Photographs Of A July - My Fuji Journal

The Matchbook | 8.8.25

Summer has a way of exploding into focus, then before you have any idea what happened, blurring past you in a haze of sights, sounds, and frenzy. It moves like water, like current after dam release. After half a blink, we open our eyes and it is August and Autumn begins its walk up the staircase to your door, prepares its hand to knock.

This July was an absolute tornado of motion.

Before I get into the Fuji round-up post to show you what I saw through the lens of my little x100v, can I borrow you for 1 moment of honesty? There are a LOT of new faces here over the last month, as this humble little Signal Fire has added almost 2,000 free readers in the last few weeks, but at the very same time, the number of paid subscribers has dropped. This place literally only stays alive with your patronage, and with funding getting pulled from all sorts of beautiful public broadcasting services as of late, all of us trying our very best to provide the world with some much needed art, we feel the pinch BIG TIME when we lose what little support we have.

So, if you have it, if you’re able, Please, upgrade your subscription as a way to keep this place going. That’s all. Public service announcement over. Onto the show that was July!

Click on the first and it’ll let you see them bigger and scroll through each one :)a

July has been a month of thunderstorms and birthdays. Of sunsets and many, many evening walks. My birthday was first, and Sarah drew/painted me my favorite birthday card ever, two chairs and swallows, pointing at our routine we follow every single day we’re home. Addie also drew me a stunner, the artistic embodiment of my favorite song, “Running To Stand Still” by U2. There’s a line “and a storm blows up in her eyes,” that I always wanted to see drawn, and maybe even tattooed one day. She nailed it. Sprinkle in a day of protest at our favorite local book store, Sarah rocking the raddest overalls known to human kind, and daily deer visitors, and things got off to a great start.

The birthday train kept rolling on, with Addie’s happening 3 days later. She ended up getting two parties, one with friends and one with family, so she got double the cake, double the loving. Rad. A huge chunk of her girlfriend crew showed up and made her feel particularly special. Sarah and I then went up to Elliston to help my folks build a waterfall/pond feature on their property in the woods. Gilly loved every moment, as indicated by his smile in the rear view mirror. We then spent a whole day wandering with

Woodland Brews

and went to the Summer Art Walk downtown, as well as the 3rd Annual Montana Highland Games, which was held in an outdoor rodeo arena, and was rad to see Scottish tradition all the way over here in Montana. There was even a booth set up for the Clan Gregor (I am a proud member, my family heritage going all the way back to Rob Roy McGregor and beyond) and it was really rad meeting people associated with our family Clan. Even radder to see our tartans, family crest, and motto displayed proudly.

More walks, and then the annual Last Chance Stampede and Fair rolled into town. We only go for photographs, as the rides 1) would make me throw up everywhere, and b) do NOT seem like they are up to any kind of engineering code or safety regulation whatsoever haha, but it’s always fun to go and take photos of the light, and its juxtaposition with the dark. I adore it. The sunsets were insane the entire time, and we got to actually spend a lot of time with both sets of my nieces and nephews that live in Spokane. Banks and Moyer first, and then Griffin and Winslow. We even took Griffin’s senior photos, which blows my mind because it feels like yesterday he was a toddler on a treasure hunt in my back yard. I do not understand time.

Closed out the month with a heart-soaring, and then heart-wrenching lesson in how valuable tenderness is, even when you are 99% sure the outcome after you’re done being tender. I opened the garage door and there was a baby deer mouse sitting there, trembling some, and seemed to be blind. I put a glove on and she crawled into my hand for about an hour while we tried to sort out what to do with her. After much research, and the sad realization that local wildlife rehabilitation centers will absolutely NOT take in a single abandoned, sick, deer mouse, we tried our best to keep her warm and safe. We left her in a little homemade “nest” of sorts in the garage, and left the door a slight crack open in case she needed to get outside to re-find her family. The next day, even though I knew she probably wouldn’t survive the night, we found her peacefully passed on in the middle of the floor. She looked so calm and peaceful, almost like she was smiling, and I really do believe it’s because for those few hours, she felt tenderness. I think she was ill, and I know she didn’t have long, but I cried a lot and I miss her still. Strange how things so tiny can take up such big places in your life, even after such short times.

This was July, so very abbreviated and condensed down. These were 30 some photographs of over 300 I took that month. More will come for August, more snapshots of a simple life lived the best I know how.

I hope you still love these.

I love you all. Be good.