What’s especially exciting about this year’s show is that two of my works will be there from Thursday January 26-Saturday March 3.

More info: www.artmuseum.org

My featured framed photographs are “Yellowstone Autumn” and “First Light”, and both are 16″ x 24″ signed matte finish prints.

To view these images, please visit www.wildharephotos.com/whp-newcards1.php

To celebrate my first showing at an art museum, I’m printing a limited edition of only 99 signed, matte finish 11″ x 17″ prints of both “Yellowstone Autumn” and “First Light” and each print costs only $50, plus shipping, when ordering using PayPal at www.wildharephotos.com

To honor and thank two very special Montana-based non-profits for all the wonderful and inspiring work that they do, I am also donating a portion of these sales to their cause.

When you buy a signed, limited edition 11″ x 17″ “Yellowstone Autumn” print, I will donate $5 to Yellowstone Country Guardians-learn more at www.yellowstonecountryguardians.org

When you buy a signed, limited edition 11″ x 17″ “First Light” print, I will donate $5 to Living Art of Montana-learn more at www.livingartofmontana.org

Once these limited edition size commemorative prints are all gone, they’re gone, and I won’t be making any more of this size image for these two photographs, ever.

Bring more nature into your home and work place, and to the lives of other nature lovers, today, and for helping Yellowstone Country Guardians and Living Art of Montana as well!

Limit: six limited edition prints per person.

PLANNING TO VISIT THE YELLOWSTONE ART MUSEUM

WILD MONTANA EXHIBITION?

They’re at 401 North 27th Street in Billings, Montana

More Info: www.artmuseum.org or (406) 256-6804

WILD MONTANA ART AUCTION 44 EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION

(We’ll be there!)

Thursday January 26, 2012 from 5:30-7:30 p.m

Preview over 200 works of art from local and regional artists.

Mix and mingle with the artists over cocktails and hors’ d’oeuvres.

Start bidding on your favorite works in the Silent Auction Gallery.

WILD MONTANA LIVE ART AUCTION

(We hope to be there-stay tuned!)

Saturday March 3, 2012

Purchase Tickets in Advance.

MORE INFO: www.artmuseum.org or (406) 256-6804

As a writing prompt, six of us traipsed around a nearby vacant lot on a sunny, calm Saturday morning  before the winter solstice. We did so in silence, focusing on what we heard, smelled, noticed and felt, then returned indoors to free write before sharing our impressions.

The following is a “bowl poem” we created that day, where one line from each person’s poem or prose is written on a piece of paper and placed in a bowl, and then arranged by the group to reflect a larger narrative and essence of what we shared and experienced together. Happy solstice, and to the return of the light following winter’s longest, darkest night!

Triplets Pressed Into the Cold

And a Whisper of Belly Drawn Across The Snow

Nourishing Lonely Green Grass Islands

Small Thin Delicate Sheets of Ice

Lacey With Beauty That’s Hard and Cold

The Snow Becoming a Map of Patterns of Summer’s Leaving

Trees Once Green With a Profusion of Leaves

Now Stark Skeletons Dripping With Blood Red Berries-

Who Could Have Known?

More, I Want More. Quiet, Mystery, Beauty.

Out of the mountains at dusk

Swirling onto the valley floor

Shrouding aspens and cottonwoods

Hugging a sluggish slate gray river.

Great Blue Heron stalks the shoreline

Patient, Present

Stillness within the storm.

When you buy two 8″ x 12″ hand-signed matte finish prints, you get one same-sized print FREE, and when you buy up to four 8″ x 12″ prints you’ll receive two same-sized prints FREE when purchasing by PayPal. 

There are over 90 different, unique, and peaceful photographs on line at http://www.wildharephotos that bring calm and inspiration to home and work spaces, and make wonderful holiday and thank-you gifts.

Most images are also available as hand-made, hand-signed, blank-inside greeting cards as well!

Your specially-priced prints would arrive by Thanksgiving, allowing you plenty of time for matting or framing images before the holidays, and feel free to share this offer with others who share your love of nature! Sale ends November 15, 2011.

At the WildHarePhotos.com website you’ll find about 30 brand new, stunning images now available as large-format, hand-signed prints or blank-inside greeting cards, and the first 1o folks making a purchase using PayPal will receive a special bonus gift as a thank-you for visiting and bringing more nature into their lives.

Also new at WildHarePhotos.com is an invitation to join my community and receive a free e-zine full of nature connection tips, anecdotes, reflections, links, and new photo updates and offers.

