Fish Out of Water
If I had any doubts, the jig was up the afternoon that our Regional Park Managers quarterly meeting morphed into a Missouri River float trip. We had assembled in moderately rustic facilities at the Beartooth…
Author: mmsw922
Winter 2021
Joy Let a joy keep you.Reach out your handsAnd take it when it runs by. . . . Carl Sandburg What a frightening, discouraging year. We hoped—on many fronts: that the vaccine would bring us…
Birds of a Feather
Yesterday, I stood and watched a magpie winkling bites from the suet feeder Which hangs off my porch rail–made fetching by a tin beak, tail, painted wings, and the wire feet of a northern flicker….
The Competition
No one talks about it. The topic being too close to home. A guilty secret. But, I bet, if you’re over 65 you know . . . That we are racing each other away from…
I Learned This Year . . .
More about growing old and navigating the world. I am 75. And tentative, slow on steps, unsteady on rocky ground. More so after a silly, spectacular sprawl in my living room last spring. The perfect…
On Holiday
From our perch beside the Ionian Sea, We jousted over “sea” and “ocean.” I called the expanse of water that glittered beyond us, “ocean.” Jean said “sea.” Which was the encompassing phenomenon, I asked. Which…
Night Lights
After the first times I needed to pee at three in the morning at the Walter family’s primitive North Fork of the Flathead property, I learned what the rest of the family already knew. I…
Empty – Full
My British friends Jean and Bryan arrived in Montana on the remnant Amtrak passenger train, the Empire Builder, on a summer Saturday evening. The 48 hour trek west had been strange enough. Traveling in regular…
Montana Assays – An Introduction
I have made you an assayer and tester among my peopleThat you may know and assay their waysThey are bronze and iron, and they act corruptlyThe bellows blow fiercely, and the lead is consumed by…
Guardians
My Rolladex empties. Tonight, the only “A” is gone. Jean Applegate died yesterday, a year after her husband Clarence. I’d worked with Jean at our human resources development agency. We shared the office outside the…