The discovery continues

If any of you have looked up Missoula in Wikipedia you'll have seen the town mottos listed as "The Discovery Continues" and "A place, sort of". The first motto was the inspiration for the sub-title of this blog: Words and pictures as the discovery continues. I'm not sure what to make of the second one as Missoula is definitely a place on the map, and a very likeable and fun place it is too.

I'm getting to know my way around and finding the essentials - Liquid Planet does a great Earl Grey tea. I even find myself using those peculiarly American units of distance: the block and the hour. So, there's an art and crafts shop I want to visit again about a block and a half away from the RMSP office and the place I'm staying is a half hour walk after classes end. On a sunny evening like today that half hour walk is a wonderful way to unwind.

The Rocky Mountain School has not been far from my thoughts for about a year now and during that time I've not really worried or wondered about what the course would be like. I'd heard enough good reports to be confident that the staff there know how to teach a thing or two, so most of my earlier thoughts were on applying for a place and getting a visa. Once they were out of the way I turned my attention to plans for starting out as a photographer when I return home. I was confident that while in Missoula I'd learn a lot about photography I guess I also had the idea that I'd grow as a person during that time as so many folk had said it would be a life changing experience. I felt that though my expectations for the course were high they were probably going to be exceeded.

Today, only three days into the course, I made a couple of discoveries. Firstly I started to get an idea of by just how much my expectations would be exceeded, and secondly I also caught a glimpse of how life changing these five months will be. These insights took me by surprise. This really is a remarkable place (sort of).

On a different note, Missoula has a really good skate park and a few of us went there yesterday evening to see what sort of photographs we could take. Missoula has some really good skate boarders so it was great to watch them as well as to try to capture what they were up to. I think the skate part will be visited several more times before I'm done.

This trick is easy... all you have to do is hurtle along up a slight ramp, leap over a pile of rocks, land on your skate board, and glide to an elegant stop.

For this one you first skate up a steep slope, then you turn and skate down the slope.

There are two ways of dealing with this structure and this photo shows both of them. One involves a lot of speed and a skateboard, the other only requires a steady upright walk.