Tag: Rocky Mountains

  • Garden notebook

    Garden notebook

    On this morning I took a hike in a part of the world I know very well. Yet while the path was familiar, the rocks seemed to get more alien the more I stared at them. I kept trying different angles and colors, but I never did manage to nail down what I was looking…

  • Front Range from the front seat

    Front Range from the front seat

    There are some roads I have traveled so often that I have permanently etched into my memory every landmark, every sign, every single geographical feature along the way. The seventy miles between Colorado Springs and Denver is one of those stretches. When I was a kid, I knew exactly how far we were from our…

  • B.P.O.E.

    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…

  • Only a paper moon

    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…

  • Seeing the Elephant*

    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…