One day while I was painting the Oak Grove Bridge, Trail Guy said he wanted to drive up the Mineral King Road and see how things looked. I put down my brushes and put on my boots.
Field Trip up the Mineral King Road
Because Jimmy Asked
Who is Jimmy? A friend of mine.
What did he ask? Something about William O. Clough and his memorial and Franklin Lake’s dam and the dams built on lakes by the Mt. Whitney Power Co. It wasn’t a specific question, more of a request for more information. He asked me, because Google sent him to my website (probably among several hundred thousand others).
Bill Clough was a colorful guy (an early Trail Guy, perhaps?) who had the job of closing the dams for the winter that Mt. Whitney Power Co. built on four lakes out of Mineral King. Or maybe he opened them. . . I don’t know how this works. (Yes, it still works, but might involve helicopters for transportation these days.)
One fall, Bill didn’t return. The following spring or summer, or maybe even a later spring or summer, someone found his boots near the little cabin he built about halfway between Mineral King and Franklin Lake. Did he live in the cabin? In the summer?
So many questions. . . wish the guy had kept a journal, or a blog or something else helpful.
So many questions, so few answers. Here is a list of what I know:
- The dams out of Mineral King are on Franklin Lake (the lower larger lake), Crystal Lake (upper or lower? It’s been too long since I was there), upper Monarch Lake, and Eagle Lake (only one of those in Mineral King).
- The cave out of the South Fork (of the Kaweah River) Campground of Sequoia National Park is called “Clough’s Cave”. The cave has a gate, so forget about it.
- You can read more about Bill in Mineral King: The Story of Beulah by Louise A. Jackson
- My second mural in Exeter called “Men + Mules + Water = Power” is of Franklin Lake as it looks now, with insets of related historic scenes.
Hope that helps, Jimmy, and thank you for asking so that I could put a Mineral King post up on a Friday in the middle of winter when the ideas are a little sparse.
NEWS FLASH: Bill Clough’s great-grand-niece just left my studio. Uncle Bill closed the dams for the winter. He closed the Franklin dam one fall, then returned to his cabin area, sat down and died. The following spring, my friend’s granddad went looking for him and found his boots and his beard. Uncle Bill was “eccentric”, had a very long beard, and sometimes he preached. (To whom? What? Always more questions around here. . .)
Final Fall Visit to Mineral King
Yesterday morning at 8:30 a.m. Trail Guy was reading the weather, and together we faced the unpleasant reality that we might be closing our Mineral King cabin during a rain shower if we waited until the weekend. So, by a little after 9, we were in the Botmobile heading up the hill to git-‘er-dun.
Rather than go on and on about what it is like to close the cabin for the season, let’s just all revel in the beauty that yesterday provided.
Next week I begin a mural. I’ll show you step by step but may not be posting until the end of the day so you can see each day’s work.
Mineral King From My Pencils
Why didn’t I choose to finish one of those other drawings?
I dunno. Sometimes I just don’t wanna. (Why doesn’t my boss fire me??)
This picture grabbed my attention because it is in Mineral King (White Chief, at the very top end of the trail). It also was appealing because of the reeds and grasses in the foreground, and the reflective quality of the water. It fits the theme of Tulare County, although I doubt many people have actually been to this spot. There was no particular spot that called for color.
Hard Water in Mineral King
This is Tulare County, pencil drawing, from Mineral King. It is Spring Creek. It could be anywhere. If I have this at a show and someone says, “Oh! Is that Yosemite?!”, then my answer will be, “If you would like it to be Yosemite, then it is Yosemite for you”.
Let the record reflect that YES, DRAWING WATER IS HARD!! (Tee hee hee, perhaps the title of this piece should be “Hard Water”.)
One Last Trip to White Chief
White Chief is my favorite short hike in Mineral King. Last Friday I showed you a few photos of the last weekend in Mineral King. Today you get the rest.
Three main things were occupying my time this summer: a trip to Israel, designing more coloring books, and training for a walking half-marathon. When I went to Mineral King, I wanted to sit, knit and split (wood).
However, I went to White Chief three times. Here is how it looked on the third trip.
The Last Oil Paintings in Mineral King
“Last” is one of those many faceted English words. Here it means the most recent Farewell Gap, Mineral King oil paintings.
There are more depictions of Farewell Gap, on murals, in pencil and in 2 coloring books (drawn in ink). However, in the interest of relieving monotony, I won’t continue this theme in other media. (Did you know that “media” is the plural of “medium”? “Medium” when it means material used for making art, not the size of my clothing.)
End of Summer in Mineral King
I know, I keep saying it is the end of summer in Mineral King. The weekend after Labor Day was very warm, and it was a fun time with some friends who rented a fancy-pants cabin (a “chalet”) in Silver City.
Still Oil Painting in Mineral King
Not really oil painting in Mineral King – oil paintings of Mineral King, painted in Three Rivers.
As a studio artist, I work from my photos. The variations are based on size and shape of painting (square, rectangular, really rectangular – and never horizontal for this scene, although that is an interesting idea). The variations also happen with time of day and time of year and type of snowfall and flow of water AND where I stood to take the photo. Plus, sometimes I juice up the colors a little more than natural. Sometimes I work at tight realism, and other times I try to loosen up. That isn’t natural to me, but is certainly faster.
These all look sort of dark, but I think it was the way I photographed them, not the paintings themselves. 2014 wasn’t a dark year. 2015 was a dark year, but we’ll have to see if that sadness was reflected in my paintings tomorrow.
Mineral King Oil Paintings, continued
One time I painted the Mineral King scene of Farewell Gap with the Crowley family cabin plein air. That was very difficult – the light and colors kept changing, people kept asking what I was doing (umm, skateboarding?), and I had to keep scooting out of the way of cars.
I don’t remember which one it was or how it turned out. I had only been painting a few months and thought that plein air painting was necessary to learning. It may have been, but mostly what I learned was how grateful I was to be a studio painter, working in a controlled and quiet environment from my photos.
That’s a new twist on an old theme.