Tag Archives: mountains

B.P.O.E.

Probably the most spectacular thing about Rocky Mountain National Park is the alpine tundra landscape above the treeline. The Tailor and I found a well-marked hiking trail up there and struck out, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pika or two among the glacier-strewn rocks.

What we got instead was a little more than we bargained for: a whole herd of elk caught up with us, stepping right into our path (literally!), just yards from where we stood, lazily blocking our way back. There was nothing for it but to stand still, pinned to a rock (uncomfortably close to the cliff edge, I might add), and wait patiently for them to move on. They were utterly uninterested in us, but still—big, unpredictable, wild animals with pointy weapons sticking out of their heads make me nervous.

When the path cleared and we got the heck out of there, we found more hanging out near the car. Sigh.

But hey. At least I had plenty of time to get a good look at them—and nowhere to go but into my bag for my sketchbook and pen.

Basin & range

There are plenty of places in the West where you don’t reach the mountains until after you cross miles and miles of foothills. Well, not here. There’s something about the sheer scale of this part of Utah—of perfectly flat valleys abruptly cut off by steep mountain slopes, of towering peaks dwarfing farms and towns and cities at their feet—that gets me every time.

Only a paper moon

It’s difficult enough to sketch from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle: keeping a steady hand, drawing quickly enough to keep pace with a changing landscape, etc. But when you throw in trying to sketch by moonlight… Well, I guess you just have to be willing to embrace imperfection—and wait until morning to see how everything came out.

Above the clouds

One of my favorite things about living in the Northwest is how everything seems here seems to exist in its own microcosm. How you can be socked in a gray pall, nothing but pearly fog in every direction—unless you find a tall enough hill to climb. As you near the top, the light changes, sun filtering through in rays, until you reach the top—and find a whole different world waiting.

Living library

I love sketching wildflowers and other plants—but unfortunately, I’m really not great at identifying them. Of course, sketching is an excellent way to cement the information into your brain, but it doesn’t help much when you’re not sure what you’re looking at. I’m not a fan of standing there, juggling sketchbook and guidebook, trying to find one particular yellow flower amongst a huge grid of yellow flower photos (that all look, well, frankly identical to each other, and not at all like what’s in front of me), just to label my drawing correctly.

Enter the National Park Service. Wondering what kind of unusual flower that is? Forgot the name of that cactus? Just look around—nine times out of ten there’ll be a little engraved label nearby. Not near a marked trail? Just look in the little pamphlet the ranger handed you when you arrived! I swear, park rangers are the librarians of the natural world (and since I’m always telling people that librarians and park rangers are the most helpful folks on earth, this seems to fit).

I rely on this so much that when I’m not in a national park (or arboretum, or conservatory), I get frustrated. I mean, how great would it be if every front-yard garden, every school hedgerow, every city park came equipped with tiny interpretive signs?

Because after all, you never know when a sketcher is going to happen by.

Seeing the Elephant*

I have a particular love (and lots and lots of sketches) of treeless landscapes and endless plains. But I have to admit—after driving cross-country over more than 2,000 miles of the flat interior of the continent, seeing mountains again, at last, feels like a kind of reward.

* “Seeing the Elephant” was a popular (and complicated) American expression in the late 19th century, often used by pioneers to refer to the reward awaiting them at the end of their long wagon journey west.

Get a shovel

I don’t know about you, but I’m always tempted to let my New Year’s resolutions pile up as high as the snowbanks at Mt. Rainier. Of course, it’s much harder to fulfill them than make them, but I know there’s at least one that I’ll have no problem keeping:

Just keep sketching.

Retro Row

Manitou Springs has been a tourist attraction since the 1870s—first for its “medicinal” mineral springs, and then for its wild-west remnants and mountain location. For decades it’s been chock-a-block with midcentury motels and vintage neon—and by some miracle, nearly all of them are still around.

Every time I come back here, I run around town to do a sort of frantic inventory of these places, always amazed and relieved to find things more or less as I left them. These signs have been my old friends for over twenty years. I’m hoping against hope they’ll fare better than Giuffrida’s, and that there’s still a lot of life left in them.

Celtic Colours

Well, okay, my visit missed the actual Celtic Colours music festival by a couple of days (sad but true). But even a short two days on Cape Breton gave me a nice taste of the Celtic heritage of the island—

—as well as a panorama of stunning autumn color, absolutely everywhere I looked.

If that’s not a good consolation prize, I don’t know what is.

Studio soulfood

My friend Jessica and I had the opportunity to teach a letterpress class at Penland last year. For one glorious week we got to immerse ourselves in Penland’s unique studio culture. Somehow these folks seem to have figured out the secret to bringing out an artist’s best work.

Step one: put them in a beautiful, rural setting (with spotty phone/wifi so as to avoid distractions).

Step two: provide them with top-notch studio equipment—

—and lots of work time to get sucked into the deep end.

Step three: take care of their basics human needs.

Room and board are part of the deal at Penland—but while the housing is simple and spare, the food sure ain’t. I wrote “three squares a day” in my sketchbook, but it’s really more like “three dodecahedrons a day.” Just like a hearty meal might sustain a farmer on a harvest day, I think the secret to creative genius might just be a piping hot bowl of cheese grits and a dish of apple Brown Betty.

This Yankee is here to tell you: you can’t beat Southern cookin’ for surviving a long day in the studio.