Afternoon Light in Kynance Cove.

C1157

“Late Afternoon Light after the Shower”

(Kynance Cove, Cornwall, England)

Watercolour & Gouache, with Sepia Ink

on Ruscomb Mill Turner's Blue, 90#,

cold pressed Watercolour Paper

6” x 9-1/4”

Click here to make this your Own

Continuing on from last post's theme of using Turner's Blue Watercolour Paper, this view of Kynance Cove is more akin to Turner's use of the paper, while the last post of my Sepia drawing was more akin to Claude. In neither one am I attempting to emulate J.M.W. Turner or Claude Lorrain, but if I had not seen either of their works, I probably would never have thought of using this paper in quite this way. Actually that might not be true. As a young man (in preparation for a Summer long hitch-hiking journey, from Michigan's Upper Peninsula out to the Maritime Provinces of Canada and New England, drawing and painting), I was doing a Watercolour a day, and studying several Watercolour “how to” books, by such artists as, Ted Kautsky (sp?) & John Pike, but the one that I found most useful was a small 75 cent Studio Vista pocket book on Watercolour painting by the British Artist Rowland Hilder (I got to meet him centuries later at a Royal Society of Marine Artists Exhibition, before he passed away, and tell him so). In that book he talked about painting on coloured papers, which were difficult to find in the darkest corners of the Upper Peninsula; but a seed was planted.

It was on that hitch-hiking journey, while looking out to Sea, in the gloaming, and watching the rising of the Moon, from the cliffs on the eastern shore of Maine's Monhegan Island, I was inspired to go to England. The island's Cathedral Wood was out of view, from my vantage point, and as I looked around, musing, I wondered whether Scotland might look like this. The Moon rose a little more. Maybe you should go and see, I thought; and yes, you could go to that little school of art, Heatherleys, that you saw ads for in that British art magazine, “The Artist”, that was occasionally to be found in art supply stores; yes, you could improve your drawing and painting skills. Art was merely a hobby at that time. The Moon rose higher, and as I fixed the idea into my head, I wandered back to Cathedral Wood, and spent the night rolled up into my blanket roll ... no sleeping bag on that trip, folks! And in the fullness of time, two years later, I walked through the doors of the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the rest is history. Instead of the two years in England that I planned, I ended up in residence for 34 years ... 23 of them in Cornwall.

With the seed of coloured papers planted by Rowland Hilder's little book, I finally found suitable papers once I arrived in England. Eventually I discovered how Turner and then Claude had made use of them. In my early days at Heatherley's I got a pass card to the Student's Room at the British Museum, which was really the Prints and Drawings library. You would go in and look up what you wanted to see, then a curator would trundle off into the abyss, and eventually return with what you had requested to see; in my case it was usually Turner sketchbooks ... I hadn't discovered Claude yet. The Turner Bequest was still at the British Museum (the Clore Gallery at the Tate Britain hadn't yet been built to house his bequest ... in fact, it was just the Tate, since the Tate Modern hadn't been built yet either), and I eventually worked my way through much of it, discovering Turner's use of coloured, and especially blue-grey, papers. There is one Gouache on blue paper of Luxembourg in the Bequest that I would die to own, and another in a private collection of a Sunrise over Rouen ... perhaps when I win the lottery, I can persuade the one in private hands to be relinquished ... make them an offer they can't refuse.

Ah, but anyway ... Kynance Cove ... it lies down on the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula on Cornwall's south coast, not far from the southernmost point in Britain. In fact the Lizard is just an inch or two off the right of this painting. Kynance is not an easy place to access. Oh it's easy enough to get down the footpaths from the carpark, but once down there the tide has to be watched so you don't get cut off. You never seem to have enough time down there. It's also a place to be avoided in Summer, as the traffic on those narrow lanes can be worse than Hyde Park Corner during rush hour. I only went there a few times in all my years in Cornwall, and always in the off-season. It’s quite a trek down there from the north coast ... at least in Cornish driving terms. Bedruthan Steps might get crowded in Summer, but even then if you watched your tide-tables closely, you could go down early in the morning as the tide was going out, come back up about when the first Summer people were arriving, and then in the evening, after the tide had come back in during the afternoon and was beginning to go back out, you could go again ... and most of the visitors were now gone to their holiday abodes for supper. But then, I lived near Bedruthan Steps, at Treyarnon Bay; perhaps Kynance Cove could have been figured out if I had lived as close.