This is an opt-in invitation, and I will never give your name or contact information to others. The inaugural e-zine will debut the second half of October, and you can expect to receive two e-zines per month starting in November.

Here at YourLifeNature, be sure to check out Adventures and Events, which are free to low-cost ways to experience the range of products and services I provide to folks who seek a deeper and more consistent connection with nature in their lives.

Thanks, too, for checking out the Viewing and Purchasing Images and Cards section, where you can support local and independently-owned businesses that carry my cards. A few of them, such as Madison Creek Furnishings and Designs in Stevensville, Montana, and the UC Bookstore at The University of Montana, carry matted, hand-signed large format prints, while others carry my handmade and lithographic frameable greeting cards.

You’ll get a strong sense as to how I found my own path to healing, growth, acceptance and life purpose through deepening my connection with nature by checking out Discovering Your Own Connections With the Natural World.

Finally, Why People Love Wild Hare Photos… shares what others have gained, learned and brought into their lives through experiencing and using the products and services that I have to offer.

There’s so much to celebrate at this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere where I live with my partner Erik and Flo-Jo the cat.

Tonight, as the winds shifted around dusk, about two hundred crows gathered in chaotic yet cohesive formation, flying off to roost in a grove of trees within squawking distance from the Clark Fork River.

Minutes later, a small skein of Canada geese headed west, then south, honking loudly as they flew overhead.

Change is in the air, change is good.

I hope you enjoy the changes both at http://www.wildharephotos.com and here at YourLifeNature, and if you’re serious about bringing more nature into your life, I also hope you’ll contact me, and explore the possibilities for working together.

Travel well!

Three months after a wounded nation plodded toward war and exacting revenge, I plunged into a long winter of  self-imposed isolation and reflection in the heart of Yellowstone. Feeling way out of my comfort zone, unnerved, and afraid, I initially resisted embracing the commitment I had made, and constantly wondered what the hell I had just gotten myself into.

The closest unplowed road was over 50 miles away, via a round-trip four-hour snowmobile ride. Everything I brought in had to be carried by snowmobile or sled, and that’s how I also got groceries twice a month on scenic and occasionally scary jaunts from Fishing Bridge to West Yellowstone. Lettuce, bananas and eggs required particular attention when packing for the return home, as I found out the hard way on my first grocery shopping mission, with none of the above among the survivors.

Once on the way home, I got stuck in deep snow during whiteout conditions in the Hayden Valley, then waited over an hour in fading late January daylight for help to arrive. Chocolate, a cool attitude, and singing and dancing to stay warm were part of my survival tool kit that afternoon, as was having a radio link to the Comm Center, and more standard emergency gear.

Bison on the road, along with occasionally unruly, unskilled or unprepared winter visitors, also made travel and work on this high plateau atop a dormant volcano extra exciting and unpredictable. I settled slowly and more confidently into days spent starting and maintaining wood stove fires in the warming hut, reporting weather and road conditions, “roving”  nearby areas to meet and assist visitors, and staffing, subbing and giving slideshow presentations, with a four-stroke National Park Service snowmobile as my winter steed.

Compared to many other winter park rangers, I was pretty much on my own at Yellowstone Lake, free to be myself, free to make mistakes, and hopefully wise enough to survive and learn from making them. That relatively TV, internet, and cell-phone free winter provided time and space to reconnect and rediscover my passion for writing and photography. It also reawakened other long-ignored and neglected desires that I didn’t have the courage to begin fully exploring until three years later, when I left the park.

In hindsight, a clear pattern emerges as to how  five years living and working in Yellowstone continues to guide who and where I am today, and to where I may be heading. Nature is where I have consistently retreated to get clearer, to immerse myself in and be o.k. with the unknown, and often, the unknowable.

Nature is also where I’ve felt most comfortable not knowing it all. None of us ever will, in the natural or the “real” world for that matter, and that’s o.k. It’s all pretty much beyond our control. The one thing I have free will and control over is whether and how much I choose to fully explore and bring forth my own true nature, and to share that freely and fearlessly with others.

That magical Yellowstone winter of 2001-02 continues to bear amazing gifts, such as greater trust, wisdom and confidence in a rapidly changing world. A steady knowing that by moving through fears and challenges, in natural as well as human communities, amazing opportunities to grow and change and thrive arise. That through discovering and developing my  talents and abilities, the better I can contribute to my own life and livelihood, and to those of all others on the planet.

