Each spring, they grow. From a recently frozen earth, they rise. Quietly, secretly, calmly, they slink up out of dark soil and emerge.

They are simple, pure, undemanding. Small, just a few inches, muted colors, no flash, humble. They are oblivious to the wild, animated explosion unfolding all around them, which Verlyn Klinkenborg aptly described as the “abruptness of spring, its riotous biological opportunism.”

Strong and sturdy, they are the kings of the understory. While red-winged blackbirds cackle from the cattails, Canada geese honk from a river island, and newborn whitetail fawns curl up and hide in tall grass, they unassumingly beat back gravity and bid hello to spring.

Morel mushrooms. Morels.

Claws scratched pavement as the dog bounded over the curb. Heedless to all but a puff of cottontail, he squirted into a one-way file of drivers pushing into the afternoon sun.

You know how the story ends… so how the hell did I wind up in Bozeman’s Municipal Court?

Let’s cover the triage first—Stinkface lives. From the collision he received only a couple dime-sized abrasions on his right foreleg.  Regarding the late-model Pontiac, however, we now have some insight into the reason why GM deep-sixed that brand in the fall of 2010. Car-freaks know that it’s been an ambling downhill roll for the auto manufacturer, ever since the ’67 ragtop GTO ruled the road like a Hapsburg in chrome. The dog may have been only nicked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the car repair costs topped a thousand bucks.

Which is how I ended up in court.

To describe as "hot" the reception for last month's Focal Point, April 2012 (j. scarson photography's first compilation for the Magpie) would be far too mild.  Still, we were pretty sure she could outdo her own effort if given another shot.  That's easy for us to say, though, we've already pored over the images below.

Enjoy.

To visit six more from j. scarson shotography, just click "READ" below (or, better yet, visit the Magpie's much-improved Gallery and watch as the "autoviewer" scrolls through all the images)...

"A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty." — Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup

Picture the 19th-century Montana pioneer. From horizon to horizon, there’s not two sticks nailed together for refuge. Days and days of sage are interrupted by unholy thickets and steep creekbeds. The view is wondrous when the light plays along and only outscaled by the sea, but risk sprinkles the hills: snakes and prickly pear underfoot, hardly an inkling of a path, hostiles and ambushes to wrack the nerves, and you wake to the screams of beasts.

Guidebooks? Not really. If you’re doing it right, you’re the first one there. If not, better dig deep to overcome the perennial difficulties of dryland ranching. A look over your shoulder confirms that you’ve bundled up your whole life in one wagon and... is that thunderhead coming this way?

Extreme uncertainty, indeed.

Hyalite Canyon is said to be the most heavily used recreation area in Montana. Situated just 10 miles south of Bozeman and adjacent to the 155,000-acre Gallatin Range Wilderness Study Area—which encompasses some of the last unprotected roadless lands surrounding Yellowstone National Park—Hyalite is a haven for fishing, hiking, and camping, as well as home to the animals roaming the Greater Yellowstone. For the City of Bozeman, it is also the source of—as well as a hazard to—the city's water supply.

In 2005, three different studies concluded that "fuel conditions" are a threat to the Bozeman Creek and Hyalite Creek watersheds, which together account for 80% of Bozeman's water. In the event of a wildfire, the scorched forest floor could release a rush of ash and sediment, clogging the water treatment plant intakes located on each creek just within the National Forest boundary. In search of a solution, the City turned to the Forest Service.

Down on the big lake, Mrs. Tibaijuka saw bodies floating by, skewered together on sticks. From where the Kagera River empties into Lake Victoria, it is about 150 kilometers upstream to the killing sites in Rwanda. “They killed like they did in ancient times,” she told me, “with sticks and drowning. In those days, a girl child born out of wedlock in her tribe would be killed. Not for lack of compassion but out of the knowledge that the child’s life would be made unbearable by the villagers. So, a stick would be driven through a mother and through her baby at her breast and then through all her other children ‘like fish’.”

In April, 2004, I met with my boss, Mrs. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, the Executive Director (ED) of UN-HABITAT at United Nations headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. I was organizing a speech for her to give the next day at the tenth anniversary memorial ceremony for the Rwandan genocide. The ED was to be the keynote speaker and would lead the staff toward a moment of silence, as prescribed by United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.