Wild Flowers in the Valley

Snow capped mountains and flowers in the meadows at Yellowstone National Park and Lamar Valley.

The flowers in a summer meadow

are infinite

The big and the small, the colorful

and the plain,

The ones that bite and the ones

that delight . . .

All are intrinsically treasured for

part in the whole.

by Sandra E. McBride

(excerpt from Flowers in the Meadow)

"Where the Buffalo Roam" An American Song

 

"Home on the Range," the state song of Kansas since 1947, was composed by violinist Daniel Kelley with text by otolaryngologist Dr. Brewster Higley.  The poem was published in the Kansas newspaper Kirwin Chief in 1876. However, within a few years of publication, "Home on the Range" gained immense popularity throughout the United States and both composer and writer became practically anonymous as settlers claimed the song as their own.

My Western Home
by Dr. Brewster Higley

Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.

Chorus:
A home! A home!
Where the Deer and the Antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not clouded all day.

Oh! give me a land where the bright diamond sand
Throws its light from the glittering streams,
Where glideth along the graceful white swan,
Like the maid in her heavenly dreams.

Chorus

Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale,
Where the life streams with buoyancy flow;
On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever,
Any poisonous herbage doth grow.

Chorus

How often at night, when the heavens were bright,
With the light of the twinkling stars
Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed,
If their glory exceed that of ours.

Chorus

I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours,
I love the wild curlew's shrill scream;
The bluffs and white rocks, and antelope flocks
That graze on the mountains so green.

Chorus

The air is so pure and the breezes so fine,
The zephyrs so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home here to range
Forever in azures so bright.

Lamar Valley "A River Runs Through It"

 

Wapiti Valley

These Children Singing in Stone

by E E Cummings, 1939

these children singing in stone a

silence of stone these

little children wound with stone

flowers opening for

ever these silently lit

tie children are petals

their song is a flower of

always their flowers

of stone are

silently singing

a song more silent

than silence these always

children forever

singing wreathed with singing

blossoms children of

stone with blossoming

eyes

know if a

lit tie

tree listens

forever to always children singing forever

a song made

of silent as stone silence of

song

Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway

Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway winds through the Shoshone National Forest, Cody, Wyoming.  We drove thru Wapiti Valley to the East entrance of Yellowstone National Park.  Passed a lot of unusual rock formations.

Rock Creek

On the drive to Beartooth Scenic Highway, we stopped at one of the camp grounds along Rock Creek. The clear mountain water of Rock Creek flows along Highway 212 and through Red Lodge, Montana and it also passes through Custer National Forest.

Beartooth Pass Montana

Rock Creek Vista Point

 

North Absaroka Wilderness Area

Memories Mary Hillhouse Flower Garden

My mother, Mary Hillhouse is turning 90 years old in April.  Within the last 4 years, she has had hip and shoulder surgery and her planting days are gone.  She no longer can work in her yard and tend to her flowers.  Most of them are now gone due to the lack of love and care she showered on them for forty years.  Many of these flowers were from her mother's cuttings Eloise McArthur Hillhouse as well as friends through the years.  I didn't appreciate their splendor and beauty as I should have.  They are now memories of times past.  A time of country flower gardens that southern women like her and her mother and mother's mother generations loved to have in the spring living on the country roads of Cherokee County.  I am grateful I have photographs of those precious flowers that will forever linger in my memory of my mom.

A Wintery Heaven Beartooth Mountains

Snowy Mountains

By John Fletcher

Higher and still more high,
  Palaces made for cloud,
  Above the dingy city-roofs
  Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
  Pillars of the sky at rest
  The mountains from the great plateau
  Uprise.

  But the world heeds them not;
  They have been here now for too long a time.
  The world makes war on them,
  Tunnels their granite cliffs,
  Splits down their shining sides,
  Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
  Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.

  Vaster and still more vast,
  Peak after peak, pile after pile,
  Wilderness still untamed,
  To which the future is as was the past,
  Barrier spread by Gods,
  Sunning their shining foreheads,
  Barrier broken down by those who do not need
  The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
  The mountains swing along
  The south horizon of the sky;
  Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
  The mists that dance and drive before the sun.

John Fletcher (1886-)1950), is an American writer, was recognized as an influencial force with the Imagist, Modernism and the Agrarian Movements. His varied interests were reflected in his ownership of over 1,700 volumes, which are housed in the John Gould Fletcher Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Granite Peak and Beartooth Peak