*****

I thought I was finished talking about chipmunks & ground squirrels, but I have begun to tell some of them apart, as individuals, and they have been highly entertaining. Although I haven’t bought strawberries every time I've gone to town for supplies, they have remained cheap and I've only missed them a couple of times. The last two purchases have seen a couple of the berries beginning to spoil, and so I cut thebad parts off and the squirrels and chipmunks got a bonus that day. Even though I'm pretty sure that they haven't actually seen me putting out the remnants, they do connect the strawberries with the truck, as they can smell them before I've eaten them, when they come past checking for the remnants on the ground. The remnants I have for lunch get distributed once I've finished eating, but the ones for supper get distributed as I settle in for the next morning's breakfast. I usually have one kept  back in reserve so that one of little guys doesn't get everything ... it doesn't always pan out that way. Sometimes the chipmunks get there first. They tend to grab one and run off with it, especially if they detect I'm watching them. Thus usually more than one gets strawberry remnants ... either all chipmunks or a mixture including the juvenile ground squirrels. If “the Big Fella” gets in on the act he usually stays put and scoffs down the remainder; “the Big Fella” is the main adult Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel. If he gers there first then that's usually all she wrote. He also doesn't get all paranoid with me watching. When he misses them altogether (even the one in reserve), he seems to know it and will come past periodically grumbling away; at least that's what his chittering sounds like.

During the hot weather we've been having, the majority of days this past month, “the Big Fella” has sometimes come and plunked himself down on the ground by my open door and stretched himself out, just like an old dog ... not longer than a minute, or so, but that's probably a considerable length of time, in ground squirrel minutes. Their vision must not be in colour, as they snuffle around finding the strawberries by smell, rather than sight, since they sometimes miss one just an inch away, when if they were seeing it in colour, they could not miss it. They seem to be attuned to faces, at least the eyes, as they know when I'm looking at them, even if I'm perfectly still. Like most living creatures, including mankind, they notice movement straightaway. Sometimes when I'm watching them eating something, and I'm perfectly still, I might do the old up and down eyebrow movement, and they will immediately stop chewing. They might continue eating, after a suitable time with no further motion on my part, but sometimes they might have run off after the eyebrow twitch.

Natural foods I've observed them eating, are the flower heads of Lupines, as well as the leaves. The grasses are now getting attention, now that the seed heads seem to have ripened to their liking. I”ve seen the chipmunks up on the Ponderosa branches nibbling at the base of the needles. “The Big Fella” dug up some sort of insect pupa (so it looked like), right by the truck and nibbled away at it; there was a viscous yellow fluid that was inside. He ran off with it, no doubt thinking my interest in watching him was a desire to eat it myself ... not until I know what it is, Big Fella. Very occasionally there will be a bad bit of broccoli or baby carrot that I have to throw out, and I have discovered they like those as well (and avocado remnants) ... haven't seen them running down a deer and devouring it just yet, but considering the variety of things they do consume ... well, time will tell.

The ground squirrels are bulkier than the chipmunks, so that “the Big Fella” has about four times the mass of the slimline chipmunks; even the juvenile ground squirrels that are just a tad longer than the chipmunks, are heftier ... maybe twice the bulk. You wouldn't think that they would make any sound when running, but sometimes, when they are chasing each other, it does sound like a miniature pair of horses tearing past. Most of the time, however, they are quite silent in their movements. Oh, and the ground squirrels do climb trees ... Just not as high and a bit awkwardly, compared to the chipmunks.

March Showers at Trevose Head Light.

C1146

“March Showers at Trevose Head Light.”

(North Cornwall, England)

A Watercolour

on Saunders Waterford, 140#,

cold pressed Watercolour Paper

12⅛” x 21⅛”

Available: email me.

