Offering - Sunset, East Missoula, Montana

“… The writer and the worshipper both draw from one source, the source where sound becomes melody, and melody turns into language, which becomes offering. Both are as open as an open wound. Both live tense and privileged moments. If one may assume that man could not live without literature, which is not so sure, one may equally affirm that neither could he survive without prayer.”
- Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), in 2003 interview with Krista Tippett - you can read / listen here

Bridger Mountain Peaks - Near Livingston, Montana

“In God's wildness lies the hope of the world -- the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.” 

-- John Muir (1838-1914)

Wonder More - Ladybug - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

“Here, where much more is hidden than apparent, I am reminded that a companion to mystery is peace; that knowing less and wondering more offers expectancy.”

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p. 163

Small Mysteries (Ladybug 2) - Flathead Lake, Big Arm, Montana

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

– Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), from Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

Genuine Ladybug - Flathead Lake, Big Arm, Montana

“ “But I no longer want to edit my behavior, twisting myself up like a pretzel.“ 

“You won't ,” she assured me. "Now that you've tasted the other, you won't go backwards. It'll be better than ever, you'll see. Just let whatever comes flow through you and then away.  

Everyone is after the same thing, y'know. It's called intimacy. The only way to experience it is to be yourself.” “

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p.138

Sunrise Reflection - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

Big thanks to early rising Sissie #3 for this glorious shot - a purrrfect pairing to a quote I’d been saving for just such a day!

“Why do men lie prone in their beds,” she murmured, “and the great glory of God washin’ the hills with holy fire?”

- From the 1953 short story “She Went By Gently” by Paul Vincent Carroll (1900-1968)

Smoky Sunrise Bloom - Big Arm, Montana

“But I believe if you tell a story, it's like sending a nightingale into the air with the hope that its song will never be forgotten .”

-from This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, page 443

Not To Worry - Big Arm, Montana

“Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

-Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983)