The rivers will run high and wide

and tipsy sunsets will last until dawn

The past few days have provided an absolutely stunning showcase of Montana’s best early spring…and it is entirely too early. But still, I got out on Waterworks a couple of times in the past few days, today even wearing a racerback tank and shorts, and sporting my new running shoes which are going to be running shoes, you know, for running, really soon!¹

But even more exciting than 70º in March is the way Chickadee Community Services, the non-profit I founded last year and now direct, is supporting a project I could have maybe dreamed of, had I been thinking in a truly imaginative fashion!

My friend and Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray (Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians) is leading a Good Life workshop on the Main Salmon River this summer, and he seeks to fill at least two spots on the boat with Indigenous participants. Here, he writes about why this is so important to those participants, as well as to him.

As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, Chickadee can collect donations and provide a tax incentive for doing so. Our mission is to support Indigenous education projects; thus it serves as an umbrella for many types of work, and this project fits comfortably underneath that umbrella. So, Chickadee gets to be the receptacle for these donations and then direct them to support Chris’ scholarship. It is a beautiful purpose to serve.

Chris is also helping by matching up to $1750, a rough equivalent to his compensation for facilitating the workshop; donating 50% of the paid yearly subscriptions to his substack, An Irritable Métis, now through April; and giving $10 from every preorder of his book Becoming Little Shell via Fact and Fiction now through April.

If you are in a position to join in giving to this specific cause, you can do so right here! Please remember to type FREEFLOW in the note space so we know where to direct your donation.

It might yet be cool enough in the mornings for coffee with whipped cream, but soon enough the rivers will run high and wide, nights will vibrate with the nighthawk’s calls, and tipsy pink sunsets will last, it seems, almost until the dawn.

1. she exclaims, with only the tiniest doubt in her mind…