Bedruthan Steps was about a two mile walk along the sea-cliffs, to the south from my flat at Treyarnon Bay, descending into and out of Porthcothan along the way. Low Tide at Porthcothan allowed you to cross the mouth of the very deep cove saving several hundred yards on your coastal walk. There was a sea-stack with an arch there, as well, that you could access at low tide. You always think that the landscapes that you are familiar with are timeless, at least in your lifetime, because geological time is sooooo long in comparison. But this is not necessarily so. If you take note of your surroundings, by and by something will happen that you thought would not. A case in point is that the arch in the sea stack at Porthcothan fell through during a January storm in the mid 90s. So now instead of an arch with the sea spuming through at high tide, there is what now looks like two broken teeth. Living for sixteen years at Treyarnon Bay, and walking those local cliffs, as often as I did, there were other rock falls in the various coves that I detected over those years, although none as obvious as the loss of that arch. With the arch gone, I wondered whether I had gathered enough reference material during the preceding years; how much is enough?

Bedruthan Steps was to the south, as I said, but Trevose Head was less than two miles to the north of my residence. From my place, if you walked down the lanes to the Sea, and keeping to the north shore of Treyarnon Bay, you would then round the low headland dividing that Bay from Constantine Bay. Then skirting around Constantine, continuing north, you would reach Booby's Bay, really for all practical purposes part of Constantine Bay, and then the neck of the Trevose Head peninsula. Strolling along the south side of that peninsula, up past The Round Hole (a sinkhole connected to the Sea through a cave), you then come to this view in the painting above.

On this particular March afternoon, the seas were quite nice and blustery, and you could see showers passing by to the north and south, until this one passed over and began to move on up the coast and inland. The bulk of it was to the right over the aforementioned Bays (it was almost not worth putting on my rain gear), and as it passed on the Sun came out and a rainbow began to appear. The swells were large, but not particularly so, but they were hitting the cliffs just right to cause great spumes of water and foam. Since my eye level is about 60 feet above the water here, the wave in the foreground is not far off that in height; so the wave hitting the cliffs on the extreme right, across Stinking Cove (yep, that's ‘er name, Bey), is just breaking the line of the horizon, so it is just higher than 60 feet. I knew this would be a painting from the moment the shower passed over.

*****

A dark Tinkerbell flew about my camp just past sundown the other night. I thought it was a Hummingbird flitting about, but as it flew horizontally, its body was in a vertical position, and I had never seen that before. Also it seemed a bit late for a Hummingbird to be out, I thought. With its posture and flight idiosyncrasies, it did remind me of Tinkerbell without a light ... kind of a demon Tinkerbell. I still would have thought it to be a Hummingbird, until it crashed into my Thule luggage container on the top of my truck, and I was able to see it was a huge beetle, brownish, and about four inches long, now lying on its back on my SUV's roof, and unsuccessfully trying to right itself. Well, I drew my bush knife and flicked it over, and a short time later it cranked up its wings and flew off ... in that odd verticle position ... definitely a demon Tinkerbell, for sure. Too dark to take a photo, even if I had my camera ready.

More Poldark Country.

C1178

“Evening Light Carnewas Cove …

Bedruthan Steps on Mid-Summer’s Day”

(Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, England)

A Watercolour

on Saunders Waterford, 140#,

cold pressed Watercolour Paper

3⅛” x 7⅜”

Click here to make this your Own

Carnewas Cove is the next cove to the south of Pendarves Cove, the cove you descend into down the narrow stairway in the crack in the cliffs. It is accessible only at extreme low tides, or through a cave to the left of the bottom of the stairway. This cave would be just to the left of the view in the painting of Pendarves Cove in the last post. Much of the time you would have to wade through pools to get through the cave, but occasionally the sand washed into the cave, at certain times of the year, is just the right amount to allow a dry-shod perambulation through. This Mid-summer's Day was just such an occasion. Once through, the view is better, with the Sea filling the cove, rather than the expanse of sand that would be there when low tide might allow you to proceed around the sea-stack in the Pendarves Cove painting.

