Gravel Bar View From West Broadway - Missoula, Montana

Looong evening walks offset the summer's ice cream indulgence, and send me treasure hunting for river poems.

"...Heed me and hear my loneliness. Split by a desire to be known 

by a crowd of solitaires and by one word split. 

A raven falls out of the yellow flame of a willow.

Its wings purely black buff sunlight. 

It paces the gravel bar, lifts into westerly sun. 

Wing flash. Black luster. Gone..."

- from The Word by Emily Warn

Further Along The Gibbon River - Yellowstone Park

blue sky air 

awash in fresh pine,

sunbeams' gentle touch

pinks slightly

lightly

cap-sleeved shoulders,

water lily pads float

distant 

in still water offshoots; 

breathe deep

this feast for the senses,

balm for the soul.

-ch

One Little Rock - Missoula, Montana

"Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy -- it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. 
To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head." 

- Steven H. Strogatz, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

Stonefly Molt - Missoula, Montana

"Stoneflies aren’t pretty… until the trout start eating them with abandon..."  - Tom Chandler

Shaping Water - Missoula, Montana

"When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light." - Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

Quiet Waters - Hamilton, Montana

I don't think still waters running deep applies in the pictured section of the Bitterroot River, but I do have it on good authority that it's a leisurely float stretch - just add sunscreen and inner tubes!

Winter Thaw - Missoula, Montana

"Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass."
- from 'Thaw' by Edward Thomas

Willow Wisp, East Missoula, Montana

Smoke from distant forest fires continues to fade the blue of our Western Montana skies and blur the mountains’ features. But summer heat continues as the Clark Fork River lilts its cool and clear siren song to floaters and anglers, swimmers and toe-dippers, alike.

Bitterroot River Parallels, Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge, Montana

1) Gaze upon above idyllic scene.
2) Insert peaceful sigh.
3)Make plans to visit.

Driftwood In the Calm, Woodside, Montana

As I tromped thru the Woodside Crossing section of the Teller Wildlife Refuge, my welcome companion was the happy memory of taking this hike with my sister last summer.