Return to the North

Karen and I share a common bond -- one of many that drew us together some 35ish years ago.  We both love the north, especially wild places in the north -- places where as far as you can see in any direction there’s not a sign revealing the imprint of the hand of man.  It truly gives both of us a natural high.

            Wild as far as we can see in any direction!  Roadside view along the Yukon's portion of the Alaska Highway.

We gave ourselves a three week high this spring -- a late May/early June road trip north -- the Yukon and Alaska.  We never got any further from Petersburg than Wasilla, AK so left plenty of room for reruns.  We put something over 2300 miles on our Mazda Tribute plus a couple of hundred miles each way on a ferry just traveling from one part of Alaska to another.  Since it’s about 700 miles from our mainland ferry landing at Haines, Alaska, to Wasilla, I figure we covered about 900 miles side tripping -- a drive to Talkeetna plus lots of miles in search of photo ops -- critters from bears to moose, caribou and all manner of rodents, particularly porcupines and ground squirrels.  Yes, Karen will drive miles just to commune with a squirrel.

                                       "Hey, it's Karen!"  Arctic ground squirrels, Denali Highway, Alaska

Of course we both packed our paints.  Karen’s never saw the light of day.  Mine didn’t do much better.  Eventually, after painting a couple of dumpster stuffers, I decided to focus on chasing photos for future studio paintings, and the joy of finding those subjects.  Thus we drove pretty slow, but with little traffic we just pulled over to let other travelers pass.  You can’t do that on a mainland interstate.

During the ensuing weeks we’ll share some of our photos from our latest adventure.  It’s already fun reliving the trip.  Here’s a primer:

                                              The ultimate lure:  Karen with David and Tamia in Wasilla

                                                        "Er, Karen, Are you sure that's a squirrel?"

                                                                "And, are you sure that's just a stump?"

                                                 "What was that sound?"  Trumpeter swan, Yukon

            "You mean we traveled all this distance just to take a picture of a bug on a dandelion?"  Swallowtail butterfly

The sight of a flower triggers the kind of Pavlovian response in Karen as the word "bakery" in a storefront window does to Don.

                              It doesn't look like Karen's porcupine friend has been flossing his teeth regularly.

Now isn't Memorial Day supposed to be warm and sunny -- a chance to head out for a picnic?   Denali Highway, Alaska

                           If perchance Don would look up he might notice something -- like maybe a willow ptarmigan.

       Yes, it's fun recounting this trip in the rear-view mirror of our camera lenses.  We'll share more in the near future.

Fruits of the Wedding

Returning from our daughter, Tamia’s, wedding with Cash Philo last July we came back with a hugh bonus.  Karen had captured gigabytes of images with her Canon Powershot -- painting subjects.  Her photos from just that one trip could keep my brushes moving for years.

So, a pending road trip north last spring (look for future blog posts) gave me a quest this spring.  You can’t visit family without gifts so I dug through Karen’s photos easily finding subjects to paint for Tamia and Cash.  What a way to relive one of the highlights of our lives -- that cold summer day in Alaska’s Hatcher Pass where the glow of the bride turned that near-frozen corner of the surrounding tundra into a tropical paradise.  I spent much of this past winter and spring re-basking in that glow as I happily moved paint from my palette onto a clean white canvas.

I selected two images to paint, one at that moment of moments during the wedding, the second at the reception when Karen focused on three children who drifted into their own worlds at the affair. 

I love to paint people -- if the image captures a moment that speaks to me on an emotional level.  A batch of photos may show the likeness of a person or persons, yet if one expresses their personality, takes me into that moment -- a moment I feel will still resonate with viewers over time -- that’s what I want to depict on canvas.


                            And the Bride Said "I..."   18 x 24 inches   Alkyd on /Canvas

In the case of Tamia, I have long wanted to paint a close-up of a face -- just a person’s head without the supporting “cast” of a background and the clothes (as much fun as they are to paint).  When I saw Karen’s wedding photos, I knew she had unearthed an “adit into a gold mine.”  After multiple passes rendering the textures and variety of colors in her face, I gave a sigh of relief, “well done.”  I set it aside.  Several days later I took another peek.  “Yikes, it looks like she had visited a make-up artist at the Alaska State Fair.  No one’s skin is that perfect.”  Gulp, I didn’t want to lose it, but I had to go back and undo perfection.  It needed more passes to bring life to her complexion.