The distant coastline, with the white houses and ending with the headland and island, I cannot recall now exactly where and how far down the, coast towards St. Ives, we are looking. I would need to refer to my maps of Cornwall, which are not to hand. It could be that we are looking at Godrevey Island, forty miles or more, as the raven flies, in which case St. Ives, and the heights behind it, would be off the right of the painting. They were all in view during the 1999 Summer eclipse of the Sun; sadly, what was not in view was the Sun itself!. A first class day, it had started out to be, and I had chosen my observation spot on top of a broze age tumulus, a half mile north of Bedruthan Steps. Then a couple of hours before totality, a band of cloud appeared down the middle of the sky, obscuring the Sun during the eclipse. Both St. Ives, way to the southwest, and Boscastle area, to the north-northeast, were out of the cloud shadow, but both were just out of the line of totality as well; and this was proved as when totality occurred, and we were in darkness, they were both in wan sunlight. The eclipse was still interesting, but not what it should have been, had we been able to see the Sun. It was not until 2017 when I was able to see an eclipse from the Wind River Range in Wyoming. But I digress. Up on the clifftops hereabouts, St. Ives may be easily seen on a clear enough day, but down here at the water's edge, not so much. So that distant headland and Island may not be as far as Godrevey Island ... wish I had my maps.

This Watercolour of Carnewas Cove falls within the strictures of “the Miniature,” being under 25 square inches. But it was not intended as such, and it was never framed within those strictures, being originally placed within an 8” x 12” frame.

*****

Time only for a couple of observations:

After a couple weeks of temperatures in the 90s, the grasses here have lost most of their green blades even within the clumps, except for those that are mostly in the shade. Their seed heads are being nibbled at by the ground squirrels and chipmunks. The transition from green to yellow ochre was interrupted by a couple of good heavy showers, one day last week. Thunder and lightning and an hour long shower from 1:30 - 2:30 PM, and another shower in the evening. They kept the dust, and the flies, down for a couple of days afterwards. The afternoon thunderstorm was a slow moving affair. You could hear a rumbling in the distance for a couple of hours before it arrived. It also did not look like it would actually come over my camp, as the clouds did not look at all threatening, and there was still a lot of blue sky around, even after the rain began. It kept that day from getting into the 90s, but the next two were mid-90s. My SUV is in the shade most of the day, and even on the hottest days there have been breezes, so generally it has been bearable. One or two days has had humidity enough to sap your energy. The past two days have benn in the mid-80s, and it is amazing what a few degrees can make ... 85° can feel absolutely cool, after 95° days!

Obviously I'm talking Fahrenheit degrees here, Folks. I reserve Centigrade and Kelvin degrees for scientific discourse, and rightly so. Fahrenheit degrees, I feel, are much more human. You older British will remember Fahrenheit degrees. But the rest of the World, really has no experience with the human scale of the Fahrenheit degree. There is 1.8 Fahrenheit degrees to 1 Centigrade degree, so there is a subtlety to the Fahrenheit scale lost in the Centigrade scale; temperatures jump too fast in Centigrade. For example: 10°C is 50°F, and when you jump 10°C to 20°C it is already 68°F, whereas if you jump 10°F to 60 °F, it is a less jarring increase in temperature ... a more subtle temperature rise ... and psychologically (dare I say it? Why, yes I do!), a more human increase ... 35 degrees does not sound hot at all, but 95 degrees ... well, that sounds like a sweltering day ... and, of course, it is. “It's below zero outside.” is damn cold, if your Fahrenheit degrees man as I am, but if you go by Centigrade degrees, below zero is not particularly cold, especially if it's a dry cold. Give me Fahrenheit degrees for everyday living, all day every day, but for Scientific Discussion I'll take Centigrade or Kelvin degrees. Perhaps now that the British have ruined their lives with Brexit (and mine, since my pension is British, and the £ fell like a stone, with Brexit ... most ex-pats), perhaps they'll go back to Fahrenheit degrees ... hell, I would.

Poldark Country.

C1242

“Evening Light in Pendarves Cove”

(Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, England)

A Watercolour

on Saunders Waterford, 140#,

cold pressed Watercolour Paper

4”  x  9-1/4”

Click here to make this your Own

I lived in Cornwall, England for 23 years ... Poldark country. Sadly I have only seen a couple of episodes of that story. The first series, back in the 70s, I had no television, and this latest series ... I have no television. But many of the scenes I have painted over the years, you might say most of them whilst living in Cornwall, were of Poldark country, since all of Cornwall is really Poldark country.

