

      Like strings of broken lyres, 

And all mankind that haunted nigh 

      Had sought their household fires...

...The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

      Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth 

      Seemed fervourless as I. 

At once a voice arose among 

      The bleak twigs overhead 

In a full-hearted evensong 

      Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, 

      In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul 

      Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings 

      Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

      Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

      His happy good-night air 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

      And I was unaware. " 

- from The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

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

Long Shadows - Missoula, Montana

"To contemplate is to look at shadows." - Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Woods On Every Side - Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

"But when day came, with a sprinkle of rain, and he looked about him and saw on every side an unknown woods, wild heaths, and blue mountain, he thought how large and strange the world was and felt frightened and small." - from Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (Nov. 29, 1898 - Nov.22, 1963)

Weight Of The Autumn Sky - Missoula, Montana

"And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance—
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins."-  from Envoi by  Kathleen Raine (1908-2003)

Rampant Autumn Gold On Grant Creek - Missoula, Montana

Montana's mining history - and present - is rife with tales of dedicated creekside miners investing their toil and time into a passionate belief of striking it rich on a  particular claim. Thank goodness for me, our fair state boasts another variety of golden riches, available every autumn by the rampant eyeful - without breaking a sweat, or even leaving the cozy confines of your vehicle.

Winded Woods on Grant Creek - Missoula, Montana

“When the wind blows through a wood, its mass is cut and closed by every leaf, forming a train of jittery vortices in the air” - AliceOswald

Toppled - Missoula, Montana

Monday night's crazy storm in the Missoula and Bitterroot valleys left a lot of cattywampus in its wake, toppling aged trees and power lines. I'm still pondering how it is that the neighbors across the street had essentially uninterrupted power while our side of the street had no power from about 7:00 PM Monday night through well into Tuesday. Ah, well - here's to thankfulness that we still had running water and we don't live in tornado country!

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!