Pack in a lawn chair and sit awhile, cool your dusty, summer-hot feet in the Bitterroot River, maybe even at this same perfect spot on Maclay Flat just south of Missoula, Montana.
“The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. “ — Chinese philosopher
Late March: We progress to t-shirt weather and not a snowflake in sight. But experienced Montanans know: Wait on planting anything tender, and don’t put away the snow shovel just yet…
“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
Spring rainfall last night and into this morning punched up the colour vibrancy east of Lincoln, Montana, and made for a gorgeous Montana road trip day. (Now we just need those fruitful clouds to head north and tamp down Alberta’s wildfires and smoky skies, please Lord.)
Epiphany - what a lovely day to celebrate - the very name full of promise of new beginning, of life-light diminishing soul-darkness, of suddenly realizing life-altering simple somethings previously shadowed, just out of reach.
May the Lord’s kindness shine bright upon you and then through you.
“It has become my way to dispense with incessant seeking in favor of stumbling upon answers. In the words of Picasso, "I find, I do not seek.” No longer desperate to know every outcome these days I tend to wait and see, a far more satisfying way of being that lacks specificity and instead favors experience over analysis.”
-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p. 163-164
The rightness of grasses not mowed to conformity, shrubs and willows allowed to spread within mostly natural inclination ...there’s something about the ...mmmm...I hate to say ‘balance’ but maybe more at ‘compromise’ of this cheek-to-jowl coexistence between accessible wildness and the minimal human constraints in the best kind of campground.
It feeds something in me. Perhaps it mirrors my own inner seeking - like water seeks its level - to be simultaneously unfettered yet at rest within this life season’s constraints.
Had to scrape my windshield this morning ... My "winter is coming" denial must come to an end... I suppose....if it must...I guess...it will melt off by noon, so I'm not pulling out my parka just yet!
"It seemed to her in her solitude that she had always sat on this step, in this twilight, with this contentment." -from A Prairie Heritage: The Early Years by Vikki Kestell
