Crazy for the blue, white, red and yellow

Castilleja or Indian Paintbrush

My heart beats true  
For the red white and blue  
Crazy for the blue, white and red  
Crazy for the blue, white and red
And yellow fringe  
Crazy for the blue, white, red and yellow

--Ragni, Rado and MacDermott

To hear The New Broadway Cast Recording version of Hair's "Don't Put It Down," click here.

People spend the Fourth of July in various ways.  They eat hot dogs and potato salad, try to drown themselves in rivers and lakes, watch fireworks, or set themselves on fire, and, rarely, reflect on what it means to be an American.  Very rarely, in my experience.  I spent the day on top of a mountain.  Specifically, I returned to the mountain where I spent Labor Day, 2008 and blogged about here.

Pat's Knob is the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alène range of the Bitterroot Mountains, and is located just south of Plains.  Standing on my deck, I can see Pat's Knob on the horizon.  Because of its height, the mountain top is covered with various types of antennae and the buildings to house the radios behind those antennae.  Kevin being a HAM operator, we go to the mountain to hear the voice of, well, probably not God.  My Labor Day 2008 blog is all about the radio experience.  This one won't repeat that.

As I noted on Tuesday, I'm working my way through Julia Cameron's The Sound of Paper.  One of the activities Cameron suggests is a daily walk.  Once a week your walk should be over an hour long.  We arrived at the top of the mountain, and while Kevin and his HAM buddies were getting their equipment out, I took off down the mountain.  That's right, I started at the top and walked down hill for half an hour.  In the heat of the day.  Wearing a t-shirt and shorts.  (Note to Greg Johnson, if you're reading this:  the t-shirt was black and had printed over the left breast the words "The Missoula Colony 3.")  Of course the problem with hiking down hill at the start, is that when you're tired and whining, you have to turn around to hike back up the damn hill.  But I was on a quest.  This wasn't just a walk.  This was a WALK, with the intent of communing with nature and spurring on any creativity left in me.  I decided that a good project would be to find and photograph as much of the local flora as possible.  In fact, my first title for today's blog was "Pat's Knob's Flora" and the music I wanted was from the Broadway musical, Flora the Red Menace, Kander and Ebb's first collaboration, the original production of which starred Liza Minella in a Tony winning performance.  Unfortunately, there is no "Life is a Cabaret," or even "Mr. Cellophane" in Flora, and Youtube wasn't helpful.

Gardeners without green thumbs, e.g. myself, can get really frustrated on such hikes.  Just as the forests above Smith River produce wild irises and azaleas that make my own look anemic, the wild raspberries growing with only God's help at 7,000 feet look oh so much healthier than the ones in my berry patch.  Even the grass growing along the road is healthier than my own at home.  Oh who am I kidding.  There is no grass growing at home--except coming up as weeds between the raspberries.

Xerophyllum tenax or Beargrass

But there were lots of things growing up on that mountain, the most impressive being the beargrass.  Beargrass is always a show stopper, and the ones growing on Pat's Knob were no exception.  While I saw other white flowers along the road, most notably Sego Lilies, pussytoes and Queen Anne's Lace (otherwise known as wild carrot), the Beargrass was by far the most notable--if only for its size.

Penstemon hirsutus or Hairy Beardtongue

 I found penstemon right at the top of the mountain, and in isolated patches further down.  I have always liked penstemon, and now have several reasons to back up my favorable opinions.  First, aside from being a widespread plant, blooming over much of western Montana and relatively easy to identify (always a good thing in my book), I happen to like just about anything that can be categorized as "hirsute."  If that weren't enough, according to Wikipedia, penstemon used to be classified as "scrofulous" (well, ok, as a member of the Scrophulariaceae family), but is now a Plantagenet (ok, one of the Plantaginaceae).  As a descendent of the Plantagenets myself, how could I not love such a plant.

DYC or Asteraceae

And just as Ragni, Rado, and MacDermott, remind us, the American flag is usually red, white, blue, AND yellow, as in the yellow fringe that so often surrounds the flag on our school flag poles.  I don't know what this particular flower is.  There are so many different ones that all look alike, at least to the non-botanical eye, so I was happy to learn that Lady Bird Johnson, among others, just called them DYCs, or Damned Yellow Composites.   I grew up calling them Daisies, then learned to call them Composites, and now I find that wildflower books call them Sunflowers or Asters.  It's just too much to keep up with.  I rather like DYC, myself.

Once back on top of the mountain, I pulled out my camp chair and my iPad.  One of the things about being on a mountain with lots of antennae is that you get great reception.  The iPad hooks up to any strong Verizon signal, and sure enough, on top of the Knob I was getting five bars.  I spent the afternoon happily reading e-mail, catching up with Facebook, and other non-productive activities (AKA web surfing).  The HAM guys, however were having troubles, and sure enough, we didn't get back down off the mountain until 6 pm.  Still, I'm not complaining.  I got my work done and am pretty happy with it.  And in case you were wondering, this is what the world looked like from the top.  It was a beautiful way to spend the Fourth.

