Montana's Song

Tonight the road roamed under a night sky splendid with stars.  The milky way shone with an icy brilliance as satellites silently traced their paths across the sky.  The grass lent its scent to the night air, giving it an earthy aroma.  The pines silhouetted against the starry sky added spice to the air. 

The road meandered by a small river and listened in as that swollen stream whispered its secret sorrows to the shore in the still places and roared out its joy at being a river in the rapids.

The road was joined by a brook, babbling as it made its way to the river, passing on the gossip from the icy springs and melting snows further up the mountain. 

A nearby campfire burned with joyful abandon, lighting up the trees and fields nearby in the excess of its exuberance.  The crack of the wood being chopped to give the flames life punctuated the river's monologue. 

Creation sings the Father's song.

Hallelujah! Let all creation stand and sing,

"Hallelujah!" Fill the earth with songs of worship;

Tell the wonders of creation's King.

Autumn

I really can't get over what a spectacular fall it's been here.  It's almost as if God said, "Alana, I know you don't really want to be here right now, but I'm going to make it so beautiful that it will be almost impossible for you to not enjoy it."  Perhaps a bit fanciful, but that has indeed been the case.  Sunny days, blue skies, yellow leaves, bluish mountains, golden brown fields...

It may not have the reds and oranges that make fall memorable in other places, but it's the most brilliant fall I've seen here for years.  It's made me wish that I were a poet so that I could more fully do justice to the feelings it evokes in me, to be able to describe the crisp, fragrant air, the whiff of cottonwood sap, the scent of gently decaying leaves tantalizing the nostrils.  Unfortunately, since smells and feelings cannot be properly captured, I must content myself with pictures, though these also don't do justice to the season.  

I never get tired of looking out my window to the cottonwoods at the end of our pasture and the Spanish Peaks beyond them.  Sometimes the gold leaves and blue mountains shimmer under the fluffy white clouds that float in a peerless blue sky.  

Sometimes the mountains are shrouded in clouds and snow.

 And sometimes it's a mixture.

Oddly enough, though, that is about as close as the snow has come.  Halloween came and went without a snowstorm or freezing temperatures, a happenstance that is almost unheard of.  The unseasonably warm temperatures even allowed me to take a trip up into the mountains...

...to this waterfall.

 It may not hold the record for "tallest" or "widest" or "most water," but I tend to think it's quite spectacular.

I think the forecast calls for snow soon, though.  I've managed to adjust to autumn fairly well; we'll see how I do with winter!

Sacajawea and Fairies

Today, for the first time since I was four, I climbed to the top of Sacajawea Peak.  Obviously, if a four-year-old Alana can make the climb, it's not too intense.  Nevertheless, it is a mountain.  More specifically, it's a mountain that I've been meaning to climb for a couple years now, and just have never had the time/energy/good weather for it.  However, with the beautiful fall we've been having, I finally managed to fit it in.



My legs started out in the lead.  They still believe that they should be my primary source of transportation and are a little bitter about the whole car thing.  They started off at a brisk pace, shouting encouragement to other parts of my body, "Come on guys!  This is great!  Only a couple miles!"

"Wait for us!"  shouted the heart and lungs, which, I think, are still not used to the altitude.  (Well, at least, it makes a good excuse.)

Some times when they needed a break, the lungs would start talking to the eyes: "Hey, do you see how beautiful it is?  You should convince the legs that you need to stop and take a picture."

"See?  Sooo pretty!"

However, the legs would often reply, "It looks about the same as it did when we stopped 10 minutes ago!  Plus, we'll see the same stuff on the way down.  You can stop then, if you still want."

So then the lungs would talk to the brain: "Hey, ya know, aren't we feeling a little dehydrated?  Tell the legs they'll work better if we stop for water."  *pant, pant*

Of course, whenever the legs were convinced to stop, they realized that, hey, they were a little tired too.  Then the brain would have to kick in and say: "Our goal is the top!  Keep going!  Further up, further in!" and the legs would comply.

Eventually the body started cooperating better as the legs began to realize that they weren't quite used to this whole always-up-hill thing.  (Israel has a lot of hills...but none of them are quite this long...)

There was snow, of course, and, of course, most of it was on the trail, probably by virtue of the trail being more sheltered from the wind and sun.  Or because people had trampled it to ice when it was fresh.

I wasn't complaining, though.  I think this is the first snow I've seen (except from a distance) or touched in well over a year.  Pretty exciting.


The last stretch was brutal as the slope increased and endurance lagged...but with the top in sight, who could stop to rest?

And the view was worth it.  Many of my favorite mountain ranges, all visible in one glorious panorama.
The Spanish Peaks and Hyalite:

 The Crazies:

 And, of course, the long ridge line of the Bridgers.  (Speaking of Ridge Routes...)

