First Snow - East Missoula, Montana

Last weekend’s first snow kissed the mountaintops outside of East Missoula, Montana. 

Water Lilies & Holiness - Placid Lake, Montana

“I think what people build can be very beautiful, but what God builds goes beyond beauty. 

You stand outside Notre Dame, say, and you marvel at the accomplishment, but you can't really connect. It's artificial, do you see? It's only a representation of something. Spirit, holiness, maybe even God. But it's not the thing itself. 
Out here, it's all there before you, around you. You're steeped in it, the real thing. Spirit. Holiness. God."
- Maria to young Henry Meloux in Thunder Bay, p. 127, by William Kent Krueger (Book #7 of Cork O'Connor Mystery Series)

Placid Waters - Placid Lake, Montana

As The Best Husband Ever noted, it’s obvious why they called this Placid Lake….

Takeaway View - Missoula, Montana

Today’s perfect closer: Takeaway supper from Vietnamese Noodle  with this side of smoke-hazed crepuscular rays. In Montana, even a humble parking lot features beautiful views.

Rainy Days - Flathead Lake, Montana

They say western Montana’s getting rain this week…here’s hoping…!

 “I loved the rain as a child. I loved the sound of it on the leaves of trees and roofs and windowpanes and umbrellas and the feel of it on my face and bare legs. I loved the hiss of rubber tires on rainy streets and the flip-flop of windshield wipers. I loved the smell of wet grass and raincoats and shaggy coats of dogs. A rainy day was a special day for me in a sense that no other kind of day was—a day when the ordinariness of things was suspended with ragged skies drifting to the color of pearl and dark streets turning to dark rivers of reflected light and even people transformed somehow as the rain drew them closer by giving them something to think about together, to take common shelter from, to complain of and joke about in ways that made them more like friends than it seemed to me they were on ordinary sunny days. But more than anything, I think, I loved rain for the power it had to make indoors seem snugger and safer and a place to find refuge in from everything outdoors that was un-home, unsafe. I loved rain for making home seem home more deeply.“   -Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

US Hwy 135 Sunset - Clark Fork River near Paradise, Montana

 #794 - Things I Love About Montana: 

Even on a no-stops-allowed schedule, Big Sky majesty meets you right along the well-beaten path. 

(Safety first, tho’ - the perfectly placed turnout allowed a quick smell-the-roses stop where maximum sunset reflection mirrored the thankfulness overflow in my heart.)

Present Grace (Poppy) - Missoula, Montana

“The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

-C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), from  Learning In War-Time, 1939

Spring Greens and Mountains - Mission Mountains, Montana

Layers of so much greenness near Flathead Lake, Montana, from the ongoing spring rain! But further Southwest, persistent precipitation provoked state of emergency flooding - along with an outpouring of  Big Sky sized kindness to assist families in the flooded communities.  We live, at times, precariously on the fine edge between extravagant  beauty and the fear of too much.