Winter Recap

I know … I know it’s been a month since my last post!  I had hoped to have this post prepared and posted shortly after the last one on June 28^th, which presented my last Oil Sketch from my High Desert Winter’s sojourn.  Since then I have sadly been back in “civilization,” working on a commission for two medium large, detailed Oils for Royalty; no, not British Royalty, and I am not at liberty to divulge anything further in print, as it is stipulated in the contract not to do so.  I also desired to have them finished before the heat of the Summer set in, but I expect not to reach completion until September’s end.  This is also why I have been drawing out the posting of my Winter’s story, and as I have said I hoped to have this posted shortly after my last post, as it would have neatly tied up that story, before I took a break by going down to the Central Oregon Coast, and attending the opening of the Coos Art Museum 22^nd Annual Maritime Show.  The postings for that interlude will begin to appear shortly.

Winter in the far “out” High Desert of Oregon was a most interesting and eye opening experience, and it was indeed “far out,” in two senses of the word; far out, as in time and space, and far out, as in “really out there, man!” as in somewhat surreal.  I have discovered that from the point of view of where the bulk of Oregon’s population resides (that is between the Coast Range and the Pacific Ocean), when I mention Winter Camping out in the High Desert, most persons have immediately thought of around the Bend area, which is really just the beginnings of the High Desert.  But when I tell them that no I was further out and east of Lakeview, those that know where Lakeview is (and many in civilized Oregon do not, it seems), say, “Oh … you were really out there!”; by which I take them to mean in time and space, and perhaps for some a surrealist tinge as well.  It was all those things for me. 

From the Portland area, I was roughly three times as far out there as it is to the Bend area (and with still a lot of miles to go before reaching Oregon’s eastern border), and thus farther in time taken to get there, before even considering that you feel you are in a different, more distant time as well … past … future … who can say?  And surreal, too!  I suppose what I really mean by surreal is a feeling of being touched by the inimitable, under these broad skies and vast landscapes; a lecture on surrealism at the Tate Gallery in my early days in London, comes to mind, where the lecturer defined the term as super realism.  I have felt this before in the all the wild places I have experienced; all day alone, drawing on a rugged North Cornwall beach, not another person to be seen; ten miles from the nearest road in the Highlands of Scotland; every time I’ve gone into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota; inimitable … surreal … super real.  Perhaps that this is relative, and for those few souls that reside out there, it is just part of their everyday existence, its specialness not to be noticed.  But I doubt that not to be true for most of those, even if such terms as surreal, inimitable or super real, are not familiar; they will have different words, maybe, but the feelings will be the same, save for such that are totally insensitive.

Besides learning more about the variety of colour mixed from my severe palette, and the way the paint handles on the surfaces of the various panels I used, there were specific lessons assimilated … such as which Winter roads to avoid (see, Mud, and the few posts thereafter) … and if I go down the wrong road, that I don’t panic and thus have a better chance of getting myself out of what I got myself into … that there is more to the High Desert than a boy from the Northwoods of the Great Lakes, ever considered … such as more wild life than expected, even unseen (witness all the tracks in the snow) … the severe beauty of this landscape, which I have only begun to touch.  In short … more time will be spent coming to terms with this inimitable landscape; with painting, and observing, and taking the time to let it all wash over me.

MUD!

(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.)

[Sorry about the delay in posting this, but I’ve had my annual accounts to do … you understand.]

After filling my tank and spare containers with petrol at Klamath Falls the night before, the next morning, Monday, found a dusting of snow, about quarter of an inch, at my chosen campsite, and the air was crisp and the semi frozen ground crunched beneath my boots as I prepared to brake camp and enjoy my first full day in the High Desert landscape.  I had not gone far from where I had camped and keeping an eye out, as always, for future and better camping possibilities, when the beginnings of a lovely duff covered forest road beckoned off the larger forest road I was already on; so I took it.  About 200 yards in the Ponderosa Pines gave way to an open area known as a flat, in these parts.  I thought about turning around at this point, but the ground off road appeared a bit soft, and since I was more or less committed I proceeded in the shallow ruts the duff covered road had turned into out on the flat, intending to turn around in the far trees half a mile distant, when the road no doubt would resume its duff covered existence. 

Two thirds of the way across some large boulders were evident a short way ahead, and I didn’t think I could safely negotiate them without my petrol laden trailer-hitch platform catching up on them; without that I might have judiciously picked my way over them.  I halted, intent on turning around and retracing my path; transmission into reverse; the wheels began to spin; immediately stepped off the gas pedal.  I got out to inspect the situation, and remembering four years earlier getting stuck in fine volcanic ash up near Crater Lake, I thought … Great! An hour and a half gathering branches and digging out.  Oh were that true! 

