Our tickets to the Decemberists at the Kettlehouse amphitheater and Missoula became a wonderful eight day back roads trip through Southwestern Montana. This glorious state can take a lifetime to explore… We never tire of the back roads of Montana. I took my felting projects and think it is such an easy interest to take in the trailer. I wrote my haiku‘s and did watercolors each morning, and felted in the evenings. The pause of these moments kept me present to the beauty surrounding us.
• Started with two days in Helena to visit kids and grandkids
Visited the Archie Bray, and the Holter. Helena is such a beautiful city. Caitlin and Austin are awesome hosts. So fun to hang with them!
• Third day we stayed on Rock Creek, ate at the awesome Stage Coach Café. Attended the concert at the Kettlehouse and it was fabulous! The Decemberists are such a fun, entertaining band. We hung out in Missoula a day, of course I went to Radius art gallery and 111. Fun shopping! Golfed 18 holes at the Ranch golf course. It was windy but fun. FORE! 19th hole was Old Bull Brewery. The kids have done such an awesome job with the brewery, and the beer is stellar! Stayed at Theresa‘s and saw the 4 kids.
•From Missoula we went on down the Bitterroot Valley, my favorite valley in Montana. After living in Hamilton, I am always nostalgic for the area. We spent an evening at Lost Trail Hot Springs, the water was pure silk, in fact The evening was pure magic. The sunset reflecting on the water, the mountains and trees, the pure air and the pure water… The spring is fed from Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone park, pretty amazing.
• Onto Wisdom, Wise River, we even dug for crystals at Crystal Park. Dillon was as pretty as ever. Going through the big hole we stopped at the battle ground of the Nez Perce massacre. It is such a haunting Meadow… We attended the anniversary commemoration of the massacre. Some of the elders sang and circle drummed. The drumming felt as the heartbeat of our earth mother. I felt shame for the white peoples atrocities upon the natives.
•Witnessed beaver slide in operation. The hay is so heavy in the Big Hole it’s almost mind-boggling. What a fertile area. I’m not sure but I think the area is one of the last remaining Beaverslide hay operators… It was really Interesting to watch. Those stacks have got to be 10 times the height of the workers.
•Spent time in Ennis, Joe did some fly fishing. We woke up to the Madison River and to the stunning mountains. Such eye candy! Had to stop in Benji‘s, such memories from their time when they were in Bozeman. Their jewelry got me through all my work in years lol.
​•Stopped in Bozeman. That town is so interesting… Talk about people watching…
​•On Home, had to see how our garden was doing and it is doing well! The deer had taken a bite or two out of a few tomatoes but that was about all the damage done.

Grandma Party 🎨💦🎨🫧year #4!
Time and space being relevant, the grandkids are growing up so fast- sprouts!
Violet and Owen came to the gathering this year from Houston and Bea and Olivia will be the Italian travelers next year.
Candy, sweets, ice cream… all the goodies at the top of the food pyramid were on the menu. Did I mention Nutella sandwich’s?😉😎grammas are notorious for that! Such a fun time.
The waterfight was epic, the little kids didn’t know the grammas aim was so spot on!!! Scavenger hunt, pour paint, water balloons giant bubbles, tepee…
Memories.

“Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

YUTORI…”It’s a kind of living with spaciousness”
“I just came back from Japan a month ago, and in every classroom, I would just write on the board, “You are living in a poem.” And then I would write other things just relating to whatever we were doing in that class. But I found the students very intrigued by discussing that. “What do you mean, we’re living in a poem?” Or, “When? All the time, or just when someone talks about poetry?” And I’d say, “No, when you think, when you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another, that’s a poem. That’s what a poem does.” And they liked that.
And a girl, in fact, wrote me a note in Yokohama on the day that I was leaving her school that has come to be the most significant note any student has written me in years. She said, “Well, here in Japan, we have a concept called ‘Yutori.’ And it is spaciousness. It’s a kind of living with spaciousness. For example, it’s leaving early enough to get somewhere so that you know you’re going to arrive early, so when you get there, you have time to look around." And then she gave all these different definitions of what Yutori was to her.
But one of them was — "and after you read a poem just knowing you can hold it, you can be in that space of the poem. And it can hold you in its space. And you don’t have to explain it. You don’t have to paraphrase it. You just hold it, and it allows you to see differently." – Naomi Shihab Nye
https://engagingpresence.com/2016/09/07/finding-the-space-for-spaciousness/