Montana Scenes

I'm currently out in Missoula, Montana for the inaugural Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing conference organized by poets and critics Prageeta Sharma and Joanna Klink, and featuring a wide array of amazing writers and scholars, including keynote speaker, scholar and critic Dorothy Wang, after whose study the conference took its name, and Sherwin Bitsui, Jess Row, Meena Alexander, Kimiko Hahn, and Farid Matuk, among many others. I'll post more about the conference over the next few days, but here are some photos of Missoula and its necklace of hills and mountains. Big sky, yes, but also, gigantic, very nearby mountains. And I've also included the photos of the herd of white-tailed deer we came across as we were leaving an event on campus. They were so close, so gentle, and did not flee but slowly moseyed away, grazing and periodically glancing back at us, as we headed for the bridge and trail to downtown.

A view across the Columbia River,
famous for Norman McLean's collection
 A River Runs Through It

A view of the nearby
mountains to the South

The Holiday Inn, where
part of the conference took place

Looking north along Higgins Road
in downtown Missoula

The hills looming just in walking
distance of downtown

Looking west along Broadway,
downtown Missoula

Public artwork, Missoula

Public artwork, Missoula

Those mountains!

More hills and mountains,
downtown Missoula

The campus of the
University of Montana

On the footbridge across
the Columbia River

Looking along the Columbia

The Milwaukee Trail, Missoula

Young white-tailed deer, grazing
at night--they were only steps
away from us and didn't scatter,
but kept munching away until finally
they proceeded down into
the parking-lot area

On the Higgins Street bridge

River and mountains

Some of the rapids near downtown