Two hours later and after digging out around each tire, and with numerous branches and dead sagebrush in place, the moment of truth had come; the tires still only spun; I refrained from spinning and digging in deeper, since that is a fool’s errand, but immediately ceased, and thought through my next moves very carefully.  I was 60 miles from Nowhere in one direction and 80 miles from Almost There in the other; I was on a forest road off of a forest road and not likely to see any vehicle, possibly until next Summer, and if I did they would be on their way to being captured by the mud as well, and if not, getting pulled out could be costly; I got into this myself and I would damned well get out of it myself.  Forty years ago in the Scottish Highlands, I found myself on the backside of Bienn Eighe and Liathach trekking 20 miles to Craig Youth Hostel, on the coast and opposite the north wing of the Isle of Skye, humping a 70 pound pack since I had just resupplied in Kinlochewe the previous evening.  There were no trails evident on the map and I found the landscape was boulder moraine;  it was up a boulder, step to the next, and the next, down in between, and up onto another, or over, and so on, and so on; it took me 8¾ hours to go the 12 miles it turned out to be, and once out of the boulder field and over a low pass only 2½ hours for the final 8 miles, although t’was into a driving rain by the time the youth hostel appeared.  I had decided, once I got stuck into the moraine, that if I broke a leg, I would crawl out to the road on Upper Loch Torridon through a pass to the south; that test I did not have to take, as the exam I did pass was sufficient enough.  There have been similar testings before and since then, and this would be yet another. 

So after getting my mind right, I replaced some of the vegetation I had emplaced with thin flat rocks I had gathered, shoving them before and aft of each tire, building up a 2-foot trackway in front of each tire, and placing larger rocks at the end of each trackway to avoid driving off the end; 4 hours after my initial miring, I put the SUV into 4-wheel drive and into low gear, and pulled forwards out of the muck onto my rock trackway 9 full inches;  I was out of the sucking mud on narrow rock platforms of my construction.  The worst part of it had been digging out the sucking mud deep enough to place the initial sage and branches … it felt like I was on the Eastern Front, advancing on Stalingrad!  By day’s end I had filled in the ruts from my front tires to my rear tires and a little bit of roadway behind those.  By this time it was 18:30 and had been dark for an hour and a half, although there was an intermittent waxing gibbous moon poking out from the clouds, and I had worn my headlamp, while searching out and prying up the right rocks from the sucking clay out on the surrounding flat.  Eight hours had been put in and I called it a day.

      

This shows my position at 16:00 on the second day; I took no photos on the first day.  The two larger puddles are where the front tires were on the first day; they also mask the two foot trackway in front of them that I first constructed to pull forward onto to get me out of the mud itself and onto something solid, after my initial effort with the branches had failed.  Although it was lower there in those front puddles, once I was forward out of the mud, and on the newly built trackway, I was relatively safe, but since I did worry about it that first night, once I had built enough behind me I reversed those few feet to the position seen in these photos, and felt better about it during the construction that followed.   All the smaller puddles are my footprints.

Close up of the driver’s side front tire.  The little puddle behind it is nothing … just a lower spot in my road construction, and is masking flat rocks only a half inch or less beneath the surface.

I managed to heat breakfast water for my thermos, but was too tired to cook supper, so I had raw carrots and broccoli, herbal crackers and peanut butter, almonds, peanuts and some mandarin orange slices from a jar, with herbal tea to wash it all down … not exciting, but enough to sate my appetite.

Crater Lake Interlude

(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.)

The day dawned cloudy, but with the sun breaking through occasionally, and so I broke camp and headed up the mountain to Crater Lake.  Although there was low cloud spilling over the rim, the surface of the lake itself could be seen  and much of the circumference was visible much of the time.  A snowy and different world than my recent campsite 17 miles down the mountain.  Being on the weekend there were visitors, many snowshoeing or skiing off along the crater rim, but I saw none heading with intent on the 33 mile circumference of the lake, as I saw no one packing the necessary camping equipment for such a trek, but that is not to say that there weren’t intrepid souls already out there … I expect there were.  I’ve considered it myself, and perhaps that may happen, before decrepitude sets in.

Crater Lake Snow

From the Visitors Center near the Lodge, I strolled left (West) along the rim taking photographs, and thinking about Snow Painting here at some future time; maybe when I Winter Camp here, but not today, as I’m intent on spending time in the High Desert on this journey.  But today was beautiful with another accumulation of fresh snow since my brief scout of two days before, and being able to see across the 5 mile expanse of the Lake.  Even with the cloud cover, there were enough sunlight and cloud breaks to give an indication of the wonderful deep blue of the water, the deepest and cleanest in North America.  On a clear day in High Summer, the blue is so luscious you just want to spoon it out and eat it!

