Interlude

The Sawatch Range from Frantz Lake, Salida

Why, yes. Yes, it has been very quiet here at Brush and Baren. There is plenty of work going on in the studio, but I'm not quite ready to share it. Perhaps by the end of this week.

In addition to burnishing my shoulders and wrists into oblivion I'm also wrapping up work on a project for the Collegiate Peaks Scenic Byway, and getting two new contract projects underway. There are FOUR (count 'em) major exhibition jury deadlines coming up in April. AND I'm trying to wrap my brain around a week of linocut workshops and a steamroller printing event at the Woodson Art Museum at the beginning of May.

Maybe it's a (still-entirely-too-far-away) spring vibe. I'm spending an awful lot of energy putting an enormous number of things in motion– the benefits of which won't be reaped until the end of the summer.

This morning, however, I'd had quite enough of all of that and took myself out for a walk in "my patch." I've spent the last ten years cruising this same 3.5-mile loop, keeping erratic tabs on the comings and goings of plants and animals and fencelines. All the bird linocuts I've been making lately? Most have been inspired by adventures in my patch.

It's been a week since I stopped by Frantz Lake, during which time almost all the ice vanished. The surface of the lake has hosted ice skaters and fishermen and no birds for months, but this morning there was a feathered party going on! Ducks, geese, mergansers... a grebe. I spied this lone snow goose consorting with its Canada goose cousins... and immediately wondered if it might not be the same solitary snow goose that spent several weeks hanging out with its cousins last year at this time. No way to know.

The beavers did a number on the massive willow tree "on the corner" of the lake earlier this winter. When they cleaned out the damaged tree limbs property managers did a number on other vegetation there, too. It all looks pretty ratty at the moment, but I'm hopeful it will recover this summer. There's a western scrub jay loitering on this corner now– my first at this location. Red-winged blackbirds singing. Goldfinches. Last week there was even one of those pesky common redpolls that have been popping up all over the country and making birders twitchy.

The last ice on Frantz Lake. Methinks I smell a linocut here.

I don't have any sketches to show for today's adventure, but it was more than wonderful to  spend some time with my favorite subject outside the studio instead of in.

Back to work now.

Fog event!

If by chance you've managed to stick with this blog for any length of time, you might remember that I get pretty excited about fog.

For those of you who live in places where atmosphere exists by default such excitement might seem a little odd, but you have to remember that despite living at 7000' altitude in the Colorado Rockies, our average annual precipitation is 10 inches, give or take.

Yes, I know... 20 minutes away at Monarch ski area they had 360-some inches of snow this year. And that doesn't even TOUCH what they got last year. But that is there, and this is here, and most of the time we are forced to run a humidifier so we don't completely desiccate overnight.

Fog is a big deal.

I felt a twinge of guilt as I charged out the door with binoculars and camera: The DM is wrapped in blankets on the sofa, suffering a nasty sore throat and cough.

Didn't STOP me. But I did feel a twinge. Really.

It probably took an entire hour to get around Sands Lake, since I had to keep stopping to take photos. (Well, that, and to suss out what birds were on the water in the fog.) I knew the fog wouldn't last long, and sure enough it was gone before I'd gotten 100 yards up river. But it still made for a lovely morning.

Fifty species of birds didn't hurt, either.

Fog is burning off already, just upriver from Sands Lake.

Turn 180 degrees from the photo above, just a moment later,
and it looked like this:

Finally the bloody ibis have shown up. They're LATE.

Could have turned up while we were away, but that was still later than normal. Slackers.
This shot was taken maybe 90 minutes after the first one above.
No sign of fog. Anywhere.

Warning label

My friend Brenda hangs a poster in her home workspace that says, "It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others," or some such interpretation of that theme.

