Snow Squared - Missoula, Montana

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Wagon Days Done - Corvallis, Montana

"...A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning. 

Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple balls. 

The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of 

dapple-gray horses...

The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a 

plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in 

summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall, 

These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on 

the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights..." - Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), from Cornhuskers, 1. Prairie 

Iced Tree Lines - Grant Creek, Missoula, Montana

"One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it." - Alec Wilkinson, The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

Christmas Terrarium - Corvallis, Montana

So fitting for Boxing Day: a wee bit o' fairyland 'boxed' up in glass - an enchanting living room reminder of magical viewpoints we can choose.

"There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it...Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They... can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned... The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland." - L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942), The Story Girl

Christmas Lights - Downtown Missoula, Montana

"Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been...
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day."

- from Moonless darkness stands between by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)


Happy Christmas to you, in the truest sense of what Christmas means.

Winter Quiet - Missoula, Montana

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? ...or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully." - Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Retired - Missoula, Montana

"Maybe [retirees] could do worse than give themselves to the world that needs them as much as they need the world.

This may involve things like volunteer work at the hospital or delivering meals on wheels or heading the library-fund drive, but the place where giving yourself to the world starts is simply paying attention to the world—to the people you've been saying hello to for years without really knowing them, to the elementary-school kids hanging upside down on the jungle gym, to the woman taxi driver with the face of a Boston bull and no teeth to speak of who waits for fares at the bus stop, to the old vets marching down Main Street on Memorial Day." - Frederick Buechner, from Beyond Words

Snow Silence - Missoula, Montana

"...Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere..." - from Snow by Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)