summer solstice

I have arrived. Here I am in Lakeside, Montana, along Flathead Lake and within Glacier County, just miles from the National Park of the same name. The drive here was large, if you know what I mean. The sky was wide, the fields stretching, the mountains immense and green.

Everything in Montana seems to have a name like Whitefish, Great Falls, Bear Paw, Big Sky, Yellowstone, Birdseye, Blackfoot.

This is the West, so different from my Northwest (did I ever know?). Ranchers stroll the edges of their land along the highway, and I drive by at 80 miles an hour (Montana just installed speed limits a few years ago, and they are still very high), listening to Jackson Browne and taking it all in.

There are a few backpacking hitchhikers on the way here, and I smile and wave good blessings to them as I drive. Two hawks swoop over carrying large fish in powerful beaks.

And I have lived at the Golden Gate, at the doors of the West in that foggy city we love, and I have lived along Lewis & Clark's trails and pathways, their "almost-there" Western summit. But now here I am in the Shadowlands, in the Western stretch of the journey, at the top of the Rockies.

Last night, we walked down to the lake, sat on the docks, took pictures, laughed. All the snowy mountains around the water were dipped in sunlight, and the evening stretched until the 9:45pm sunset: we celebrated the day for 17.5 hours of its light.

Wendell Berry prays, "At night make me one with the darkness, in the morning make me one with the light."

Oh, the North, the fabled West, its overwhelming summer solstice.

Happy hinge-point, my friends. I hope your spring was well.