                                                 Mothers in the Making   18 x 24 inches   Alkyd on Canvas

The image of the three girls speaks to how the maternal instinct of girls seems to express itself at a young age.  I hope I’m not being sexist, but I don’t have that ability to relate to very young children.  I suspect it’s a symptom of many males.  Like a final exam in a physics class, they strike fear in my heart.  I simply don’t know what to do with them -- at least until they are old enough to be read to and draw with.  In the case of this painting, I moved the girls into another part of the yard and even “planted” some different flowers in the foreground.  It’s an artist’s prerogative.

Patty's Stump

Patty’s request sounded simple.  “Would you paint my stump?”  She had seen a couple of my gnome paintings  and wanted one -- the stump in her back yard with gnomes in it.

Karen and I ventured with our cameras behind her house several times during the ensuing months.  Patty has an eclectic assortment of items arranged around an old spruce or hemlock stump -- a reminder of the old growth forest that once dominated Petersburg’s Hungry Point.  There we found a metal insect “sculpture” -- spoons welded to a large washer.  A fairy princess, blue door, three man-made mushrooms, an overgrown birch bird house, flower pots, a broken wagon wheel all showed Patty dearly loved her old stump.

                                                                The actual stump in Patty's back yard

Still, I just couldn’t get inspired.  Then Patty relieved the pressure.  She didn’t care if everything was to scale or where she had placed them on the stump.  She just wanted one of my gnome paintings.  I could even add things that weren’t there.  It felt as if I could paint a portrait that didn’t have to look like the model. 

With that, and suggestions from Karen, I was off and running -- having a grand time adding whatever struck my fancy.  I had so much fun that in the end I felt Patty had given me a wonderful gift -- the chance to let my imagination run free with a pretty-sure prize at the end.

And so "Patty’s Stump Erupts in Play When She’s Away" was conceived.  As a spin off, when Karen and I set off on future road trips or even on Karen’s almost daily jaunts to the Salvation Army Thrift Store we’re going to be on the lookout for additions to the stump.  Then again, maybe we could even start our own stump.  

Patty's Stump Erupts in Play When She's Away    22 x 28 inches    Alkyd on Canvas.  You can see the two images don't quite match.  I moved the tree to the left of the stump forward.  So much for accurate depictions of real settings.

                                                                              Left side detail

                                                                            Upper right side detail

As you can see there's a lot of action in Patty's back yard when she's at work.

A note of Whimsey

If routines are boring, Karen and I plead guilty.  Most nights we settle down on a green rug in front of our gas fireplace to play a game of Upwords -- somewhat like Scrabble with a vertical element.  We even cheat.  We look up words in a Scrabble dictionary and we lay our tiles face up on the rug so we can help each other.  Still Karen usually wins.  Of course. 

Perhaps less boring are our spiral notebook “score” pads.  You won’t see Don and Karen at the top, not even D and K.  No, Karen precedes most games by manning (should that be womanning?) the pencil and drawing whimsical critters at the top of the page.  When Karen’s on a winning streak the figures are pretty friendly, perhaps some silly chickens losing feathers with lots of hearts.  However, when she’s losing a few games her aggressive side shows up -- perhaps a running watermelon spitting seeds at a fleeing pig.  Yes, Karen has a dark side.

A visit by friends Pastor Carroll and Cynthia Marohl last summer prompted Karen to bring out the latest score “pad.”  Most turns of the page brought out a chuckle (Hopefully from seeing the drawings and not who seemed to come in second so often) until Karen piped up that she’d like to give the Marohl’s a gift -- a painting based on one or more of those drawings.  YES!  And thus, “A Note of Whimsey” was conceived.

                                                 A Note of Whimsey    7 x 10 1/4 inches    Watercolor

For Karen these kinds of paintings come as naturally as eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich does for me.   After all she was a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher before she married me to whisk her away to towns with no need for new teachers.  Back then she excited her students on a daily basis, capitalizing on her sense of play with chalk or other drawing materials.   I wonder how many of her students went on to become artists, or at least enlivened the sense of learning in their own children this way?