Wizard Island

Wizard Island, so named for its resemblance to a wizard’s hat, is a volcanic cone that arose some years after the massive explosion that collapsed the peak of  Mount Mazama, some 7700 years ago, and thus forming the crater you see today.  What would it have been like to have been witness to such an event, as did forbears of Native Americans whose stories have come down to us over the expanse of years since?

The Bowl of Crater Lake

This photograph begins to give one a sense of the crater itself.  The rim stands between 700 and a thousand feet above the Lake’s surface, and is 5 miles across.  But I had miles to go before I could sleep, and I had to fill my three spare containers with 15 gallons of extra petrol, before heading out to the into the High Desert, and so in the late afternoon, east down the mountain I went, obtained the petrol, and refreshed some other supplies in Klamath Falls, then steamed sedately off into the Oregon night to a forest clearing I know about.  It’s nice to be building up a knowledge-base of forest road campsites, so that one can arrive at them after the night has fallen; in territory I have not been in before, I need to first discover them in daylight, but thereafter, anytime night or day will suffice as they are then a known quantity.  I found the intended site with no difficulty, settling in for the night, even though it had been two years since I had last been there, and only the once … and there was a hint of snow in the air.

Hooligans & Riff-Raff

(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, & the Blog, at their best.)

The Road to Flook Lake

It has come to my attention from a couple of my readers, that the rigmarole one needs go through in order to leave a comment on the Blog, is what probably puts people off doing so.  I thought that might be the case when I began the Blog, but in spite of that, I went ahead with those parameters.  Having looked at a few blogs that I respected, and looking hard at the comments thy attracted, I decided to go this route; some had a few undeserved entries of the kind you might find in the less salubrious chat-room environment, while the comments on others were all germane to the topic at hand, and even where not full in agreement respectfully set forth their points of view, which often led to good discussion between the various commenters.  While my Internet time is limited, I may not have the time to join into such a debate, should one ever arise on my site, a particular thread or discussion might be picked up and addressed in a future Post.  I believe also, that when a commenter has to jump through a few hoops, and whose identity is more or less known, they are less likely to behave as hooligans, and even though I might have editorial powers to extract an offensive comment from the site, as most bloggers have the ability to do, I might not always be in a position to pick them up in a timely manner, because of my limited Internet access; I draw your attention to my recent 6 weeks in the Oregon High Desert Wilds when I was completely off-line … that’s a long time for an inappropriate comment to gestate on one’s unattended site.   It might just well be that all my present readers are hooligans & riff-raff, and thus refraining from jumping through the proverbial hoops to inject pithy comments, but of course I couldn’t possibly entertain such a thought … (hearty laughs all around!).  I will be leaving the present comment parameters in place for the moment, but might revisit them at some point, experimentally. 

At an exhibition not long ago, it was commented on how different my Oil Sketches were from my usual work.  I addressed this in the introduction to this Blog, but I will briefly address this again.  For most of my career my usual work was almost exclusively highly detailed, labor intensive and thus time consuming Watercolour work, with some Pastel and the occasional Oil thrown in.  The Oil Sketches & Studies thus far shown on the Blog are just that … Oil Sketches & Studies, completed in a couple of hours or so, some a little longer, where rapidity of execution to beat the ever changing light, is more important than extreme detail.  Even so, many of them have more detail than much of the Plein Air work seen these in the Art World … ingrained ways of thinking and seeing are not easy to divest, and so I am trying to loosen up even more.  Ultimately, however, when some of these are used to create larger Oil work, I want that work to be somewhere between the looseness of Plein Air and the detail of my more usual Watercolours, and able to go in either direction as the subject o commission might demand.  Meanwhile it’s an interesting and exciting journey.  And speaking of my recent time in the Oregon High Desert, I have finally managed to scan my Oil Sketches & Studies onto my PC, and have begun to correct their colour with Photoshop, and so my next Post will begin to introduce them and relate my Winter High Desert adventures.

Butterfly Wing in the Snow

On the Blue Sky Road

No time to work on more photos ... so until next time ...

Where are I? … Oh! Here I are!!!

