Opening To Autumn - Cabinet Mountains, Heron, Montana

“Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” 

-Helen Keller (1880-1968) 

Shine Through - Blue Creek Lodge, Heron, Montana

“I’ve always thought of her the way I think of a precious gem: The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself but in the way the light shines through it.”  -from This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

Rushing Stream - Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”

- George Eliot (1819-1880) from Janet’s Repentance, chapter 5, in collection Scenes Of Clerical Life, free at this Gutenberg Project link

Mossy - Greenough Park, MIssoula, Montana

“We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy. “ — Edward Abbey (1927-1989), The Hidden Canyon — A River Journey)

Flathead Lake Kayaking - Big Arm, Montana

Pre-1894 start of Labour Day (Canada and USA):“Supervision was harsh and punishments were handed out to those who talked or sang as they worked.” -Investopedia Term Of The Day

Well, I would have been in constant trouble on the singing charge, for sure! Feeling fortunate to work in present-day North America, for this and so many other reasons.

Wherever you are, hoping you are safe and finding beauty and gratitude somehow.

Experience Calm - Big Arm, Flathead Lake, Montana

“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

Art of Life & Fishing - Big Arm State Park, Flathead Lake, Montana

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”
- William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

Of Weeds & Wildness - Big Arm State Park, Flathead Lake, Montana

 “...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
• 
  
  
  

•