Four years ago, I stopped for the night in Moscow, Idaho, at an old friend from Cornwall's house. Tim (and his first wife), was my downstairs neighbor, when I lived at Treyarnon Bay. Not having arrived until after eight in the evening, after eleven hours of driving and crossing seven Oregon mountain ranges, we repaired straight to the kitchen, ate and drank and laughed for the next seven hours. The television in the sitting room had been on low, in that room, the whole time we were regalling each other with stories in the kitchen. When at 3:30 or so, we entered the sitting room and found it still on, we both stopped and stared at the screen, for it seemed familiar ... and it was, for we both realized we were looking at the end of show credits of a Poldark episode, scrolling down over a view of Bedruthan Steps, not a mile and a half from our former residence ... Surreal!

[Note: After that, I slept in a chair for a couple of hours, then hit the road, going over the Lolo Pass to Missoula, Montana,  and subsequently driving 634 miles, spending the next night at the first rest stop past the junction of the Little Bighorn with the Yellowstone River. I was headed for Minneapolis and then the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a class reunion.]

For sixteen years, I had lived a mile and a half from Bedruthan Steps. The first several years I rarely got down there, as the bottom of the stairway down to the beach had washed away in a storm, and, subsequently, the National Trust had blocked off the top of the stairs for safety purposes. The only other way to the coves below, was from the north end of the beach at extreme low tide, and with the water's edge then so far out, it was not so interesting. Once the stairs had been repaired,  Bedruthan Steps became one of my favorite bits of coast to go to and to paint. For four months during the Winters, the top of the stairs were also blocked, but by this time I had discovered how to scramble over the blockade, and so have the place all to myself, rarely seeing anyone else who might also know how to get down there.

Pendarves Cove, in the painting above is the first cove you descend to, down the narrow stairway in a crack in the cliffs. That would be to the left off the painting. Another of my paintings with the shadows of early morning, from this viewpoint, was in the “Artist's and Illustrator’s Magazine,” back in the early 2000s ... Issue #19 rings a bell. On a Summer morning, with an ebbing tide, from this point you can scramble around into the next cove, Redcove, and if you watch the waves and are quick enough, you can get into it twenty minutes or so before any of the Summer visitors find their way into that cove. Then skirting around to the other side, there is a cave that you can scramble through, and be in the third cove (which name escapes me at present), and be there for an hour and a half, before any one else makes it around the headland ... few people were aware that the cave went all the way through, I discovered, and besides, it was a bit of a scramble as well. Bedruthan Steps became one of my favorite painting subjects, during my final years in Cornwall.

Incidentally, Bedruthan was a Cornish giant who fled across the coves here, using the sea stacks as stepping stones, when fleeing the devil one night ... at least according to local folklore; and who would dispute such a venerable source?!!

*****

More  campsite observations:

During the last half of June and the first ten days or so of July, whenever I walked up into the Ponderosas, there were big caterpillars marching along every few yards. These were not of the hairy kind. They were about four inches long and about half an inch thick, dark grey-green in colour with some brown and black in the design. They reminded me of the white ones I have found under the bark of some sort of dead pines, in the past, and which I roasted and added to a rice dish (I followed the directions found on a survival site). I did not try these, as I am yet unsure as to whether all un-hairy caterpillars are edible or not. Hopefully I will find information on these, at some point, as they could be a survival food source at some future time. Incidentally, the white ones depended on the condiments added to the meal for palatability; I understand that Witchity grubs, down in Australia, are flavourful in their own right.

A few days ago, the wind blew many little catkin-like objects out of the trees. They are about an inch to an inch and a half long, about a quarter inch wide, and rusty brown in colour. I think that these are what are called male pinecones. These, I believe, are the source of all the pollen, I talked about back in the first couple of weeks in June; the greenish-yellow smoke, that I thought was coming out of my car when driving out of La Pine on the 4th of June; the same colour dust that Kicked up on my trouser bottoms when walking through the woods; the same stuff settling on my car and any horizontal surface, for that matter; and the same stuff left as a scum ring around the puddles in the road after the rain ... that stuff. I have vague memories of reading and/or seeing documentaries about it. Since my connectivity is so sparse out in the various places I camp at, I cannot research this. So I will go with what I just said.

In the evenings, before pitch dark, I have noticed smallish butterfly-like moths working over the old blossoms on the bitterbrush. There are fewer bees working them in the daylight, as they seem to have lost interest in them since the flowers are so long past their prime. I wonder if these moths were working them all along?