First Snowfall at my Camp, Warner Mountains

My last Post was on November 6^th and the next couple of weeks thereafter were spent with my nose to the grindstone building a plywood shelf for the back of my SUV to be able to safely transport my 120 Watt suitcase solar panel array, and constructing a plywood case for my 12 Volt AGM (Absorbed Glass Matt) Deep Cycle 115 AH (Amp Hour) Battery, complete with 300 Watt Pure Sine Wave Inverter, and wiring in a dual socket 12 Volt receptacle to plug my electronic things into for use & recharging.  I then disappeared into the Winter vastness of the Oregon High Desert Mountains and Plateaus for several weeks to paint, of course, and test my equipment and ultimately myself.  The shelf safely transported the suitcase solar array, which is 22” x 34” and lay flat on the shelf, and there was room to carry other things on the selfsame shelf.  The AGM Battery, within its new case, rested in the passenger foot well, and being fully charged was used periodically throughout the following weeks.  There being only one full day where the sun shone brightly all day, and that day was spent travelling to the nearest town, 65 miles away, for supplies, I was not able to set up the solar array to test that, so that will have to wait until later in the year with longer & sunnier days, however it traveled safely on its shelf.  Transporting 3 five-gallon cans on my trailer-hitch platform, also worked, and extended my time in the Wild before I needed to resupply.  And since my return I’ve been ploughing through (that’s plowing, for the American reader) my Emails, carrying out necessary equipment maintenance and such, but I thought I had best write a Post or two, now that I have returned to Wi-Fi reception (more on Wi-Fi below), to assure my readers (all two or three of you), that I have gone into the Winter Wilds, been tested … and returned.  The Oil Sketches completed out in those Wilds will soon begin to appear in future postings. 

But my first test actually occurred even before I left.  While I was loading up the truck, I turned and slammed straight into a partly open garage door.  Grabbing my head and waiting for the pain to subside, as it usually begins to after a few seconds, I realized it was a good smack when 45 seconds passed with no subsidence of the pain; and then the blood began to pour onto the floor in great big drops.  I have never seen so much of my own blood outside of my body as I then saw.  Well, I managed to open the door of my SUV, grab a roll of paper towels, rip a few off and pressed them to my wound.  Many paper towels later, and 15 or 20 minutes of compression and wonder of wonders the bleeding was staunched; head wounds do bleed … a lot.  I have never had a good look at the wound since it was too high on my head to get a good glimpse of it through my bifocals, even when using a hand mirror.  Cleaning the blood off my face and head was not easy with no running water nearby, but I managed it.  After rigging a bandage slathered with First Aid Cream, I decided to continue loading up, and if it didn’t begin to bleed again I would head off in the morning as intended.  Not to belabor the tale, the bandage came off in the morning, and with dabs of alcohol followed by First Aid cream over the next few days, the wound healed during the next couple of weeks or so.  A friend looked at it the day after and 200 miles down the Oregon Coast, and when he didn’t faint I took it as a sign that I probably didn’t need stitches.  Sadly it’s not a scar with great character since most people will never see it unless they are pro-basketball players.

Things were experienced, and learned, on this latest sojourn in the Wild.  The spaces are large, East beyond the Cascades, and the Winter daylight hours are short, and so when moving within these landscapes, especially those where I’ve not been before, these few daylight hours become a very important part of one’s decision making process.  Thus during the weeks away I passed three possible places where I might have accessed free Wi-Fi.  The first was when my first paintings were still too tacky to scan … the Oil Paint seems to take longer to dry than in the Summer and early Autumn.  The next two possibilities were when I had to resupply and attend to maintenance of equipment, and found no time to seek out free Wi-Fi before it was necessary to leave and find a suitable campsite before darkness fell.  But each new campsite found is one that I will be able to find again after dark in future, so future passings will allow the free Wi-Fi to be accessed whether it be daylight or not.  Short days also mean having to take advantage of the light to actually paint the Oil Sketches, and supper was often prepared in the dark, sometimes by Moonlight and several times under a snowfall.  I was comfortable down to 0º Fahrenheit, and have yet to go below that, but I reckon it will have to get yet much colder than that before I begin to worry.  Six inches of snow at campsites did not hinder driving into them, nor the heavy snowfall driving over the Willamette Pass on Hwy 58, when returning to the Yamhill area.  Wildlife was seen, such as 200 antelope, coyotes, deer, including a resident herd of 14 doe and 1 stag at one of my campsites, and more wildlife was detected through their tracks in the snow, such as rabbits, various unknown small rodents, more coyotes, deer, elk, and at least one set of tracks that I believe belonged to a cougar.  Here follows a few Photos.

 

Coyote track on the left & unknown trail on the right

              First Glimpse of Hart Mountain

Into the Distance – on the Hart Mountain Plateau

High Desert Winter Road – Beatys Butte

Evening Glow – Beatys Butte

             Morning Light – Hart Mountain

Campsite in the Aspens – Hart Mountain

Working with my Guerrilla Painting Kit

Christmas Morning – Hart Mountain

Christmas Day Snow Shower – Hart Mountain

Well, I think that's enough to be getting on with, don't you?