Fall Throwback - Haystacked - W. US Hwy 12 Near Helena, Montana

"People who think it’s so hard to find a needle in a haystack are probably not quilters. Needles find you. Just walk on the haystack for a second. You’ll find the needle." -Jenny Lawson in Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Shepherd Hills - Missoula, Montana

A warmer season Montana view for this brisk Christmas Day. Perhaps the shepherds “watched their flocks by night” in green hills much like these.

Click here to ponder more on their experience with Sis #3.  This Christmas, may we be blessed with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts open to receive our Creator’s truth & kindness.

Thistle, Weed, And Wind - Missoula, Montana

"...The wind is not helpless 

for any man's need, 

Nor falleth the rain 

but for thistle and weed..."

- From The Music, in The Collected Works of William Morris: Love is enough : Poems by the way by William Morris (1834-1896)

March Madness - East Missoula, Montana

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade." - from Great Expectations (ch. 54) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

More Like March - Missoula, Montana

Aah... snow-dusted mountaintops and early morning roadways (not shown here), brisk winds quickening your step, precipitation shifting any given moment between sleet and snow and rain - THIS is more like what March in Montana ought to look like! And also the reason why studded snow tyres are allowed right through until the end of May.

Childhood Remainder In Sight - Largent's Bend, Vaughn, Montana

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Green Grass Yet At Largent Bend - Vaughn, Montana

“We trample grass and prize the flowers of May, 
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.” 
- Robert Southwell, from "Scorn Not the Least"

Remote - Livingston, Montana

"This sudden remote bowl of pasture is called the Tierny Basin - or would be , if any human voice were there to say it's name." - Ivan Doig (1939-2015), This House of Sky, p 23

(Note: This is not a photo of the actual Tierney Basin, which is near the small town of Maudlow, Montana, north of Bozeman.)

Folded Landscape - East of Lincoln, Montana

"You could look out across that folded landscape and every sense you had told only that this was all the world there was." - from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, p 280

Wondrous Sky - Livingston, Montana

"I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread." - Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

View To Mount Jumbo - Missoula, Montana

Hiking with friends atop Missoula's Waterworks Hill trail system, we paused briefly - only to take in the widespread views, of course. Pointing out a route I'd taken last year that popped up along Mount Jumbo's ridge and then down its face, directly around the "L", I suddenly realized how big a hill that is. Plodding along the trail, your vision and concerns are more immediate and close. But stepping back a bit - or maybe a lot, as in this physical instance! - your perspective widens, which can give room to feel a bit proud of how far you've come.

Of course, it's always good to have a balancing factor: one of our little group pointed out a barely smaller hill to the left (out of this photo frame) and recounted his grandpa's telling how, back in the day, his grandma would go over the hill  every day to work in East Missoula - and back (uphill both ways - for real!). We sincerely hoped she had a trusty mule or horse to make that commute.

Accumulated Cumulus - Near Butte, Montana

"And see those clouds?'

'Hard to miss'
'Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?'
'I'm sure I should.'
'They're the best ones.'
'How come?'
'Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you're a kid. Which is nice, you know? ...” - Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight

April-like May - Near Livingston, Montana

"By now it was April, fooler of a month. One day the weather would be what passed for spring at an elevation of a mile, and the next would feel as if it had come from Iceland." - Ivan Doig (1939-2015), "Sweet Thunder", p. 12

Rangeland- SouthWest Montana

"..Western land was made for those

Who like land wild and free...

I want the sage, I want the grass,
I want the curlew's call...

Just give me country big and wide
With benchland, hills and breaks,
With coulees, cactus, buttes and range,
With creeks, and mountain lakes,
Until I cross the Great Divide,
Then, God, forgive each sin
And turn me loose on my cayuse
But please don't fence me in."

- from 'Open Range' by Robert H. Fletcher, from Corral Dust, 1936 edition

Landscape Layers - North of Dillon, Montana

"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually.  For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value." - Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Climbers' Sky - Ravalli, Montana

“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. 

Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.” - Helen Keller

Cloudy With A Chance, Missoula, Montana

There’s nothing quite like a spreading span of storm clouds to enhance the drama of Montana’s Big Sky.

Mountains Up Into Sky, Missoula, Montana

Once again, my first morning thought was, “Must go to sleep earlier….“. But with only handful of pages left in my book, how could I turn out the light at a decent time? Barbara Richardson’s novel, “Tributary” bleeds rich with the poetry background alluded to in the dust jacket bio. In this quote, she captures exquisitely the awe-inspiring interaction of mountains and sky.
“In Mississippi, stars were fuzzy with distance, a puzzle work for sailors, fine slow-moving guides. Here, they were a palmful of brilliance, cast like dice just overhead. I’d forgotten to even miss them, the sevens and elevens rolling off the rim of the mountain, never bothering to mark out anything, with no use for gods or bears or pots and pans…. “ - Barbara K. Richardson “Tributary”, p. 170.

Dusted Hills, Missoula, Montana

There's a selection of left-over Christmas fudge on the counter in our office breakroom - original fudge, huckleberry, and a creamy-coloured concoction. When I was a kid, my oldest sisters owned a health food store - Happy House, still a viable business, last we heard - so we enjoyed alternatives to common junk food. Instead of cocktail peanuts, roasted soy nuts were on our snack menu. Instead of fudge, we savoured a Middle-Eastern sweet called halvah, which is good in its own right, but cannot be confused with fudge. (If you squint, these snow-dusted hills look kinda like a variety of halvah. That's my tie-in, like it or lump it.) And I had no idea we consumed above-average food until we moved to the USA when I was in grade seven, and a new friend offered me a Twinkie. I think that's the last Twinkie I ever ate. No loss there.

Windswept Hills, East of Billings, MT

The light was so cool & clear when I took this photo - a perfect day to drive across a big stretch of God's country. Spare views like this make me think of the first homesteaders, working so hard to keep their claim, living miles & miles from any neighbor, keeping company with the wind & the wide Montana sky.