The Spring, before I turned nine, was when I began to make discoveries in the woods where we lived in Northern Wisconsin. We lived three miles from the small village of Lake Nebagamon, and our nearest neighbors were a quarter mile away. Everyday, after school, I was out in the woods, and the fields and down at the extremely small and seasonal pond. Before that Spring, it was mostly play, and my observations were incidental. But that Spring, things began to have more meaning, I began to see more relationships, and had more understandings of my observations ... they also built upon the earlier “incidental” observations. It was a time of discovery ... with meaning. These days, out here, I am feeling that same sense of awe and discovery of my childhood.

As adults too many of us have lost that sense of discovery ... of wonder. I pity those poor fools who purport to love the great outdoors, but then come out here and treat it as a shooting gallery, and an ATV race track, and, too often, a trash can. The World would be a better place if these folk would get off their vehicles, lay down their arms for awhile, and stop to smell the roses during their time out here; perhaps then they might gain an actual respect for these Great Outdoors, and take their trash back home.

Eclipse

(Take Note: for those of you who have signed up to be notified by email of new postings to this blog, you have been receiving not just a notification, but an actual copy of the new blog posting as the email.  As this does not show the images of the paintings in the best possible light, you should click on the title of the latest blog posting at the top of the post, and not the title of the painting itself; this will open up the actual blog itself, and you may then enjoy the paintings at their best.)

Monday, August 21, 2017; west of Union Pass, Wind River Range, Wyoming.

Before I tell my eclipse story, I present one of the paintings I did while I was in England over the Winter. 

C1619

“Storm over Botany Bay”

(Isle of Thanet, Kent, England)

Oil Sketch on Pannelli Telati fine CottonPanel

5” x 7”

Click here to make this your Own

There was an eclipse of the Sun in 1999, and at that time I lived on the path of totality at Treyarnon Bay, Cornwall, England.  I planned for it.  I bought heavy duty neutral density filters, for my camera and a eclipse goggles for me; made sure I had batteries for my tape recorder as well as my microphone; made sure my watch was synchronized to Universal Time, which happens to be Greenwich Mean Time (Winter Time, not British Summer Time); went out to one of the bronze age round barrows between Porthcothan Bay and Bedruthan Steps (to be close to the Ancients, as well as closer to the centerline of totality), several hours early to set up.  As the morning progressed, people began to wander out to the sea-cliffs, singly and in small family groups or friends; I would not be alone while I made audio notes with my tape recorder.  The morning started out cloudless and beautiful, but as first contact approached, a band of cloud appeared overhead.  IT DID NOT MOVE, as expected, but remained overhead, blocking the Sun, while to both north and south, outside the path of totality, it remained cloudless!!!  The light began to dim, and get a bit weird, but still no Sun/Moon discs to be seen.  Finally it the darkness of totality rushed across the sea towards us and we were engulfed in darkness in the middle of the day.  There was sunlight down at St. Ives, 40 miles away to the south, and it was clear to the north up on High Cliff above Boscastle, and there were sunset colours on the horizon outside the circle of totality, but we were not treated to the ‘hole’ of the Moon surrounded by the Sun’s Corona.  Some teenage girls nearby screamed and shouted like they were at a rock concert when it went dark, but luckily other people nearby overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment shushed them, for which I was grateful.  After totality, when packing up, I was able to glimpse a few seconds of a crescent Sun through a thin section of cloud; I didn’t even need my eclipse goggles!  And that was it … the band of cloud remained until long after last contact. 

Not so for the Eclipse of 2017!  Again my base in Oregon was on the path of totality, but I am not in Oregon; I am in Wyoming a few miles west of Union Pass in the northern Wind River Range, on the forest roads and 20 miles from the nearest paved highway.  I arrived on Saturday, and the journey from Lincoln Portal, above Aspen, to here will be covered in another post.  Even up here on the desperate forest roads there were loads of campers in forest, in their tents, camper vans, and even camper trailers!  I thought perhaps I had left it too late, but the deeper I went the fewer there were, until I found a clearing on a forest road, off a forest road off a forest road, all to myself … nearest neighbors .75 miles away.  A great site to camp, but on eclipse day I moved back up the road 1.25 miles where I had a view of the Grand Tetons 45 miles away, and in the direction from which the Moon’s shadow would come.  Morning of the 21^st; Eclipse Day!  A couple of puffy clouds and a few wisps of high cloud in the early morning, but these disappeared well before time.  I arrived and set up my astronomy app on my tablet ready with five minutes to go before first contact.  Using GPS, the app was able to show me the state of the impending eclipse in real time.  I took a couple of photos of the distant Tetons; they were visible, but almost lost in haze.

