While on our way back from Bozeman, MT, mom, the girls, and I stopped in Lovell, WY, for two nights, and explored Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. Definitely a worthwhile exploration. So early on the first morning we were there, Sarah and I decided to go on a sunrise drive, stopping at a gas station for coffee while it was still dark, driving along a remote highway until we found a place to see the sunrise, watching as the sky gradually grew silver, then rosy, watching as the landscape emerged from shadows. I love how expansive the landscape is, and how desert-like.
The sunrise colors were beautiful and pale, muted by the atmospheric smoke, but bringing out all the pale loveliness of the landscape, the pastel hues, pale greens and mauves and golds. Being a lover of growing things, I always delight in the differences in flora from one region to the next, and something about the low-growing, scrubby vegetation sparkles in my imagination, as unremarkable as it is. It is the landscape of the west, of the novels and history that have captured my mind for so many years…and now it is the landscape and flora of home.

The beauty of the west.