Field Trip

Trail Guy and I took another field trip. If I call it that, then it sounds as if I am working. I am always working if I hand out a business card or take a photo that might be worth painting.

View upcanyon from Slick Rock area at Kaweah Lake.
Alta Peak is the highest one; Moro Rock is the granite monolith just above the green hills on the left; the spots in the sky are my signature photo look.
Mustard is usually the first wildflower in the foothills, blooming in early February like clockwork (if we’ve had rain).
Walking in the lake bottom means getting cockleburrs in ones shoelaces.
With the recent rains, the lake is filling up, so we walked up to the Horse Creek Bridge, since our normal route is underwater now.
The pillars are huge up close and would be fun to paint, maybe like the trunks of redwood trees. I wonder how mural paint holds up underwater. . .
On the other side of the bridge is the abutment of a small old bridge. No dates visible, and only a vague idea of its purpose (besides the obvious one of crossing Horse Creek).
Looking back at the bridge. I’ve never seen it from this side before.
What a peculiar sight and strange find –an oyster shell! Were the squirrels planning on using it as a trap door? Did if fall from someone’s boat?

Heading Home

I’ve spent many nights away from home in the past month. The drive between home and away is so beautiful this time of year that I want to show you a few photos. I hold the camera up to the window while driving and not looking at the camera screen, so any photo that is sort of okay is lucky. Then I edit the lucky shots.

Someone has graffitied my initials in my favorite color on this road sign.

Would any of these photos make good paintings? Or am I just blinded by green love? If I paint these, can I write off my mileage? Or can I write off my mileage because I am considering these to be paintable?

I can’t stand tax season. But I love this time of year. Life is full of contradictions, dilemmas, incongruities, paradoxes, always at the same time. Thank goodness there are goods happening at the same time as bads.

Scouting Around

What are those dudes howling about over there??

For the first time in my life, I have purposely not gotten a cat “fixed”. We have so much trouble keeping cats that I want to generate a few back-up kitties. Besides, it costs so much and then some coyote just comes along, and poof, gone, bye-bye cat and bye-bye dollars.

So, our little Scout has become a boy-scoutin’ kitty. She has a couple of boyfriends who are yowling at one another down by the road. We are a little worried that Scout will go scouting too far away, but even if she was “fixed” there would be no guarantee of safety.

Meanwhile, I haven’t been working much and went scouting around (for scenery and exercise, not like Scout!!) with a couple of friends. It is early spring in Three Rivers, up on the BLM land along Salt Creek.

We saw a total of 4 young ‘uns! I told you it is spring around here.
First bush lupine of the year in bloom – more evidence of spring.
This waterfall along Salt Creek doesn’t photograph well for me, but I always try.
Whoa. This is so beautiful. Sometimes I can’t believe I get to live here.
Does this look like January to you? It was January 30 when I was here, honest! See? Tulare County isn’t all about unemployment, obesity and smog. (But don’t tell anyone else, okay?)
This map is where we were. Salt Creek BLM land. Some people call it Case Mountain, but it is one very long walk to Case Mountain, involving a tremendous amount of trespassing. Since it follows the Salt Creek drainage, that is the name I prefer.

Chasing a Tree

During a recent drawing lesson, I opened up my envelope of just-in-case snapshots, and this one was on top. Why not draw it? Demonstrating is a good method of teaching.

Both the trunk and branches are confusing to me. If I can’t see it, I can’t draw it. I can make stuff up, but since this was on The Captain’s property, we decided to go see it.

I told her it which flowers were blooming in my photo, which informed her of the location. This involved a rather messy slip-slide through very slick cow poo, hidden under leaves, with apologies to my jeans for the damage done. (Sometimes art is a dangerous profession.) I recognized the tree, or felt fairly certain when we got there.

Using a sketch book along with my camera, I began sorting out the twisted branch pattern to understand which was connected to which.

Photographing it at various angles was helpful.
No wonder I am confused. Look at this mess.
See how this one big branch turns behind the other? In my original photo, I couldn’t tell if I was looking through a gap or if the green was the beginnings of leaves.

Really, come on, now. It is a TREE. How can it be wrong?

My goal is to make my work believable. Another goal is to keep pushing myself to understand what I am seeing, to not coast and make things up. Other times the goal is to push myself to make things up.

Sounds as if I am perpetually confused. . . What am I seeing and why am I drawing it?

Right after sketching it, I flipped to another page in the sketch book and saw that the original photo was taped inside. I planned ahead and then forgot. The Captain and I got a good laugh. We need good laughs to get us through losing The Cowboy.

I didn’t hit my head when I slipped on the cow poo. This is just how I am these days.

Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work

In my normally slow month of December, I finally had the chance to work on my upcoming book Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names.

It seems to be cooking along just fine, and then something goes wackadoodle with InDesign or the template ceases to do its templatish magic or it takes hours and hours to resize all the photos to the same effective PPI (you’d really rather not know) or some of the photos get corrupted and I have to keep moving the flashdrive back and forth between the 2 laptops or I realize the title page simply says “MK Wildflowers” instead of Mineral King Wildflowers . . .

You get the idea.

One morning I worked about 10 minutes on it and suddenly it was lunchtime. Then I put in about another 1/2 hour and it was dark out. Then another 10 minutes and it was 9 p.m. So, you see this is an engrossing and enjoyable project.

The worst part will be writing the blurb on the back. Have you ever tried writing about yourself? Don’t, if you are able to avoid it.