At the bottom I paused at Fairy Lake, a place which lives up to its name.  It's easy to imagine the fairies coming out to play, teasing the fish in that still, green pool.  

Jezreel Valley

This weekend was the much anticipated Regional Explorations Field study! The nine of us in the class, one spouse, our bus driver, and Dr. Wright spent 3 days exploring the far reaches of the Jezreel valley. This class is almost the pinnacle of our studies in the historical geography program. The seminar next semester is the real pinnacle, but this prepares us for that. We spend the class basically learning how to research various topics and issues in historical geography, and then putting together coherent presentations on what we learn. This trip was our final.

For those of you who know nothing of the Jezreel valley, let me give a brief introduction.

Well, I'll attempt to be brief. It might not work.

I have to start with Israel. In the history of the world, the region that we now call the middle east has played a huge role. I think it is fair to say that almost all "world empires" that have arisen have vied for control over as much of the "middle east" as they could grab. Many of these empires even originate in the middle east. Israel was never really one of these empires, but the land of Israel was always fought over. This is because Israel (and to some extent Jordan) contain the best routes for getting from one area of the middle east to another. In days when airplanes didn't exist and boats were rudimentary at best, land routes were all there was. There were various routes that could be used, depending on your purposes and where you were headed, but in the end, most of the routes ended up going through the Jezreel Valley.

The Jezreel Valley is a roughly arrow shaped valley in Israel, north of Samaria, but south of Galilee. It is surrounded by various hills and mountain ranges, but there are 7 passes in and out of the valley: Jokneam, Kishon, Shimron/Shimon, Tabor, Harod, Dothan, and Megiddo. Since there are 9 people in our class we added the Nazareth Ridge and the Acco Plain and we were each assigned one to research and present our findings at two sites in or related to our regions. Here's a map of the region. The green flags are sites we visited, the balloons are other important sites that we saw but didn't stop at. The purple lines are approximations of the routes we talked about, and the red line is the boundary of the West Bank.

Rather that detail exactly everything we saw and talked about (and probably bore you to death) I'm going to include a number of pictures from the weekend to give you a taste of some of the things we saw.

Climbing up the tell of Jokneam. The road you see is coming from the Jokneam pass and heading off into the Kishon pass.

Here are all the girls in the class, sitting on a random couch on top of Helkath.

Today's "Rushing Torrent of the Kishon."

Party time at Acco! Probably part of Eid-ul-Adham.

Sunset at Acco.

One of the crazy little fish jumping all over at Acco.

We stopped briefly at a possible location for En Dor (the little mound right in front of Mt. Tabor).

On top of Mount Tabor (traditional site of the Transfiguration).

Coming down the road from Tabor...hoping not to die! :)

Starting to feel like spring in the Jezreel valley - green grass and flowers!

Sun shines through the clouds as we look at the valley from the top of the Nazareth Ridge.

Sunset by Hannathon.

The Harod Spring, of Gideon fame.

My site on Mt. Gilboa, from where we could see (almost) into the Dothan Pass.

More flowers!

When we got lost a little man appeared to point the way. (How do we go up??)

The forest of Gilboa reminded me of Montana. I even found a Christmas "tree" to bring home!

Our wonderful class and professor (and Mindy!) on Megiddo.

Finding firewood on a hill by Megiddo...which also reminded me of Montana.

Last "site" of the trip, looking at Gath-Padalla and the entrance to the Dothan Pass.

Hopefully this gives you a taste of some of the things I got to see over the weekend - both educationally valuable and beautiful.

Thoughts on Music

I've thought a lot about music at various times. For example, how much does what we listen to affect us? Does the type of music affect us? Are some types of music (apart from lyrics) better than others (morally, aesthetically, technically, etc.)

Recently (well, fairly recently...it was before school ended, but I haven't really had time to blog on it since) I had another thought.

Actually, I was talking to one of my students about the music I was playing at the time (Russell Watson, I believe.) He said he'd like to be able to sing like that if he couldn't be a rock star (or rap artist?)...or something sort of along those lines. It was a while ago. To make a short story shorter we started to compare the beauty of the semi-classical music we were listening to to the beauty of rap. As a disclaimer, I've never claimed to be a fan of rap. Sometimes I can stand some of it. But this student does like rap, and I got him to agree that rap really cannot be considered beautiful. Fun, cool, sweet perhaps...but not generally what comes to mind when you think of beauty.

Perhaps others would disagree (and some rap songs may be exceptions to the "rule"), and if so I'd like to hear their arguments. At any rate, the conversation started me thinking. At Petra we emphasize the importance of truth and beauty and their connectedness. Now, I haven't drawn any hard conclusions, but I do wonder. If some types of music have less beauty than others, does that mean they also have less truth? Or perhaps reflect the true form of music less truly?

Just some thoughts/questions. Comments are welcome. ;)

And for the fun of it, here's a beautiful picture from here at camp. :)