Glacier National Park, Montana

Heaven's Peak through the burn. One year after the Trapper Creek Fire. Loop Trail, Glacier National Park, Montana. 10 Aug 2004.

One of my delights (there actually have been some!) in the past few days has been my friend Janson Jones updating his blog Floridana Alaskiana from v2.5 to v4.0 &  posting his marvelous photos again.

This morning he posted a photo of Avalanche Creek in Glacier National Park — just an hour’s drive or so from where I grew up in Northwest Montana.  Feelings of nostalgia… so I decided to post a photo from my last trip to visit my family in Montana in August 2004, from a hike I went on with my brothers & niece along the Loop Trial not that far from where Janson’s photo was taken.

Glacier National Park played a prominent part in the first 24 or so years of my life, before I came up to Alaska.  In fact, one of the earliest photos of me was taken on the shores of Glacier’s Lake McDonald —

— but for a better view of the lake itself, here’s a photo from the same August 2004 trip of my brother Dave when we stopped by to refresh ourselves after our hot sweaty hike that day.

But I think my favorite of my own photos of Glacier is this one of a beaver dam along McDonald Creek, from a hike with Dave & Linda (my sister-in-law) during a visit in November 2003.

Except for a three-year exile to Seattle from 1987–1990, I’ve lived in Anchorage since 1982. But while I’m now an Alaskan, I can never forget the home where I lived the first half of my life. Thanks to Janson for bringing me such a stunning visual reminder of the place where I grew up, which is still a part of me.

See Floridana Alaskiana v4.0 for more & continuing visual treats.

And for a little more of Glacier Park, here’s a slideshow of those Glacier photos I have in my Flickr photostream.