It didn’t take long for “A Note of Whimsey” to emerge on a sheet of watercolor paper, an emergence that is bound to delight current as well as future generations of Marohls.  Oh, and me too.

The theme struck a note of interest by another former pastor. too.  "Would you be willing to paint another?"  Karen has a soft spot for any request from friends and thus, "It's Not Who-o-o You Are, but Whose You Are" was conceived.  I hope she paints more in this series.  

                                    It's Not Who-o-o You Are, But Whose You Are    9 x 12 inches    Watercolor

Since not all of you can look at our notebooks today, here are a few samples of Karen's headings on our score sheets:

                              Karen must have lost a game or two due to the level of aggression exhibited in this one.  

          Karen seemed to be on a winning streak here -- until the last game depicts a hint of her "Darth Vader" side.

                                                    Karen must have been on a winning streak on this page.

                                                          Hearts suggest Karen was once again winning. 

                                                          More hearts.  Yep, you guessed the final outcome.

These give you an idea what I've been up against.  In case you're curious about the final scores, the individual (Karen) in the left column usually wins -- sometimes by more than 100 points.  I think I've only won by 100 points once in all of recorded history.



 

The Sound of Spring

I awakened one morning this past week to the sound of spring -- a single note -- perhaps mezzo soprano with just the hint of a trill -- maybe a second in duration.  Pause.  Repeat.  Pause.  Repeat, often in alternating frequencies.   In human terms it could have been a distant child blowing a whistle, albeit one tuned to a lower range than the kind we might wish someone had not handed out as a birthday party favor.

A varied thrush, a close relative to the American Robin had returned to our wood lot.  Was it staking out our tiny forest as it’s territory or just sending a greeting as it passed through on it’s way further north?   Either way, to me it heralded the official arrival of spring in our neighborhood.

Our house is surrounded by the kind of habitat that attracts varied thrushes -- trees -- tall conifers -- Sitka spruce, hemlocks, yellow cedar, even a shore pine I dug up as an “infant” to plant at the road end of the walkway leading to our front door.  At the edges, less shade tolerant species -- alders, mountain ash and elderberry add to the privacy of our lot.  My favorites are a pair of cottonwood trees that have merged at one side of our front lawn.  I planted them there and now they tower above our roof.  They’re the survivors of four branches I broke off from cottonwood trees at the Juneau airport while waiting for a plane one spring day back in the late 1980s.  I had heard cottonwoods could be grown from branches.  My science experiment worked. 

The cottonwood trees and other nearby deciduous trees have a pronounced impact on our lawn that draws the varied thrushes, robins and even hermit thrushes in the spring.  They shed leaves -- lots of them.  If I don’t rake the lawn, birds have a grand time flipping them over in spring --  in quest of worms, beetles and even slugs that take refuge under the litter.  We couldn’t buy a better bird feeder.

Of course there is a down side to those cottonwoods.  Think roots.  With our house built on muskeg soil -- peat -- trees do not sink their roots deep into the soil.  Rather, they run along the surface -- in the case of the cottonwoods -- all over our lawn.  We can trace their structure by the sinewy tendrils that make mowing the lawn in summer a bit like driving a car through tundra pock marked with Arctic ground squirrel holes.  But, oh, the birds and smell of cottonwood leaves in spring make the challenges of lawn mowing a small price to pay.

I so enjoy the cottonwoods that I once figured that if Johnny Appleseed could make roadside apple trees a feature that traced his wanderings, I could make cottonwood trees a feature that delineated my walks.  Fail.  Not one of many many branches I thrust into the ground survived.  But a least we have the  united pair at the edge of our lawn to help provide sustenance to our heralds of spring, varied thrushes.

