Forrest’s Dream Cabin still feels a bit daunting, too hard, too challenging. Maybe I am just lazy. Or the hateful time change still has me dragging. Or too many trips down the hill in one week threw me off my stride.
Excuses, excuses. Even when I am in a diminished state of mental energy and toughness, I can paint Mineral King like nobody’s business*.
When these are dry, I will hook up my old computer to the old scanner and scan them so you can get a better look. Tomorrow I will show you the ones that I photographed because they are too large for the scanner by ONE LOUSY INCH. (Who decided that 17″ was a good dimension for a scanner??)
*Such a strange cliché but I am not interested enough to look it up.
Have I painted this scene tall and narrow before? No. (Disregard the photo along side the painting – it was left there from a previous painting.)
Or in this evening light? I don’t think so.
Or with a dam on the creek? Nope
I chose to leave off the smaller tree on the left. You probably wouldn’t notice if I didn’t tell you. This might be finished. Of course I can always add more detail. . .
P.S. If you recognize this charming child, wish her a happy birthday today!
Last week it got cold and rainy but I painted in the unheated workshop anyway because summer is coming and I will wish it was cold. Yes, there is a heater which Trail Guy offered to light for me several times, but I declined. It was overcast, and I knew I wouldn’t be painting all day because it was a little hard to see the colors correctly.
In deciding which of the 7 Mineral King oil paintings to work on, it may not surprise you that I chose one of the Oak Grove Bridge, my favorite subject to draw and paint.
The bridge needs to be refined and the foliage needs to be finished. Then I will probably start on the other oil painting of my favorite bridge in all of Tulare County.
Yes, yes, I know it is still March, my second favorite month (interpret that either way you would like). But summer comes every year, and with it comes the need for me to supply Silver City Resort with oil paintings to sell. There isn’t a lot to paint of Silver City itself, and as nice as it is, people go there BECAUSE IT IS NEAR MINERAL KING.
Excuse me for shouting. I feel that all the way to my toes, since I took a job at Silver City in 1985 BECAUSE IT IS NEAR MINERAL KING.
Here are the paintings that I have begun in order to have merchandise for Silver City to sell.
That was the last one needed for the upcoming show, Still Here, at Arts Visalia in the month of April (virtual? actual in-person? More will be revealed. . .)
Now I can get back to the Mineral King paintings that I started when the others were too wet (or I was too flummoxed) to work on.
Now I have to decide if it is a good idea to show you all the finished paintings that will be in the show or maybe just make you actually attend the show in person. (As if I have the power to make anyone do anything)
“Recreate” in this blog post doesn’t mean to create something for a second time – it means to engage in recreation, or having fun in leisure time.
We drove up the hill to Mineral King to close the cabin and shut off the water for the season. Trail Guy held the gate for a convoy of 6 fire vehicles from Kings County.
Some crews “brushed” (this means “pruned” in normal people language) around the cabins. Because we lease our land from the National Park Service, we are not allowed to do this important maintenance chore. Apparently another agency pulled rank on the NPS. They are not landscapers – just energetic strong people who are doing a job to make a community more fire safe.
They limbed trees to prevent “laddering” by fire – we’ll need to trim these stubs next year.They left a lot of little stumps.I sawed off one that was a real tripper.They didn’t drag the brush away.
I am just reporting – not criticizing. I am curious how the Park will view these actions, and hope they just say “Thank you!”
Then there may have been a wee bit of recreating. We needed to do something to stay out of the way while the main men finished closing.
Then it was time to head down the road. The amount of brushing and shredding on the county part of the road (from the Oak Grove Bridge down) was astonishing – 4 or 5 crews, rumored to be from Mexico. Look at the “broom” they are using in the bottom photo.
This has been sorely needed for many years.
Thank you, energetic fire crews! We appreciate you and your consistent hard work. Thank you for saving Three Rivers and Mineral King from disaster in this bizarrely disastrous year.
In the olden days, we would have said it was not a good clear day. These days we are happy to see blue sky.
This photo is from the road. Since Mineral King is closed, we are only allowed to go to our cabins and not “recreate” anywhere. This is also due to the voluntary evacuation order. If it becomes mandatory (very slim chance), officials will have to find everyone to say “time to go”. If someone is out on a trail, an official won’t come looking for you! MK cabin folks were reprimanded gently by a Park official who said he was “disappointed”* to learn that people were leaving their cabin area. However, I happen to know that it was Silver City folks, not Mineral King folks who defied the order. Yes, there is a difference, a 4 mile difference.
(I just wanted to set the record straight and defend my immediate neighbors.)
Instead of going to Mineral King, I went to the coast to see some blue sky. I’ll show you next Friday.
*I refrained from telling the official that we were disappointed that he didn’t open the campgrounds this summer – took a bit of discipline, but I managed somehow.
“Dismal” and “grim” are the 2 words that come to mind when I think of the state of Mineral King and Three Rivers, and Tulare County, and while I am at it, California. But for this post, I’ll settle for “gloomy”. We were up the hill for about 36 hours after the mandatory evacuation was lifted, a chance to gather some things, and secure the cabin a bit.
The lower gate was almost impossible to open, but Trail Guy muscled it open for these frustrated folks; we figured out a way to lock it back. This is all necessary because MK is closed for the season.Peek-a-booThis sign greeted us.The sky was blue for a brief and welcome break from smoke.A typo. Good grief, people!!The smoke returned. Vandever is barely visible.It shows more here.The trail sign is covered with warnings.The standard view is grim.If I tilt my camera up, the peaks surrounding Farewell Gap show better.If we got trapped in Mineral King and fire came to get us, we would sit under the bridge.There was a little dam upstream from the bridge, and I decided to bust it down so more water would flow under the bridge. Probably useless, but it was fun. I’ll take whatever scraps of fun I can find these days.Hmm. Barely made any difference at all.When we left on Sunday afternoon, Trail Guy apprised the Forest Service fire crew of the water system in our neighborhood. I felt a tiny bit better leaving with these competent professionals in place.
May we please be finished with these fires? Please?? Sigh. I hear that rain is forecast for tomorrow. Please, God, have mercy on this place.
Today we have the pleasure of a guest post, something I have never had in 12 years of blogging! Sharon Devol is a real life friend, and the most regular commenter on this blog. She always has something interesting to add, and when I half-jokingly suggested she write a guest post, she was graciously eager.
This is Sharon’s personal story of her family’s Mineral King cabin.
My family connection to Mineral King starts in 1930 when my grandparents, Van and Mary Dixon, visited Faculty Flat (JB here – Faculty Flat is about a mile below the end of the Mineral King Road, so called because it was first settled by educators from Southern California) on the invitation of faculty colleague, Dr. Bates of the Bates-Bell Cabin.For the next 20 years Van and Mary and their two daughters, Diane and Shirley, used the Bates-Bell Cabin until the cabin built in 1926 by Lou and Mary Lou Coole came up for sale. Despite its primitive condition, the daughters begged Daddy to buy it, and the Dixon family set to work to clean and improve the cabin.
I first visited our cabin when I was one year old, and time at Mineral King has been a part of my summer ever since.
Coole Cabin as built in 19262020, same cabin
Quite an improvement made by a physics professor married to a home economics teacher with elbow grease provided by various family members.And we descendants of Van and Mary Dixon so appreciate their love, care, and hard work to make our family a warm and inviting place to visit each summer.
P.S. by Jana – A few years ago, I got the chance to update the drawing I did of Sharon’s cabin in 1992, because I draw better now. Goodness, an artist would certainly hope so. (Nope, not going to show you the first version because I deleted it, so there.)
!
Architectural details still missing, but background looking good.