I’m not without fear. I embrace and engage it every day. It has become a most unlikely friend, often revealing a higher and unexpected way through perceived problems beyond the more limiting solutions society, others or my ego might come up with. As a result, I am better at surrendering and allowing  things to happen, being less attached to outcomes, and visualizing positive results for my seven billion fellow human beings to also discover their own true nature, and share their talents in the highest way.

Eight years ago in early May, I accidentally came within six feet of a Yellowstone grizzly and her two cubs, while responding to a “bear jam” between Norris and Mammoth Hot Springs. Managing a “bear jam” actually involves skillfully managing the unpredictable nature of humans, and there were plenty of them emerging from cars parked all over the road, doing their best to circumvent my and another ranger’s orders to remain in their vehicles, as three bears navigated a human labyrinth in search of peace and a calmer place.

I had turned around to stop a family from approaching any closer, and in that moment, I felt the hackles on the back of my neck stand up. On the far side of the car closest to where I was standing, radio-collared grizzly bear number 264 and her cubs zoomed by, ears down, eyes averted, panting hard, fearful perhaps. They ditched the road, meandered along the far side of a mucky meadow, then vanished into a jumbled, regenerating lodgepole pine forest. Bear jam over. I was emotionally spent once the adrenaline fled.

I still get chills when recounting that experience. That same night a crazed grizzly bear came to me in a fearful dream, peeling my scalp and crushing my skull before consuming me alive. I’d like to think that my worst nightmare was only that, and quite different from what my highest hopes and dreams may ever bring.

It’s hard to say whether grizzly bears dream, what they may dream about, or whether their nature is much different from ours. One thing I can say with conviction is that I have tremendous personal power to change my reality. We all do. It depends upon embracing our true selves, as well as befriending and learning from our fears.

Perhaps grizzlies and other wild beings spend less energy being afraid of how things are or look in favor of more fully being themselves, making the most of opportunities inherent in the now. I’m glad places wild and large enough for grizzlies still exist, for if we ever lose such places, we’ll also lose a wilder and wiser part of our own nature. When I really listen and slow down, I hear Yellowstone’s wild heart beating fiercely in mine.

Could you benefit by having photographic images that help you stay calm and better connected to nature, and that bring beauty, peace and inspiration to your home and work spaces?

Do you know someone who’d love to receive a unique gift for an upcoming graduation, wedding, Mother’s or Father’s Day, birthday, or another occasion?

Through Monday March 21, when you buy two signed 8″ by 12″ matte finish landscape and nature prints at http://www.wildharephotos.com you get another same-sized print FREE when purchasing using PayPal.

You can buy up to four signed 8″ by 12″ prints and get up to two same-sized prints FREE!

Just e-mail me at hobiemt@yahoo.com and let me know after purchasing which FREE print or prints you’d like.

These prints would arrive seven to ten days after ordering, with plenty of time for matting and framing these images before presenting them to others (or yourself) as unique, made in Montana gifts.

Feel free to share news of this sale with your community, and bring more nature home today!

http://www.wildharephotos.com

Through a Clark Fork River town

Drifting downstream

Pacific bound

Translucent boulders

Disintegrate and roll

Winter’s shape shifters

Once Again Whole

Cottonwood snags

Nature’s debris

Human hubris

Cast out to sea.

Yesterday afternoon, snow had dusted the higher ridges of nearby peaks that had not been blanketed since mid-June. Lolo Peak, the most prominent mountain to Missoula’s southwest, was shrouded by swirling clouds that took the better part of the day to reach and release some of their moisture on the city. Still only rain in town, but the snow line’s slowly marching down toward the valley floor. Winter’s coming.

Over the weekend I facilitated a workshop for an area non-profit that uses the arts and nature to support healing, primarily serving people facing illness or loss. The focus was on autumn and exploring the changes of the season, using haiku as a collective entry point.  From there we departed in different artistic directions, after spending time in a small park observing nature’s fall colors, changes and lessons.

The results were as diverse and individual as Nature’s creations. Some folks crafted artwork using leaves, pine cones and seedpods, while others cast off and transformed the confines of haiku into more expansive poetry and prose to accompany their art.

Earlier in the workshop, I spontaneously suggested taking one line from a haiku poem we had each written about a natural object and then create a group poem.

We wrote our lines down on pieces of paper, placed them in a bowl, then randomly drew the lines to create a larger, collective work. It’s fun to read what we came up with in reverse as well!

Holds Brittle Against the Wind

Purple Leaves

Patterns Bring Discipline

Green and Yellow Swirling Near

Earthbound Constellations

Please Linger, Autumn.

Autumn Twilight, Returning

Earthbound Constellations