The coming and going of fall

Fact: The 49th parallel does not believe in the between seasons (fall and spring). If you blink you might miss them. One day you are getting sleeted on and the next day you are tanning in a bikini. Or maybe those happen in the same day. I wouldn't be surprised. Take this photo for example:

There were wildflowers still blooming on my first day up this trail. Ten days later, the first snowfall hit- 6 inches of it. This picture captured the days in between those two extremes. This picture is of a high alpine fall on Napa Trail # 31.

Fact 2: Glacier National Park will always be stunning no matter how many times you see it (see below).

This picture was taken from polebridge on the weekend before Halloween. It was peaceful up there. The tourists have finally gone into hybernation.

Fact 3: It is ridiculously hard to avoid taking photos of barns with mountains in the background.

This was a barn in the southern part of the valley. Jack and I discovered it on our search for a new place to rent. The barn was out in the "slough," an area just north of flathead lake where the flathead river meanders in a million different little offshoots. It isn't a place that I explore a lot- it is mostly farm land and dirt roads. A few days after I took this photo I was looking through my old co-worker Nikie's senior pictures and noticed that she had had them in front of this barn. No surprise!

This last photo is what remained of my crew at the end of our season (the rest left for school): Sara and Jeremiah (the only two on the crew to not miss a single day), and Eric and Garth (the longest serving of our crew members, this season, having both started 2 weeks early). In the background is the ridgeline of the swan range, where I spent most of my summer. I feel very connected to it now. I used to look at it like it was a beautiful stranger. It was so stunning but still easy to forget in the way that you eventually forget about strangers. Now it is my friend. I like to look along the range from the valley floor and identify each peak that I have been up, and each trail. It is comforting and rewarding to think about. And fitting that it ended up in my last photo, the backdrop of it all.