The sun was rising in the east, the clouds were moving from the west, and the sky looked like this. A front was coming through this morning; the wind ahead of the front started blowing and the sky cleared of clouds and became blue.
Noon on the Lake Ontario shore. West wind. Mid-20s Fahrenheit. Sun. Clouds. Ice on the beach, the water. Open water beyond. Cold.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, during those days when less and less daylight lightens our days, this plant on top of my refrigerator does all it can to brighten the nights.
This fellow, Ken Block, does some very interesting things with a Subaru WRX. Click on his name to see those things.
A near-monochromatic day, it was, with temperature about 17 degrees Fahrenheit. The snow was crispy, the sun was hiding.
This straggly forsythia shrub manages to flower in the fall when its leaves are turning purple. Seems like a desperate survival scheme.
Vicious Scissors
Time: Last week, sunrise.
This, the smallest of the Great Lakes, is large enough to swallow my self and leave me clear, peaceful, and sated. It yields up rocks and glass, soothing noise that drowns out all else, and a geohistory beyond imagining.
The Enchanted Highway is one fellow's sculptural gallery. Geese in Flight is just off I-94; the rest wend their way south on the little two-lane road through the prairie.
Gates of the Mountains on the Missouri River open and close and open and close as a boat moves upstream and side to side on the river. At first, it just looks like the river ends in a rock wall. Then one gate opens and the view upriver opens further. Then that gate obscures the opening, but just about right away, the other side opens and the upstream portion is visible once more. But the canyon never opens completely until the end and only then can the river's course be seen as coming through this narrow portal.
The settlement called Deerlodge, off I-90, is the home of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, a working cattle ranch which is also part of the National Park System. The mountains in the beyond are the Flint Creek Range. This is a dry land, about 10 inches of precipitation a year. The snowmelt on the highest mountains is watched carefully, hoping that there is still snow on the 4th of July. That usually means that there will be enough water in the streams for the rest of the year.
The confluence of the Jefferson River and the Madison River to become the Missouri River is a quiet place, dominated by the sound of water running, rushing, going. The sky is big, here, yes. The water is full and swift.
Not a mile later, the Gallatin River, coming from the east, joins the new Missouri and this, now, is the Missouri River. This is a place to return to, to sit, to dream, to be quiet from the human world.
