…I’m still fascinated with snow flakes. Some things a Phoenix girl just can’t get enough of. I de-dust mite my critters a couple of times a year by putting them outside when it gets down into the teens. Some delicate snow drifted under my front roof and decorated some of my menagerie recently. They land on Cooper and are easy to see on his brown coat when conditions are right, but he doesn’t hold still for pictures likes these guys –


Think how many of these soft crystals it takes to do this!!!!

This is where I went skiing earlier this week – a big, mostly flat golf course with the snowy mountains in the background. We even had some sun that day, a major treat!


We had more frozen fog this week, but instead of feathers, we got spikes.




Gotta find whatever silver, spiky, frosty linings we can up here in the cold, and so far this new year I’ve found billions – all in the form of crystals!!!

Just like that, 2015 is over. Hard to believe! Looking back on it there were certainly some moments that I thought would never end, it’s not been the best year for me, but most of it flew by! And hope springs eternal – 2016 could be my magic year! The year is ending on a white note, which is as it should in Northwest Montana. I’m on Christmas break, missing “my” kids. Last week there were icicles on the bus and views that make me miss the driving.

Naturally, my four-legged kids love the snow!

I took girls’ basketball to Missoula earlier in the month, when we were in our “fog” period. I walked downtown and found some of the scenery quite lovely, like the old Milwaukee Road train station along the iced-up river, and a pretty church steeple, of which Missoula has several.

It’s ski club time on the Big Mountain, and I took kids up the day after school was over – these pics may look familiar. I always enjoy seeing “my” Whitefish train station and the cute little house I used to rent there.

Vacation time is for snowshoeing, one of my favorite things, and I went out on Saturday. The kids found deer bones to chew and refused to walk, one of their favorite things!

I have six more days off – I intend to enjoy them thoroughly while mentally listing my New Year’s resolutions, the first of which is to watch for that coming magic. I wish each of you a splash of the same magic, and we can compare notes same time next year!

It’s mid October and I’m starting to see spooky things!  I’ve been driving through wispy fog for a week now, just before dawn, no thicker than ghost breath – creepy!  Pumpkins glow eerily along sidewalks, even at 7 in the morning, smiling their gummy smiles below empty eye sockets.  The kids on my bus are excited about the upcoming fun, talking about costumes, candy and a party at the church.  My favorite things at this time of year are the clothes, the fall colors, that would last for months if it was up to me, and chilly mornings with warm afternoons, but, sadly, I’ve lost whatever childhood magic the so-called holiday once held.

Not that all my Halloween memories are good!  Pumpkin carving was always fun.  Dad would bring a big fat one home, and we’d discuss what kind of face to put on it after he hollowed it out.  It was a fun, messy occasion.  The faces were simple then, as were our costumes.  My main memory of costumes though, after being fun to think about and put on, was that they were a pain in the neck for a little kid on the dark streets of Phoenix.  My earliest memory is of a Tweetie Bird costume with a big, plastic mask that didn’t stay put, and I kept tripping because the mask’s eyes didn’t line up with mine.  It was easy to trip over the folds of a ghost sheet, too, and end up on your face in someone’s lawn.  One year I was a princess.  I don’t remember what I wore but I remember my magic wand, a glow-in-the-dark stick with a star on one end.  I dropped it somewhere and lost it!  I was very upset.  Lucky for me I saw its glow in the middle of a dark street and rescued it.  Today it hangs on my bulletin board and still glows that pale, green light!

It was safe then to go door to door.  I’m lucky to have my memories, good and bad, tromping around in the dark with siblings and friends, begging sweets from neighbors and enjoying the loot for weeks.

The first Monday and Tuesday of October the bison range invites the public to come watch the annual bison roundup.  LOTS of school children accept the invitation.  When I went a few years back they still did the roundup with cowboys on horseback, but now they use Jeeps and ATVs; it’s just not the same.  Supposedly it’s less stressful to the bison, and certainly safer for the cowboys.  Anyway, there’s a big holding area and numerous smaller ones with gates and chutes for moving the big critters through the process of being chipped, weighed, inoculated, DNA tested, separated, or anything else that needs done.  This is the time they separate out those that will be shipped to other herds or tribes.

It’s an amazing process.  The chutes and catwalks are incredibly strong but you can still feel the size and power of these big animals.  It can be loud with pounding hooves, slamming gates, kicked gates and wranglers yelling.  Children and adults alike appreciate the privilege and rarity of watching this process.  My bus load of kindergartners was lucky to be the first in a second wave of buses and we practically had the catwalk to ourselves with time to take pictures and ask questions of the many volunteers for quite a while.  One of the most entertaining things to me was the lady manning the gate from the chutes back into the big holding pen – she was crocheting the whole time.  When she had to open a gate she tucked her crocheting under her arm, yanked on the ropes to let a bison through, then went back to crocheting.  Hilarious!  I had to wonder what all those bison were talking about after their ordeal.  They seemed none the worse for wear, rolling in the dust or nibbling on the fescue.

And I’m pleased to report the signets are doing well.  They look to me to be full grown, still gray, but just as elegant as their parents.  Just seeing them would have made it worth the trip.

School started almost a month ago already, and teams have started traveling around the state for games, running, and golf.  Last weekend I took junior varsity football to Stevensville – Montana’s oldest established white community.

