Westward Wagon
Grand Teton National Park
2011

This scene got me to thinking about the movie Shane which was filmed in the area back in 1951. Maybe this wagon was used as a prop in the movie. It certainly would have fit right in.

Old 89
Grand Teton National Park
2011

The cargo cover on an old stage coach stored at Menor’s Ferry.

The Coincidence
Livingston, Montana
2011

I’ve tried with little success to avoid the extensive news coverage of the anniversary of the 9/11/01 bombings in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. It’s not that it’s not worth remembering, even if it is uncomfortably sad at times. It’s just that we get daily reminders that the tragedy of 9/11 did not end with the events of that day. The “war on terror” that 9/11 spawned has been a decade long extension of that day’s violence that has produced more tragedy than triumph.

Who would have thought that many times the 3,000 original 9/11 victims would die in the subsequent decade of fighting and that so many of the people killed or affected by the aftermath would be just as innocent as those who died on that day? The whole sequence that has unfolded since then reminds me of a desperate attempt to battle cancer with chemotherapy. Doctors and patients acknowledge that chemotherapy attacks a specific problem with a systemic treatment that, while potentially effective against the cancer, may well do significant harm to other parts of the body. In fact the treatment itself might be fatal. It is an act of desperation. Every day the world reels with the side effects of our chemotherapy attack on terrorism.

So, I’ve tried to avoid too much exposure to the media remembrance of this anniversary, but with little success. Today after Sunday morning breakfast in Livingston as has come to be our custom, we took a drive through the city park along the Yellowstone River–also as has come to be our custom. But, deviating from that customary itinerary, we decided on the spur of the moment to cross a one-lane bridge to a residential area on a small island in the middle of the river. In our thirty years in this part of the country, we’d never actually driven over to the island although we’ve driven by the bridge countless times. The island road crosses under another bridge, this one carrying Interstate 90 across the river and the island. It was on the I-90 bridge support that we saw this mural. It was not until after I’d looked over the mural for a while that I saw the date in the lower right hand corner (shown below).

What’s that saying, “there’s no such thing as coincidence; everything happens for a reason”? It’s going to take me a while to figure out why this happened today.

9-11-01
Livingston, Montana
2011

Cover Your Pansies
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
2011

A brave flower poking it’s head out from under the cover put over some planters in preparation for a cold night. You just can’t keep a good flower down.

Frosty Jungle
Brooks Lake, Wyoming
2011

Frost covered grass at the outlet of Brooks Lake.

Boundary Water
Brooks Lake, Wyoming
2011

No, not the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, just some grass growing in Brooks Lake at the interface between the calm lake and the flowing water of Brooks Lake Creek.

All the Comforts of Home
Brooks Lake, Wyoming
2011

The campground hosts at Brooks Lake use their spare time to decorate the pit toilets with tables, rugs, reading material, wall art and even telephones. The phones didn’t actually work (there was no electricity or even cell phone service in the area), but they said they were wanting to be able to make them ring whenever someone went in and sat down. We were camped right across from this toilet and whenever someone would go to use it for the first time they would invariably at least giggle if not laugh out loud.

Pinnacle Buttes
Brooks Lake, Wyoming
2011

Looking across Brooks Lake to the Pinnacle Buttes where the high point is at 11,516 feet. While I’m partial to black and white landscapes anyway, converting this photo to black and white had the added advantage of mostly hiding the fact that about 50 percent of the forests on the slopes of the mountain are dead due to beetle kill. Climate change? What climate change?

The Palisade
Brooks Lake, Wyoming
2011

When I was a kid in Kansas, summer camping trips to Colorado were always major events in our family and a big treat on those trips was coming to the continental divide at the top of some high mountain pass. Because of those trips, to me, the continental divide became synonymous with craggy peaks at the top of the world. Of course I later realized that there are less inspiring points on the divide, places where a signpost on a seemingly flat highway is the only indication of the change in geography.

At Brooks Lake these shear 500′ cliffs met my childhood expectation of the divide, at least partially. A couple of miles away at the northern end of these cliffs there is a break in the spine of rocks through which a trail runs and on which I was able to stroll to the divide, barely fifty feet elevation gain from where I was standing when I took this photo.