The plan is to have it in hand in April so I can do a book signing in the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum before the Redbud Festival when people are in a wildflower state of mind. (Have you ever been in a wildflower state of mind? It might just be an idiosyncratic trait of this Central California artist.)

Chasing the Big Trees and Dogwoods

We (Trail Guy, Hiking Buddy, and Mr. Hiking Buddy) joined in with the madding crowd (I don’t know what “madding” actually means, but I liked the book and the movies “Far From the Madding Crowd”) and visited the main part of Sequoia National Park.

I wanted to see the dogwoods in their autumn colors and gather more photos of the big trees, AKA Sequoia Gigantea AKA Redwoods (Redwood High School, Class of ’77, yea for us). It was a fun day, but also smoky and crowded up there.

Smoky – this mess is coming over a ridge or two from a lightning fire in the Camp Nelson area.

Dogwood is a tree that blesses us twice – flowers in spring, colored leaves in fall. This is by the Crystal Cave Road.

Crescent Meadow

A fallen giant next to a midget man.

We walked on top of it and the midget man became Trail Guy, who helped us get down off of the big tree.

Woodpeckers go after redwood trees??

Tharp’s Log as it appeared when we approached it from a different trail.

I’ve painted this fence (not itself, but oil paintings of it) several times.

This big tree fell recently and its roots landed on a boulder.

This is the brightest one we saw.

It is tricky to find colored dogwood with redwood trees nearby, good sunlight, and a turnout off the road all together.

The colors were brighter in person.

Dogwood berries?

Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.

Lingering Wildflowers in Mineral King

I’ve spent more time in Mineral King than home working in August so the subject needs Friday as well as Monday next week.

Mineral King’s wildflowers peak in July, but there are still beautiful sights in August.

This dude is too busy to notice the stellar jay feather. He is a Lodgepole chipmunk.

Trail Guy on the Franklin/Farewell trail.

Yo, Bucky.

The flowers at the Franklin/Farewell trail junction are fading, but Bigelow Sneezeweed is still going strong.

We accompanied our good friend on the first four miles of her week-long backpack trip.

This girl can step out, even wearing a backpack that probably tops 45 lbs. I had to focus to stay on her 6, carrying my 4 lb. day pack. How embarrassing. When we got to the Trail Junction (affectionately known as the “Wildflower Cafe”), we had a snack, and then I announced that I had gone as far as I wanted to go.

I came to see some Explorer’s Gentian, and they did not disappoint.

They make the Sierra Gentian look boring by contrast. (Or perhaps my photos do that.)

Crystal Creek is slow and low.

Eight was enough miles for the day. We got back to the cabin before the sky opened up, and I got more knitting done. (Our friend probably was at her destination, hunkered down in her tent.)

It’s getting wet out there.

Mineral King Wildflowers

Because I went coastal last week, I don’t have any new stories to tell about my crazy life in Mineral King. (not truly crazy, just me exaggerating. . .)

Instead, here are 10 photos of Mineral King wildflowers for you to enjoy.

Swamp onion

Penstemon

Crimson columbine

Indian paintbrush

Giant blazing star

Kelley’s leopard lily

Coneflower

Swamp onion again

Mountain Pride (or Pride of the Mountains, depending on which book you read.)

Pennyroyal

Do you have a favorite? Do you know any of these by different names?

Mineral King: 1 Hike, 2 Canyons

Last week we took in the 2 best canyons, White Chief and Farewell, with a friend on one long mostly off-trail day. The flowers were spectacular.

 

The lupine were at their peak.

Almost there – a steep climb. The fit folks would say “just a short hop over the ridge”. The sort of fit would say, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” The unfit wouldn’t even be present. (Putting it this way makes me feel better about my own personal struggles in the fight against gravity.)

The wildflowers were truly stunning on the south side of Farewell Canyon where the old route is.

The photos never do the real scene justice; however, I bet your legs aren’t sore.

Variety in Mineral King

My recent time in Mineral King was varied. Have a look:

The art show and sale, “Art: Inspired by Mineral King” was a hit! 

Some of my paintings on the display screens; everyone else’s were on the other side.

Botanical watercolorist Joan Keesey demonstrated.

Watercolorist John Keesey told another disappointed potential customer that the piece they wanted was not for sale. . . sigh.

Trail Guy couldn’t get out of the driveway to come help me bring the show home and I couldn’t get in with all my stuff because 2 cars parked directly at the end of our road.

If you recognize either of these cars, please explain to the owners that it is a bad thing to block a driveway.

We enjoyed a bonfire with our neighbors (and we were a bit short on sweets so I went to them a-beggin’).

We shared our roasting forks and they shared their marshmallows.

We walked the 4 miles to the Farewell Gap/Frankin Lakes junction. It felt like 6. Who moved this spot that we call “The Wildflower Cafe”??

It was worth 8 miles round trip to enjoy the wildflowers.

Franklin Creek was crossable – Trail Guy rock-hopped, and I walked straight through.

I learned a new (and difficult to photograph) flower called “Blue-eyed Grass”.

I had some fun going to Soda Springs and then to a swimming hole above Soda Springs with some friends/neighbors.

This is how a crazy 7 year old enjoys cold water with his grandma, who is not very traditionally grandmotherly!

When we could exit our driveway, we went to Silver City to retrieve my display screens and were happily surprised by dear friends/neighbors, who helped Trail Guy rehang our wedding photo. (We were the first to go on the wall, because the former owner was a great romantic and felt she had a hand in our meeting and marrying.)

Just a few of the many wedding photos, 2 couples with whom I worked at the store and married the same year.

Another hike ensued, but you’ll have to wait until next Friday to learn about it.