Fieldwork Friday: Lean Times

Here in the upper Arkansas River valley we're accustomed to dry. The Continental Divide defines our western county boundary: Pacific moisture tends to stay on the other side of the Divide and here in the rainshadow a typical year brings us a scant 10 inches of precipitation.

This is not a typical year.

Even the high country received paltry little snow last winter and by the end of May the highest peaks of the Sawatch Range already looked as brown as August. The path under the F Street bridge, usually flooded with runoff and impassable this time of year, has barely even been damp this season.

A newspaper headline last week declared area snowpack down to 4% of normal. We're not just dry, we're dessicated. This weekend is the annual FIBArk whitewater festival and yesterday we saw heavy equipment in the river, moving rocks to create some sort of flow for the raft and kayak races. At least one event had to be cancelled because of low water. I've been in this valley ten years, and I've never seen it like this.

I can't decide if it's strange or completely natural, then, that I would choose to spend my drawing time today absorbed in dry plant material. I've been longing for something lush and green, but here I am engrossed in brittle and brown!  I love the twisty aspect of this chunk of vine, though, drawn from three different angles. Maybe it's a good reminder that we never know what's ahead, and that maybe those gathering dark clouds will drop a little wet cheer. Rain on tomorrow morning's parade? Bring it.

Dry vines from my friend Nicky's garden

Long Lake is long on dirt and short on water this year.

Gathering up loose ends

The Wednesday Knitters meet in the company of linocuts at Cafe Dawn.
I would say they were gathering loose ends, too, but Gwen
assured me she was creating more than she was tying up.

After several weeks of (apparent) absence the evening grosbeaks are back in town, chattering up a storm and gorging on whatever they can find. It's odd to be thinking of autumn migration when it seems as though summer just started, but the signs are quietly appearing. Rufous hummingbirds bully the resident broad-tails at the feeder and the neighbor's maple tree is undeniably a "yellower" shade of green than it was the last time I paid attention to it. There are back-to-school supplies piled in the aisles of the local department store.

But it's all okay with me. I'm ready to throttle back just a bit... to walk forward rather than race.

It's been a day of gathering up loose ends. I spent the morning organizing information and following up on research contacts for a client project, and this afternoon made a couple of quick stops relative to exhibitions. The first was at Café Dawn, one of several popular local coffee shops, where Monday I installed a collection of linocuts that will hang for the month of August. After that I strolled over one block to the Maverick Potter Gallery to update my inventory there and replace a couple of missing artwork labels.

A little rain shower came through and the DM and I put a big batch of cabbage rolls (cabbage from our local CSA, elk from our local meadow) in the oven and suddenly everything seems to be chugging along rather than sprinting. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm ready to enjoy it.

What's that sound? Oh, right. It's me. Breathing.

A flash of July

Um, yeah. Hot.

The summer whirlwind continues! Monday the DM and I made a quick trip to the Front Range for a gander at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Sculptor friend extraordinaire Bill Starke was exhibiting at the festival and encouraged us to come out and scout the scene. We saw lots of wonderful artwork (including a respectable number of printmakers), but the key word for the day was HOT! When we finally called it quits the temperature gauge in the DM's car said 100 F, and that didn't take into account the radiant heat from the asphalt streets on which the event is held.

Clouds and rain and 30 degrees cooler on Hoosier Pass.

We took a slightly longer route back to Salida, through the mountain resort of Breckenridge. It was a delight to watch the thermometer drop to 69 degrees and then to encounter rain. (My queendom for some rain here at home. As I type it's actually thundering, but I know better than to hope for anything to come of it. We've had frighteningly little precipitation here since last summer.)

Wednesday morning it was back to contract work.... some of it corn-ier than usual. (See right.) Tomorrow I'm hoping to squeeze in a little Fieldwork Friday time, and then next week I'm off to teach at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine! A week later it's Rocky Mountain National Park, where I'll teach another workshop and then Zoom! There goes July.

All's well that begins well

Right about the time I decided I ought to give the yard a little water, we got a downpour. (Complete with small hail.) I'll take the culminating light show as a good omen for the journey ahead. We're off to Santa Fe in the morning (yup, the DM gets to come along on this one), where I am pleased to be doing an inservice for all of the elementary art teachers in the Santa Fe School District. Wow! Very cool. We'll sketch and journal and even make the stab bound books I described here once upon a time. Back on Sunday, see you then!

It's not just me...

Chas Clifton over at Nature Blog: Southern Rockies pointed me to his excellent post on the changing language of weather. Thank goodness I was not hallucinating (this time) about my grade school education. Chas learned the equation "monsoon = India," too.

Of course, we haven't had measurable rain here for 48 hours, and I've been sneezing for 47.