Harvest Path - Near Park City, Montana

“A quiet presence over takes me, and my pulse slows. My hands relax, and my palms open spontaneously as I am reduced to blessed clarity. I feel subtle yearning for adventure, similar to the way I felt last fall. Haven't I been counting on seeing new paths? Don't they abound everywhere, out here?”

-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p.97

Light To See - Heron, Montana

“ There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition." 
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) from Pascal's Pensées, end of section 430

Azurous Hung Hills - Near Helena, Montana

• “And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder…”
• - Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) from Hurrahing in Harvest
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Harvest Stack - Near Helena, Montana

“Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise

Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour

• Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
• Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?”
• - Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) from Hurrahing in Harvest
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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)