River Stories, Cottonwood Leaves - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

I do wonder what travel stories this cottonwood leaf duo could tell (if, of course, they could manage to stop for a chat or interview …).  

“The face of the river, in time, became a wonderful book . . . which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it had uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.” — (Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) aka Mark Twain , Life on the Mississippi)

Cottonwood Alley - Missoula, Montana

What a week - Sunday was shorts and t-shirt sunshine, Monday saw enough snow in the Bitterroot Valley that Corvallis, MT, called a snow day and canceled school! 

Springtime in Montana reminds us that change is part of life and there are no regrets when we choose to be fully present.

Winter Fenceline Shadows - Missoula, Montana

“He closed the missal, looked out the window at what was left of the day. Not too far back, it was the shortest day of the year. He was some farther north here, the shadows seemed longer, the blue in them colder.”

-from Coyote Wind, A Gabriel Du Pré Mystery by Peter Bowen (1945-2020), page 135

Spring-Sticky Greens - Missoula, Montana

My gardening-genius sister of the far northern city has been collecting aged horse manure after work - trowel scoop by trowel scoop, into large plastic bags carefully placed in her car trunk. (Yes, with patience being a virtue and all, she’s got a head start toward saintliness of some sort.) Last week, she texted something about metaphorical teaspoons and a photo of a sunset-silhouetted mountain of manure, with her comparatively teeny tiny car in the foreground. Her garden’s really going to be great this year.

Today she texted that our horse-whispering cousin’s new acreage has "singing frogs in the slough, ribbet ribbet",  (insert happy froggy emoticon) which made me think firstly, ’It’s such a Canadian thing to have fond thoughts of a slough.’ And nextly, ‘Surely, there exists a Canadian ode to spring-singing slough frogs?!’

Thoughts such as this are why Google is my Home screen.

I discovered that Lord de Tabley wrote, according to ‘The Living Age, Volume 270’, “…a charming set of interlinked sonnets to the frogs that sing unceasingly from early spring to harvest-time in every lake and pond and secret slough from end to end of Canada.“ Here’s my favourite find; may your very own memory spring to mind.

“Wrinkled oaks and plumy bracken,
Milkwort, skull-cap, sweet gale-bush,

Frog-pipe, more than you can reckon,
Cotton grass and flowering rush…”
- from ‘The Dirge of Day’, Lord de Tabley (1835-1895)

Fresh Layers - Near Superior, Montana

"...In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art 

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes."

- from 'The Layers' by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)

Sun-Kissed Butte, Fort Shaw, Montana

Still at the Fort Shaw historical sign pullout, pivot and scan down the highway, then continue your rotation to gaze across the road. On a clear summer day, you’ll see this same sun-kissed butte across the waving meadow grasses. And at the far horizon, the hazy mountain silhouette means home is just on the other side.

Three Tree View, Hieronymous Park, Hamilton, MT

'Tis the exact view upon arriving at the other side of the ramble through the bosky copse!