Winter Leaf Frost and Amazement - Missoula, Montana

“… When it’s over, I want to say: all my life 

I was a bride married to amazement. …” - Mary Oliver (1935-2019) from her poem When Death Comes

Frost At Eventide - Missoula, Montana

“The day is gently sinking to a close,

Fainter and yet more faint the sunlight glows…

Where Thou art present, darkness cannot be,

Midnight is glorious noon, O Lord, with Thee.”

-

The Day Is Gently Sinking To A Close (1863) by  Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885)

(Thanks to Julia Spencer-Fleming for this poem opening her fourth Fergusson/Van Alstyne mystery To Darkness and To Death.)

Frost and Red Rose Hips - Missoula, Montana

Contrasts draw us in, as with red rose hips amidst  slender frost-outlined branches in the lingering evening light.

Cotton-Woodsy - Maclay Flats, Missoula, Montana

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods."
 -Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Riverbank Path At Maclay Flats, Bitterroot River - Missoula, Montana

“... By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.” —Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), The Wind in the Willows)

Fading Treetop Frost - East Missoula, Montana

“We followed a trail into the hills on the eastern edge of the wide valley, our view dominated by the backdrop of mountains dark with the hazy purple-blue of distant conifers.“

 -Thunder Voice, Sam Keaton Series by Sigmund Brouwer, p. 95

Knapweed Frost Blooms- East Missoula, Montana

slumbering knapweed 

a mimic of summer self

at Frost’s brush edits

-c hull

Best People Watching- Fans On the Field, FCS Semi Final - Missoula, Montana

University of Montana Griz fans defy being crammed into any stereotypical box. So a hometown football game provides ample people watching delight. You see Fifth-Avenue-attired city folk next to a bona fide rancher sporting Carhartt coveralls, a Stetson hat with fleece ear flaps, and an impressive greying walrus handlebar mustache. Little kids with their parents and too-cool teenage siblings in the same row as octogenarians in original booster club winter parkas. And of course the make-it-epic fans in full length furry coats - including bear-face hood and clawed paws that drop from the sleeve cuffs. Oh, and we can’t forget Section 104’s beguiling Twinkie tossing man. (What does it MEAN??! & how DOES he smuggle them all past security?!)  Think of any “group” and you’ll see them on game day in Missoula, Montana’s Washington-Grizzly Stadium. 

And the unifying factor among them all: They love the Griz - for whatever reason - enough to show up and yell themselves hoarse in concert-level 95+ dB roars. 

IF I were in an especially schmaltzy mood, I’d end with: And in them all beats the heart of a Grizzly. 
But I’m not, so: Go Griz - all the way in Frisco!!!