'Twas the week before Christmas...

...and all through this place, many creatures were stirring...

(red-tailed hawk, sailing)

(mule deer, grazing)

(elk, lazing)

 ...if at a slow pace.  The Bitterroot shone, barely dusted with snow...

...and ice on the river began building its floe.

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Okay, okay, I'm fresh out of Christmas rhymes!

But all of this is to say what a great time I had, snapping these images on a two-hour drive with the fantastic photographer Mel Holloway of Corvallis.  I've known Mel since my last trip here.  He posts Bitterroot pictures regularly on Facebook. On this particular day, he had an errand to run south of Hamilton and more pictures to take.  He invited me along!

Mel, on a photo safari.

First we went to the ranch and new apple orchard of the aptly named Lee McAlpine.  Mel had Christmas gifts to deliver -- a bottle of bubbly Italian Secco and a plate of home-made cinnamon rolls baked by his wife, Mary Alice.

Mel comes to the McAlpine ranch bearing gifts.

Lee McAlpine is cider master of a hand-crafted hard cider made with fresh Bitterroot apples. Her
business is Montana Cider Works. She shows us her fermentation equipment and soon-to-be tasting room.

Then we drive north and home to Hamilton on the Old Darby Road, high above the valley. Here and there are lonely fence-row trees, cattle grazing and mounds of soft blonde-on-blonde high-country grass.

Happiest of holidays, from the land of velvet hills (and icy peaks)!