Tetons lost in haze, but you can detect their snowfields
above the more obvious mountains on the horizon.

I am at Latitude 43.50168°N & Longitude 109.96909°W.

All the following times are USA Mountain Summer Time which is 6 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (or Universal Time).

10:19:09 - I detect first contact through my eclipse spectacles … a tiny bite out of the Sun-disc, as the Moon, begins its journey across the face of the Sun.

11:10 – by now the Sun is a fat crescent and the light on the landscape is noticeably wan.

11:22 – fourteen minutes to go getting dimmer, and it’s chillier, so I put on a fleece five minutes ago; a breeze has kicked up.

11:24 – put a bandana around my neck.

11:25 – a thinner crescent Sun.

11:30 – a thumbnail crescent; weird light … sunny, but dim … NOT like twilight!

11:31:14 – even dimmer, wierder light; can still see the Tetons.

11:32:16 – the crescent Sun is like the best, thinnest new Moon I have ever seen.

11:33 – very weird dim light ... perhaps unexplainable.

11:35-approximately – the Grand Tetons disappear! (Then during the eclipse they show up darkly silhouetted against the horizon sky).

The Tetons in the Moon’s shadow.

Moon’s shadow fast approaching.

Moon’s shadow almost here.

11:36:09 – Totality begins; took photos of Sun’s corona; probably could not so easily have done this without my new camera (Panasonic Lumix fz70).  I did not perceive the star Regulus with the naked eye (the corona was much brighter than I had expected), but it showed up in my first overexposed photos … I had to under expose by 2-1/2 f-stops to get a proper shot of the corona.  Venus was brightly visible off to the west of the Sun, but did not see Sirius or the stars of Orion; I suspect some were visible, but a nearby tree blocked the view in that direction, and I did not have time to make the few steps to see … there is only so much time available during totality, and boy, does it go so fast!  A lone cricket began to chirp, or perhaps it was a tree frog.

Totality … Sun’s Corona & the First Magnitude Star Regulus,
made out just below left.

11:39-approximately – Tetons back in the sunlight; overexposed in the photos.

Tetons back in Sunlight.

Totality almost over.

11:39:30 – totality ends.

11:48:00 – definitely warmer in temperature.

13:01:24 – last contact of the Moon’s disc observed (through the eclipse specs, of course); by this time I had moved back down to my campsite.

And those were my eclipse notes.  The next day while looking at the forest meadow, I am camped in, through my sunglasses, I realized that the light was similar to the early state of dimming of the light during the eclipse, perhaps as first noted at 11:10, in my notes above.  I wonder if more dense sunglasses would give a sense of the light, as it was even closer to totality?  Would the wierdness effect be present? 

Even here I was not alone.  There was a grouping of two or three trailers, about a hundred yards away on the edge of a grove of trees, which I suspect were all acquaintances.  They were not positioned to see the Moon’s shadow crossing the landscape from the Tetons.  Then there was a camper pickup truck down the road about 300 yards with a couple of people.  They were in a position to see the Tetons, if they so desired.  These neighbors were luckily in quiet awe of the event, with no pop concert shouting … I was grateful. 

All in all this was worth the 843 mile meandering trek north from central Colorado to see, especially since there are so many other landscapes seen and yet to see that were not in my original plans of travel.  It would have been nice to have had clear skies back in 1999, for the Cornish eclipse, so I could have had better knowledge for this one, but I guess this was my once in a lifetime eclipse experience; unforgettable!  If you ever have a chance to see a Solar Eclipse, by all means I highly recommend that you do so.  It gives you a sense of the mechanics of our little corner of the Universe unlike any other event.

For you tech-heads the pigments used in the painting at the top were:

Imprimatura: W&N Venetian Red

Drawing: W&N Ultramarine Deep

Painting: W&N Venetian Red, Cobalt & Ultramarine Deep Blues, also a touch of Cerulean.

Rublev: Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, Lead White #1.