And that's a little how I feel about today. FINALLY this morning I got out for the long-neglected walk, and OOPH. The season has changed and I missed the entire process! Travel and work and an unfortunate encounter with an ice-covered step kept me either on the run or under an ice pack for most of the last month, and while I was away my familiar landscape got an extreme makeover. One portion of "my" trail has been scraped away by hospital-constructing bulldozers. Another has been widened and covered with new gravel. Yet another has been denuded: large clumps of willow taken out around the lake to make room for more fishermen. (I guess.)

The swallows are completely gone and the juncos have come down from the high country. Many trees are completely bereft of leaves. And I am chagrined that I wasn't there to note the change in gradual increments instead of great swaths. (This is the part about serving as a warning to others: do not let doing interfere with being!)

My one consolation is that the "good winter ducks" have started to arrive: ring-necks, gadwall and wigeon are in. A few grebes, a few mergansers.-- and one handsome wood duck. Sands Lake's lone summer coot has 8 or 10 buddies now, and an osprey haunts Frantz Lake before continuing south.

The milkweed has transitioned from pink flowers to brown husks, so I brought a chunk in from the trail to draw this afternoon. My original intention was just to make a pencil drawing, but the temptation of a brush close at hand was too great. I'm not sure I like the drawing as well with the color... but there you have it.

And yes, I'm walking tomorrow- before it starts snowing or something!

Trail of tears

Maiden's tears, or bladder campion. Silene vulgaris. It's blooming just now along the trail from Frantz Lake to the top of the mesa. One of the many reasons it's good to be home and taking regular walks again.

Early spring walks: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Friday I decided it was warm enough to declare "first shorts-wearing day of the season." It was a little overcast, so the potential for my exposed pallid limbs to frighten the wildlife seemed slim. Time to take a walk along the river. Wearing shorts seemed like a good thing, and I started a mental tick list of all the fine reasons to be out walking on such a day. Before I made it back home, wearing shorts became a not-so-bright-idea-culminating-in-near-disastrous-idea.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I just came in from another fine early spring walk (no shorts, it snowed yesterday and the wind is chilly today), during which I spent a lot of time thinking about how and why I walk the same route day after day. I've no doubt it's a topic that will get greater attention soon, but for today let's just start with that list of early-season pros and cons:

Good: Red-winged blackbirds in an uproar.
Bad: Clouds of midges. Breathe only through the nose, and do not inhale deeply.
Good: The arrival of tree swallows- can everything else be far behind?
Bad: Time to say goodbye to the winter duck party on Sands Lake.
Good: Ice-free paths, so watching feet not necessary. (*See the Ugly, below.)
Bad: Defrosted dog poop hard to see on those same ice-free paths.
Good: Scolding chipmunks.
Bad: Personal temperature regulation. (Jacket on, jacket off, jacket on, jacket off.)
Good: Increased dawdling potential.
Bad: Work behavior decreases in direct relationship to rise in dawdling potential.
Good: Who wants to work all the time anyway?
Good (and probably the best): That feeling of waking winter-dormant knowledge: Whose song is that? What plant will that green sprout become? When should I look for catbirds? Where will the fox spend sunny afternoons? When will the river turn brown and muddy... and how high will it rise? Will the wild iris come up in the same place? There's a new sense of expectation to a walk just now... because the potential for surprise is high. This territory has been familiar but slow to change for the past few months, and now all bets are off.
Good.
Good.
Good.

As for the Ugly bit... that happened on Friday, and is related to Good Item #3.

At Frantz Lake there are small wooden footbridges over a ditch that runs along the path. I've crossed them hundreds of times. But on Friday I was looking up, not down, when I crossed, and I didn't notice the missing board. At least not until I fell through.

Please recall that I was wearing shorts.

So now my winter-white legs are also sporting red raspberry scrapes and lovely purple bruises. But I didn't break anything, neither on my person nor in my pockets. I did, perhaps, crack my pride ("some observant person YOU are"), but it's better than cracking my head. And I certainly got a surprising new view of my usual route. Welcome spring!