Montana Sunset Alpinglow
Wednesday evening with thunderstorms forecast – 9:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Daylight Time (sunset is close to 9:30 now)…the sky to the east looked interesting, the wind was kicking up and sounding fabulous in the pines. I called to Karl, grabbed my camera (and pepper spray!) and off I went. Karl did not follow – he hates thunder and seems to have a sixth sense about it -…I whistled and called and watched him head from the driveway back to the house…Rats!! – I hate to walk without him – it is our thing!! But the sky called and so I went…. but halfway along as I was looking at the vista which was beautiful beyond words, my good dog appeared – panting, wagging tail – …. I love the following photos, but more than those, I love that my dear dog put aside his fear and followed…
Oh, there was no thunder that night – and more important, no lightning …often the clouds pile up and it rains or snows in the mountains but not in the valley. We never even heard rumblings in the night…
You can just barely see above what you can see below with more intensity…the setting sun, once again casting the tops of the trees in gold, bronze, deep red – the colors of Fall in the height of Spring. I stood – in awe – with my mouth open in amazement at the color feast spread out before me. I have seen the setting sun turn the tree tops in my woods gold but I had never seen the array of colors that I did this evening. I took a lot of photos and as I took each I knew that there was no way I was capturing the feast of color spread out at the foot of the mountains. With each photo, I hoped I could capture what I saw – from where I stood there was a wide expanse of glowing trees, snow covered mountains and building thunderheads – magnificent! For a long while I just stood and watched the color and the light.
And below…looking the opposite direction – West – as we headed for the house…the sunset through the trees…
My property sits in the woods on a plateau of foothills before the land gives way to the Swan Range – Continentel Divide – to the east and the floor of the Flathead Valley to the east.