The Lonely Tree at Devil's Canyon

I always like taking pictures of lone trees against vast backgrounds and wide open spaces.  It's leaves and broken branches show the harsh weather conditions it had to endure.  I named this the "Lonely Tree" among the rocks and prairie bush.

Devil's Canyon Overlook

Big Horn Canyon

Big Horn Mountain Range in Big Horn Canyon Recreation Area in Wyoming. We had the park mainly to ourselves since we were the only tourist on the road.  We drove miles without seeing a car or truck.  We had visitors of Big Horn Sheep to block the road. The scenery was truly spectacular! 

Creek Indian Reservation at Yellowtail Dam

Horses, Cattle and the Montana Big Sky...

Yellowtail Dam Montana

We had to drive through the Creek Indian Reservation to see the overview of the dam.  It is part of the Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Park

Wooden Leg Hill - Little Bighorn Battlefield

I visited Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument Park.  This area memorializes the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry and the Sioux and Cheyenne in one of the Indian's last armed efforts to preserve their way of life. Here on June 25 and 26 of 1876, 263 soldiers, including Lt. Col. George A. Custer and attached personnel of the U.S. Army, died fighting several thousand Lakota, and Cheyenne warriors.  The picture above is the monument to the Indians who died at the battle.

Luther-Roscoe Scenic Drve

We drove six different scenic routes while we were visiting Montana.  The Luther-Roscoe Scenic Drive was on our way to Red Lodge where we stayed for two nights in the mountains.  Red Lodge was one of my favorite places for an authentic mountain town environment.

From Fishtail to Grassland Prairies

The Absarokee Scenic Loop passes through the small western towns of Absarokee, Fishtail and NYE.  From the grassland prairie outside of Fishtail, you get a stunning view of the Beartooth Mountains.  It reminded me a lot of New Zealand's rolling hills with sheep farms.  

Absarokee Scenic Loop

 

The Absarokee Loop Scenic Drive is a forty-mile long route that makes a scenic loop through a scenic and quiet corner of Montana.  The route, which has a series of paved and gravel roads, provides beautiful views of the Beartooth Mountains.  The highlight of the trip include the Stillwater River, valleys and the Beartooth Mountain range.

Lonely for "The Lone Tree"

It was 14 months ago I saw the Lone Tree on Lake Wanaka.  We search throughout Wanaka looking for the tree.  Photographers in Queenstown has made the tree very popular with tourist by selling prints of the tree in the art shows.  That was how I discovered the tree.  I only had a rainy afternoon and the next morning to take pictures of the tree.  The tree looks extraordinary in its environment by the way it is frame with the shore and trees in a semi-circle on the left and the mountains in the background.  In Florida and south Georgia, it is common to see trees growing in shadow lakes and swamps but not as colorful and flamboyant as the lone tree of Lake Wanaka.

The Scent of Flowers

Matthew 6:28-29                       
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

Patience Taught by Nature

 
 Patience Taught By Nature

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

'O DREARY life,' we cry, ' O dreary life ! '

And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle ! Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards
Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife
Meek leaves drop year]y from the forest-trees
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory: O thou God of old,
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these !--
But so much patience as a blade of grass
Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.     

"The rushes cried Abide, Abide"

Song of the Chattahoochee

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.

Matanzas Beach Old Boardwalk

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth  

         

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

West Horse Shoe Park

The Horses of the Sea
By Christina Georgina Rossetti


The horses of the sea
Rear a foaming crest,
But the horses of the land
Serve us the best.
The horses of the land
Munch corn and clover,
While the foaming sea-horses
Toss and turn over.                 

"Nature is What We See"

Nature is what we see
By Emily Dickinson


"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.                  

"Daughter of Earth and Water"

The Cloud
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

"Hide Myself Within My Flower"



Hide Myself Within My Flower 

Poem by Emily Dickinson

I HIDE myself within my flower,

That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

River and Sea

River and Sea
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox


Under the light of the silver moon
We two sat, when our hearts were young;
The night was warm with the breath of June,
And loud from the meadow the cricket sung,
And darker and deeper, oh, love, than the sea,
Were your dear eyes, as they beamed to me.

The moon hung clear, and the night was still:
The waters reflected the glittering skies;
The nightingale sang on the distant hill;
But sweeter than all was the light in your eyes -
Your dear, dark eyes, your eyes like the sea -
And up from the depths shone love for me.

My heart, like a river, was mad and wild -
And a river is not deep, like the sea;
But I said yout love was the love of a child,
Compared with the love that was felt by me;
A river leaps noisily, kissing the land,
But the sea is fathomless, deep and grand.

I vowed to love you, for ever and ever!
I called you cold, on that night in June,
But my fierce love, like a reckless river,
Dashed on, and away, and was spent too soon;
While yours - ah, yours was deep like the sea;
I cheated you, love, but you died for me!               

"Jewelled Arc of the Waterfall"

Waterfall

I do not ask for youth, nor for delay

in the rising of time's irreversible river

that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall

in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,

all that I have and all I am always losing

as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.

I do not dream that you, young again,

might come to me darkly in love's green darkness

where the dust of the bracken spices the air

moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness

and water holds our reflections

motionless, as if for ever.

It is enough now to come into a room

and find the kindness we have for each other

-- calling it love -- in eyes that are shrewd

but trustful still, face chastened by years

of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons

in mild conversation, without nostalgia.

But when you leave me, with your jauntiness

sinewed by resolution more than strength

-- suddenly then I love you with a quick

intensity, remembering that water,

however luminous and grand, falls fast

and only once to the dark pool below.                       

                                               

By Lauris Dorothy Edmond (1924-2000)

"Nobody Knows This Little Rose"

Nobody Knows This Little Rose
By Emily Dickinson


Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose—how easy
For such as thee to die!      

"That Place between Sleep and Awake"

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan 

My Rustic Garden

Come slowly – Eden!    

By Emily Dickinson          

 

Come slowly – Eden!

Lips unused to Thee –

Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –

As the fainting Bee –

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums –

Counts his nectars –

Enters – and is lost in Balms.

"A Fairy Song"

The Fairy Song

by Louise May Alcott (1832 - 1888)

The moonlight fades from flower and rose
And the stars dim one by one;
The tale is told, the song is sung,
And the Fairy feast is done.
The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers,
And sings to them, soft and low.
The early birds erelong will wake:
'T is time for the Elves to go.

O'er the sleeping earth we silently pass,
Unseen by mortal eye,
And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float
Through the quiet moonlit sky;--
For the stars' soft eyes alone may see,
And the flowers alone may know,
The feasts we hold, the tales we tell;
So't is time for the Elves to go.

From bird, and blossom, and bee,
We learn the lessons they teach;
And seek, by kindly deeds, to win
A loving friend in each.
And though unseen on earth we dwell,
Sweet voices whisper low,
And gentle hearts most joyously greet
The Elves where'er they go.

When next we meet in the Fairy dell,
May the silver moon's soft light
Shine then on faces gay as now,
And Elfin hearts as light.
Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky
With sunlight soon shall glow.
The morning star shall light us home:
Farewell! for the Elves must go.