Looking northwest toward Thompson Falls, Eddy Peak, and, eventually, Idaho.

Back in the Saddle Again

Flags flying at the Noxon Bicentennial Park

Noxon, Montana

I`m back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again

To hear Gene Autry sing "Back in the Saddle Again," click here.

I've been feeling stymied lately.  There is still so much to do as far as getting settled into the new house that I tend to climb into my recliner and curl up with a good book.  I do have a few of them around.  I've been cataloging my library using the website www.librarything.com, and to date I have added 1,314 books to my personal catalog.  Most of these books are packed in boxes waiting for new shelves to be built, the thirteen bookcases installed in my library being filled almost to capacity.  Of those thirteen cases, I've added only four shelves of books to my librarything catalog.  There's a long way to go.  It doesn't help that everytime I open a previously unopened box, it has books in it.  I knew I had a library, but as George Takei says, "Oh Myy!"

Always carry your camera, you never know what might show up

 At the Big Sky Pantry, Milepost 12, Montana Highway 200

Meanwhile, I haven't been writing.  Oh, a blog post every now and again, and some short quips on Facebook, but nothing serious, nothing personal, nothing regular.  Well, let's hope Julia Cameron can come to my rescue.  Cameron is the author of The Artist's Way and numerous other books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and even one movie.  Many of our Creative Pulse students found The Artist's Way helpful, and I even started a separate blog when I began working my way through Cameron's God is No Laughing Matter.  One of the books I unpacked early (and set aside for inspiration to strike) was her work The Sound of Paper:  Starting from Scratch.  Last night I picked it up and began reading.

Stop along the way and smell the daisies.

Big Sky Pantry, Milepost 12, Montana Highway 200

In my experience, reading a Julia Cameron book is an interactive experience.  Especially so the books that deal with spurring creativity.  The Sound of Paper is no exception.  The book is made up of a collection of short essays, and each essay is followed by an assignment that Cameron sets for the reader.  In addition, Cameron has three activities she strongly recommends to all those who would follow her advice.  The first is writing your Morning Pages.  The idea of the Morning Pages is that first thing in the morning, before you get into any of the details of the day, you sit with your pen and paper and write out longhand whatever floats through your mind until you have covered at least three pages with ink.

The Clark Fork River at Noxon, Montana

I have written my Morning Pages at different times in my life, and have always found the exercise helpful.  I just picked up a notebook from my desk and found written on the first page "5/22/07  So we're back to the three pages a day routine."  Every one of the 160 lined pages in that green, hard bound "Celtic Journal" is covered with words, the last entry continuing on to the green sheet of paper at the very end, and dated "Sunday, July 29, 2007, 7:00 a.m."  What should be obvious from the May 22nd post is that this journal is not the first I've filled with Morning Pages.  Looking back at The Artist's Way, I see that Cameron says "There is no wrong way to do morning pages."  I had thought we were to write them, then throw them away, but no.  We can write them on single sheets and then put them in an envelope.  We can write them on the pages of a spiral notebook if we wish.  I choose to write them in hardbound journals.  Cameron does suggest that no one else be allowed to read our Morning Pages, and indeed for those following the course of study proposed in The Artist's Way, even the writer him/herself shouldn't go back through them, at least not for the first eight weeks of the program.  Cameron specifies just what we're doing here.  "Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness. ... They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions."  I won't comment on draining brains, but I KNOW from experience that I am more productive when I have written my Morning Pages.  They are so important to me that I capitalize them, even though Cameron does not.

Cameron has two other tools to use in nurturing your own creativity.  The Artist Date is a weekly exercise where we romance our inner artist.  I'll talk more about this activity in the future.  Finally, a twenty-minute walk daily should do wonders to clear out the cobwebs.  Once a week, Cameron suggests making the walk much longer, adding an hour to our twenty minute walks.  Again, I'll address my walks in a subsequent post.

This MinPin owns the boat pictured above.  (Thank God my own kids aren't this fat.)

So here I am, back in the saddle, having written my first set of Morning Pages in several years.  And how did it change my day?  Well, having drained my brain, I was free to have breakfast, read my email, catch up with Facebook, and do some other correspondence on-line.  Having moved quickly through activities that usually take me all morning, I grabbed the vacuum and the mop and attacked the tile floor in the den.  I've been looking at it for weeks wishing that it were cleaner, and now it is.  Once I finished the floor, I undertook the first of the exercises Cameron sets out in The Sound of Paper.  The exercise consisted of putting together a collage of pictures taken from magazines--pictures that speak to you for whatever reason, even if you don't know why.  She suggests taking 15-20 magazines and pulling out whatever pictures resonate.  Spend half an hour doing that, then cut out the images and glue them onto poster board.  I had just finished a half hour's worth of grabbing pictures when Kevin called.  I left to meet him in town, and spent the rest of the day riding with him on the tail end of his bread delivery route, Thompson Falls, Trout Creek and Noxon, Montana.  Noxon is sixty miles west of Plains, and fifteen miles from the Idaho state line.  I always take my camera along, so with this post you can see a bit of what I saw today.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.  I know I'm enjoying the process.