Sketching Daughter and a Viaduct

On our camping trip a few weeks ago, our daughter and I elected to sketch while the boys and my wife hiked up to the boardwalk at Rough Ridge (Blue Ridge Parkway, near the Lynn Cove Viaduct). We carried bag chairs and our sketching supplies to the next viaduct north, about a tenth of a mile, sat down and began to draw. I positioned myself so she would be in my sketch.

After what seemed 15 minutes my oldest was there to let us know they were done with the hike. One of the fastest hours I've ever spent. I finished the sketch (which is in my moleskine) over the next few days from memory. My daugher and I commented later, while driving over another bridge, that we would never feel the same way about them, now that we had carefully observed their parts in such detail. Drawing is a deep form of seeing and remembering.

Interesting Places

Somebody has to screw down the wing-nuts.

I have always loved to get into unusual places and look at the world from there. I remember a walk we took when our oldest was about 5 years old. We found a manhole open in a wooded area, and it was a very deep one with a prominent built-in ladder. I went down and looked back up at my family in the little circle of light at the top. Our oldest wanted to come down, too - so I climbed back up and helped him down the ladder, also. It was a juncture point, with big concrete pipes running away from it in three directions and a half inch of water running fast downhill in the middle of the curve. He liked it.

I like to boost my children up into huge trees with friendly low branches. We hike in places that have clefts and shallow caves. We cut out over land on hikes, going through unfamiliar woods. I have deliberately crossed bogs. I like to lay on my back on the carpet and imagine the ceiling is really the floor, and picture what it would be like to walk there. Maybe it has to do with my personality that naturally tries to see everyone else's point of view. It makes it hard to pick a favorite spot, or make decisions. But it's fun much of the time.

A Better Mousetrap

I found a mouse in our bird-seed container in the garage. We keep the birdseed in a covered plastic trashcan, and the mouse had climbed up into it somehow (while it was closed) and had been unable to climb out.

So that gave me the idea to set up the trap in this photo. Where there is one mouse there are usually more. I even put in a small water dish (a jar lid) so the mice would be comfortable while they waited. Before 24 hours two more mice had walked the plank (see them in this photo). There have been no more in the 48 hours since, so I closed up the makeshift seed bin.

All three were released in a wooded stratch near us - no house for a quarter mile in any direction. I took them each time in a jar - it was a shot trip. I have heard that mice released in this way have almost no chance against predators, etc. - but really most mice have little chance (practically every predator eats them) and this chance is better than certain death from traditional traps.

The cats loved the mice in the jars; I let them see them before I took them. Mice are cute standing up against the glass; their feet are so pink, and so tiny. The mice didn't even sem to notice the cats outside the jar - no cat smell, after all.

Cats and Koi

My latest watercolor - this is one that I mentioned painting over. It started as an abstract, then ended up turned 90 degrees and about fish, then it ended up with ink on it turned in yet another direction, then the ink went to cats, then the koi appeared (attracted by the cats?), then I added the goldfish and other little items...

See this and others on my webpage, second gallery page. The original is hanging at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts.

7 Random Facts Meme

I won't tag anyone, but I'll do this on the invite of Moomin Light. As I see it these should be quirky things others might never suspect.

1. My hair went rapidly salt and pepper starting when I was 28. Now that I'm 46 I am getting the usual sideburns and temple silvering over the TOP of the salt and pepper, and I like it.

2. When out at night with a flashlight I will always point it at the moon and look to see if the moon is brighter.

3. I used to be able to gently float down whole staircases without jumping or touching the steps, but I forgot how.

4. I carry two full rings of all my keys in my pocket, so I can rescue my own absent minded self.

5. My postage stamp collection has an orange Ben Franklin stamp that once mesmerized me for half an hour because the color slipped inside me and lit me up like a big candescent bulb. Goldfish and nasturtiums sometimes come close to this color and then my heart buzzes with the memory.

6. Though I have had a beard and mustache since I was 19, with only one six week break about 17 years ago, I do not picture myself with facial hair and my reflection sometimes surprises me.

7. In my inmost molecule I know exactly what the perfect painting looks like, and I have set out to paint it hundreds of times, but when I actually begin it always slips out of focus and I can't recall what it looked like.

Walking Sticks

Another habit of mine has been to make walking sticks from fallen limbs, toppled trees, and drift wood. When my oldest son and I helped a fellow choir member with her yard work one afternoon, we cut a number of dead limbs from a huge blooming George Tabor azalea in front of her house. There were a number of seasoned, crooked branches which we took home.

I've found that some of the best walking sticks are not straight, but bent in the right place to hold, hang, and swing with each stride. This one turned out this way. The wood was very fine grained, hard, and a lovely ruddy brown.

And the design I carved on the top, during quiet sleepy hours each afternoon of one of our mountain vacations, was suggested by our youngest, then five. Here are some shots of the carving, moving around the top of the stick. The color is colored pencil wax (prismacolor), put on the exposed wood right after carving, rubbed lightly with a smooth stone, then heated over a campfire. Hand rubbing completes the process which started with pocketknife and a stone from a beach on the Linville River, about two miles from the falls.

(Photo link for George Tabor azalea thanks to Donna Andrews)

Made up Games and Heart's Home

All five of us are prone to make up our own silly games, and some get attached to places. Here my youngest is the leader (though my oldest has stopped playing for now) in a game where you draw a line in the gravel with your walking stick and the other must follow it no matter how difficult or convoluted. My oldest invented this game to amuse my youngest, and now either one will lead or follow, depending on who gets the notion first.

We only play this in one place - this magnificent road around the Bass Pond at the Moses Cone Manor on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here is another photo of that road - one of my favorite glimpses as you make the one mile circuit. This place is one I go to mentally to revive myself. It's where I am lying in the photo on my profile on my website, and on that same page is another photo of the place, with the most important people in my world.

It's like the lyrics of "My Secret Place" as sung by Joni Mitchell:

"I'm going to take you to
My special place
It's a place no amount of hurt and anger
Can deface
I put things back together there
It all falls right in place-
In my special space
My special place"

When I was in my late teens and twenties my mental escape was to the grounds of the Livingston Manor, Clermont, on the Hudson River near Tivoli, New York. That used to be my secret place. As time and space separated me from NY and connected me to NC, and to this spot in particular, my heart moved its home.

I can't count the number of epiphanies and personal revelations we've had on this mile of old carriage road.