KATE MONTGOMERY

Lake Ontario with the lights of Toronto in the distance.

I got a GoPro, then I got a bike. Happy Bicycle Day!

"Sleeping in the Forest" I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. By Mary Oliver ... ... ... Photography by Kate Montgomery Original Music by Kendall Perry Featuring Beatriz Rola on Violin

"How Surely Gravity's Law" How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing— each stone, blossom, child — is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God’s heart; they have never left him. This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. by Rainer Maria Rilke ... ... ... Photography by Kate Montgomery Original Music by Kendall Perry

"In Blackwater Woods" Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. By Mary Oliver ... ... ... Photography by Kate Montgomery Original Music by Kendall Perry Featuring Beatriz Rola on Violin

"Slip Your Mind" excerpt I’m a moody star But if you said glow I’d cut my soul into a million little pieces just to form constellations to light your way home — Andrea Gibson ... ... ... Photography by Kate Montgomery Original Music by Kendall Perry