Luckily the schools are close to town so I could hit a few antique stores and take a little walking tour. There are some great old buildings, a small downtown, and a lovely church, St. Mary’s, built in 1847, which they charge to go into, so I didn’t 🙂

This is an historic area for other reasons – Lewis and Clark passed through this area, as did the Nez Perce on their flight from the army, crossing the Bitterroot Mountains on their arduous journey.  This is near the trail where it comes out of the mountains here, and I can’t help but picture Winter Rain, the scared little boy who grew up to be named Thomas Sky Crossing (The Sparrow’s Choice)

The worst of summer, the worst air from fires, and I’m out getting firewood.  It’s called making hay while that sun is shining.  I got info on some available firewood from some clearing that was done just outside of town, so I rushed right out there and met some wonderful folks who hate to see good wood go to waste, so now I’m panic mode to get it – come fall whatever’s left will get burned!  They have twenty acres and here’s part of the view from their house in the first pic.  Today when I went out those mountains were not visible through the smoke that is getting worse by the day.  Just awful.

The second picture is an apple tree, all that remains to indicate there used to be a cabin, someone’s home, there along this dry creek.   The current owner’s don’t know how long it’s been gone.  The third pic is my reluctant helpers.  Sara never likes being tied up but three bears visit that apple tree every day and, though I doubt they’d come around while we’re there, no point taking chances!

Saturday I went out to attack the first pile.  It’s really a treat to have neatly stacked wood in workable sizes that you can drive right up to.  (The main house is on the other side of the trees over the top of my truck.)  There is wood to last me years in big slash piles but they gave me this easy pile to start on and I’ve made two trips to bring home what I’ve cut so far, now nicely stacking up in my driveway for when it will be the perfect time to have firewood on hand!

Had a nice drive home today, glad to be here even though it was almost 100 degrees!  Made a brief stop in Great Falls – Lewis and Clark would weep at the industry along the Missouri River.  I didn’t take a picture of the “Great Falls,” they’ve been dammed.  Didn’t see any more big white pelicans.

“Everett would never forget his first survey of the West.  The mountains that had looked like a line of rickrack in the distance grew to savage teeth and then to towering wonders that pulled the train into their purple depths.”   The Sparrow’s Choice

Everett and Calandra had a better view as they approached the Rocky Mountain front than I did today.  It was smoky and barely visible.  There’s another big fire in Glacier and the whole northern end of the front that I should have been able to see, with its dramatic cliffs and jagged peaks, was curtained off.

I saw more rolled hay bales in the last two days than in the whole rest of my life.  I could have taken pictures all day it was so scenic but kept driving.  Until I got back to the Blackfoot River.  I stopped and had the last of my watermelon watching a fly fisherman just up the river – a postcard of Montana, well, except for the Tupperware of watermelon 🙂

Okay, survived the defensive driving class.  Did I enjoy it?  Not so much.  A good challenge and beneficial, no question, but fun?  Nah.  There were twelve in the group, divided between four instructors.  My group started out in the “monster,” one of those cars with the small wheels on the back that castor around simulating black ice.  We all did many spins getting the hang of it, all that open land spinning wildly, got a little whoozy!  Then on to high-speed curves and running off and on the road, on purpose, in a regular sedan.  Then we did skids on wet pavement followed by evasive steering.  I hit cones with the school bus doing evasive steering – darn!!!  After a lunch break and some graphic videos, we repeated the procedures in a more realistic fashion, slower and with improved control.  This time, though, we used a second school bus and also an ambulance!

I met some nice folks and enjoyed the scenery.  The driving school is on an old WWII training base for B-17 bombers.  The big hangar is still there – very cool!

The surrounding farms were being harvested of wheat with antelope grazing in the fields.  Thankfully, a nice cloud cover moved in, blessed us with a ten-minute rain that cooled it down and cleared it up.  Instead of the predicted 96 it stayed in the lower 80s!  Will head out bright and early tomorrow and check in when I get home!

Time for me to take the defensive driving class for my school bus job, and the class is in Lewistown – way out in central Montana.  Driving a school van (with A/C and CD player!) I hit the Lewis and Clark trail in Missoula this morning.  Heading east on Highway 200, I drove through Bonner, the location of one of the West’s biggest Superfund sites.  The pair of explorers would be as appalled as the rest of us over the disaster at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, the result of old mine waste that came from upstream.  The dam is gone now and things are improving, at least visually.  (The Blackfoot was made famous by A River Runs Through It, though at the time of movie production it was too polluted to use for filming.)

I followed the river east, the air yellow with summer heat and haze.  After crossing the divide the land and geology actually reminded me of areas in Northeast Arizona.

It was 96 in Great Falls so I thought maybe I was in Arizona!!!  I saw a white pelican – will try to get a picture of one on the way back!

Actually no vacation for me.  I worked, and worked hard.  And, as a surprise, I learned something!  Sitting in the faculty lounge for lunch I scrounge for reading material – there’s a bookshelf full of interesting titles, mostly about art.  One book I pulled out was on famous paintings.  Mind you this is a kindergarten and first grade school.  This book had little arrows pointing out features of famous paintings – like the Mona Lisa.  I never thought much about her, and the fact that she has no eye brows.  I never noticed.  Apparently it was vogue in her time to pluck them all.  And did you know she’s wearing a veil?  I sure didn’t!  Okay, so first graders are ahead of me in art, who cares 😉
To give an idea of some of the bizarre things I did this summer (two weeks of this left) I’ve included two pictures.  One of the school –

I washed every exterior window on that building, including ones on the roof looking into the cafeteria, and most of the interior ones.  There aren’t as many on the south side of the school but enough.  One of the other hard workers removed all the hand and foot holds off this climbing wall in the cafeteria/gym.

I put them back.  Use your imagine, I was told.  Have fun with it!  I tried, I really did.  I also tried recruiting some kids to help and couldn’t even convince them it was fun.  I failed as Tom Sawyer 😦