                                 Karen's painting:   Winter Guest  7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches  Watercolor

During several winters a varied thrush or two has over-wintered in Petersburg.  We hope they made it.  Such "decisions" carry a risk for birds.  While migrations expose birds to the threat of becoming dinner for predators -- including  cats -- in unfamiliar territory, a severe winter carries the risk of starvation.  Such was the challenge one of those winters posed when a pair of varied thrushes showed up in our yard in mid-winter, honing in our our bird feeder.  Although they were very wary (thankfully because a neighbor's cat insists our feeders were set out for it's amusement) Karen was able to document this male varied thrush with a watercolor painting.

                                                 Karen's paining:  The Hermit  4x 6 inches  Watercolor  

Another quite secretive thrush that we mostly hear in our woods in summer is the Hermit Thrush.  However, the ripening of our red elderberries is enough to lure these birds to a bush (planted by birds no less) right outside our kitchen window.,

An Angel to the Rescue

I volunteered to occasionally read the lessons at Petersburg Lutheran Church.  My turn arrived on the last Sunday of March.  With a tendency to fumble my words, I practiced.  I was glad I did.  Guys with names like Abinadab, Shammah, and Eliab are not in my circle of friends and of course I wanted to sound like I personally knew those brothers of David. 

                                 Karen's fresh watercolor painting of Petersburg Lutheran Church  4 x 6 inches

The routine at Petersburg Lutheran is for the reader to narrate the first lesson -- something from the Old Testament Bible, sit down behind the lectern while either the choir or congregation sings a hymn and then rise to read the second lesson -- usually something from a letter Paul wrote to encourage congregations he had previously visited.  Easy!

I didn’t even trip getting up to the lecturn and there it was just as I expected -- a Bible opened to the first reading.  Good.  In the past the lessons I read were printed on the Church bulletin so I just read from that.  Not this week.  The reading from the New Testament took up the entire page.  All that was printed for my part were the words “Not Printed.”    I had to read from the Bible on the lectern -- the one with big print.  Perfect. 

The first lesson went off without a hitch.  I rattled off Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah like they were old high school buddies  As the choir master (Lila) raised her arms to launch the choir into their piece. I closed the Bible and started looking for a tab to guide me to the second lesson. 

Oh, no!  This is not a regular Bible.  I soon discerned it was arranged by weekly readings.  I just had to get back to where I was.  The choir launched into song. 

OK, where were we?  Ah, I see some dates.  I’ll just rifle back to the last week in March.  Oh oh.  This is Lent -- the part of the Church calendar leading up to Easter.  Here the lessons were named by weeks in the Church year.  I broke into a sweat.  I don’t know the names of the weeks in the Church calendar.  Please, dear God, may this be a long hymn.  The choir sang on.

By now the stress had me really fumbling -- totally rattled -- my search almost becoming random.  I think I found the first Sunday of September four times.  Oh, please, Lila, keep the choir singing.

I was losing it.  I started imagining the humility of having to tell the congregation I don’t have the lesson.  Then -- there it was.  An Angel must have left a pew Bible under the lectern just for me.  The choir sang on.

Frantically with shaking hands I thumbed through the pages desperately seeking Paul’s letter.  What order were they in?  Yes, at least I remembered near the back of the Bible.  The choir finished singing as the congregation did the most un-Lutheran thing.  They clapped to give me ten more seconds.   I didn’t even know what the choir had sung, but I knew it must have been wonderful.  And then, there it was -- YES the passage.  Thank you God. 

I stood up and read from the pew Bible, "For you were once darkness..."  I don’t think anyone even knew how much those words rang true that Sunday morning.

I painted God's View, Sunday Morning Second Pew from the Back of the Church based on several photos Karen took during a Sunday School Rally day to herald the beginning of the fall Sunday School year.  We had been asked to record the event with our cameras and this was our big bonus.  This piece is 48 x 15 inches and is painted with alkyds on stretched canvas

Lifting Fog   12 x 16 inches   Alkyd on Canvas  Karen and I have a number of photos of Petersburg Lutheran Church in our files.  We see our favorite view looking down the road (Excell Street) from up at the ball park.  I took the photo on which I based this painting during a morning walk as fog lifted  over Petersburg to reveal another glorious day.  The figure -- it's of our daughter Amanda from a photo I took several years later walking out to Blind Slough Rapids.  Oh, and I changed Mandy's clothes to the outfit Karen was wearing that day.