Carlsbad Caverns National Park – Drawn the Road Again

Mt. Rainier National Park, WA

Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. All of America seems to be celebrating right now, and rightly so. In my opinion, our wildest pockets are our true national treasures, and our national parks, as Wallace Stegner said, our best idea.

Olympic National Park, WA

So since I’ve spent a good chunk of my sketching life in national parks both close to home…

Arches National Park, UT

…and far afield…

Crater Lake National Park, OR

I figured I’d add my voice to the celebratory din, in the form of a little sketchbook retrospective.

Badlands National Park, SD

Beyond the centennial itself, I’m always up for toasting the parks. Not only do I think park rangers are the best people on earth,

Redwood National Park, CA

but I also sometimes think they’re the only thing standing between wildness and destruction.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM

And anyway, I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m a total park nut myself. It’s my goal to visit every NPS property before I die, including national parks, historic sites, national monuments, everything. (Actually, I’ve crossed a goodly chunk of them off the list already—

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX

—and I even have the stamps to prove it.)

Olympic National Park, WA

I know I have a long path ahead of me before I reach that goal,

Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

and getting there won’t be easy.

Big Bend National Park, TX

Yet I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the opportunity exists in the first place—

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

that so many people have fought to preserve these wild places, and won.

Saguaro National Park, AZ

Best of all is the feeling that no matter how long it might take me to get to each park with my sketchbook,

Glacier National Park, MT

I know it’ll be there waiting for me, as close to unchanged as humanly possible. Thanks to the National Park Service, the window of opportunity remains open.

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Well, I might not have had the chance to tour Meramec Caverns, but I got to tour the everloving snot out of Carlsbad Caverns—and I have the bursting sketchbook to prove it.

We were there in the “wrong” season—that is, not the time of year for bat-watching. But it didn’t matter: I figured the cave itself would be plenty enough to keep my pen busy.

Boy howdy, was that an understatement. I forgot all about the steep hike as soon as we got underground, because my brain immediately broke. At least, the part of my brain used to drawing recognizable things broke. The under-used bit that loves abstraction came roaring to life. It was like a Seussian paradise down there.

I think anyone wanting to teach design should send their students to Carlsbad Caverns. Around every curve waits a lesson in composition, or silhouette, or texture, or complex linework, or negative space.

Of course, it’s far too dark in the cave to break out the old watercolors, so I had to do that part later, but I had no problem making drawing after quick drawing on the spot, while the friendly park ranger told us interesting stories (have I mentioned that I love park rangers?)

And the limestone formations lent themselves so well to drawing! The way water carved each stalactite into linear shapes, or formed ripples in the surface of rock—it was like reinterpreting a line drawing that already existed in three dimensions.

Of course, none of this drawing (nor any of the dramatic photographs you see of the place) would be possible without the work the National Park Service did to show the caverns in their best light—quite literally! Almost as much as the rock formations themselves, what really struck me was how incredible the lighting work is in there, and how the mechanics of it all are nearly invisible. Without such brilliant lighting design, each spectacular formation would be lost in a sea of overwhelming texture. The park goes way beyond any museum, and ventures into the realm of art: if nature is already perfect on its own here, it takes a masterpiece of illumination to make humans appreciate it all.

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Drawn the Road Again

Tag Archives: Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Our best idea

Cave paintings