Drawn the Road Again

Tag: Mt Rainier

  • Greetings from the Best Coast

    Greetings from the Best Coast

    Greetings from the [Quarantined] Coast! Hoping this finds you safe and well, and staying home to help “flatten the curve” of the virus that is suddenly everywhere at once. Here in Washington we’re sheltering in place—and as fate would have it, today I am celebrating (from home) the release date of my newest book! Greetings…

  • Our best idea

    Our best idea

    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…

  • Mountain shadows

    Mountain shadows

    A lot of people are going to be up early today to participate in holiday craziness—but for me, this time of year has a completely different incentive to be out before the sun. Because if you live in the South Sound area and you’re very, very lucky, you might catch that rare phenomenon where the…

  • Super moonrise

    Super moonrise

    I had other plans for today’s post, but I had a surprise on Saturday evening that changed all of that. I spent the day on the Oregon coast, and arrived on the home stretch just as the last light was fading. As I neared the Nisqually Delta, I looked east out of habit, where I…

  • Perfect panorama

    Perfect panorama

    For the many days of the year, these mountains are invisible. If you showed up in western Washington in November, you might not even know we had mountains here. Our rainy Northwest climate makes these peaks disappear into the clouds on most days—even, sometimes, when you’re right there, standing amongst them. Not in the summertime,…

  • Bright and early

    Bright and early

    I’m generally a morning person—especially when it comes to sketching. But I live at 47 degrees north latitude, where for months at a time, being a morning person means spending a lot of time in the dark. Right now I’m still shaking off that lazy Northwest winter-mode version of “early,” where 8 am still feels…

  • Living library

    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…

  • Get a shovel

    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.

  • Smoke signals

    Smoke signals

    Tomorrow is my fifth anniversary of living in Washington state—so in honor of the occasion, the next few posts will highlight the Pacific Northwest. It’s been fascinating to see all the faces and incarnations of Mt. Rainier in my time here (so fascinating, in fact, that I did a whole book about it). But I…