Summertime at Holter Lake outside of Wolf Creek, Montana.
Never-ending vistas
Discovering each keepsake
Nature’s promised grace
Harmony’s singing at daybreak
Majestic mountain peaks
Reaching to heavens above
Fields’ ripening grain
Easy to witness Creator’s love
Highway’s distant crossroads
Welcoming each blessed guest
Town’s main street alive
Hospitality at its best
Heart searches for its peace
Dreaming . . . now Montana bound
Precious adventures
Journey complete . . . Montana found
Pioneer Falls in the Madison Range of southwestern Montana. (Photo shared from one of my Montana daughters)
As of July 1, Colleen and I are beginning our travels from our home in central Ohio to Montana. The Big Sky Country is my native state, and we are eager to see family and friends. We will return in about 15 days.
Montana’s Crazy Mountains as pictured outside of the town of Big Timber. This photo was taken in late May, yet there remained substantial snow visible on the peaks.
Waking up on cold, frigid, winter morn
Looking like snowy storms, soon to be born
Pulling warm covers over this bare head
Let’s fast forward to new season instead
Always dreaming with bigness every night
Never alone, tasting perfect delight
Traveling ahead to hot summer day
Feeling urge to jump up, shouting to say
Has one ever seen more beautiful sky?
Sensational, unblemished blue so high
Treasure State’s journey, mines purest pleasures
Opening saddlebag, full of treasures
Shining high above, fullest sun in view
Sharing smiles with heavens, always be true
Western hospitality, comes this way
Be sure to come back, as we always say
From warmest hearts, joy overflows with grace
Montana’s Big Sky, lifetime’s “Last Best Place”
This poem reworks the theme from a previously published poem from 2019. The much-improved verses were inspired by the 1990 publication of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. Through eight chapters and over 800 pages, the works of numerous Montana authors can be read. Each illustrates the unique way of life and history found in Montana’s Big Sky Country.
From the top left and moving clockwise: Southwestern montana’s tobacco root mountains form the western wall along the madison river valley, montana ingenuity is discovered at a rest area along interstate 90, the hospitality of the community of ennis is found up and down its main street, the former parmly library building in billings–now home to the western heritage center, from a distance the “sphinx” formation is visible along southwestern Montana’s madison range (about 10 miles east of the community of cameron).
There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.
There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.
American Washington Irving (1783-1859) ranks as one of his country’s most renowned authors. His amazing short stories of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleeping Hollow” remain all-time classics. Ironically, his final resting place is at the Sleeping Hollow Cemetery in New York state.
Big Sky Buckeye 