Balsam and Aspen

Still working on trees. Tried balsam fir today.

This one is with the black ink on the paper first and then a watercolor wash over that. I like this one.

This one is with the paint first and then black ink on top. Even though the paint tone is different with more blue in this one, I think I like the first one better. Balsam are dark.

Still struggling with the spring aspen. This is try #5. This is watercolor first with a sponge. Probably too much water. This could be improved with some more paint, I think. But it's still got too much foliage for early spring. The scalloped outlines don't say spring, either. They suggest too much fullness.

This is acrylic paint with a sponge first, and then the black lines over that. Needs a little more pen work so the trunk doesn't just end when it hits the leaves but this is starting to approach the look I want.

I edited and did a few other things. A pretty low-key day.

See Trying Trees

Charley Harper's Isle Royale

This puzzle was loaned to me by hiking buddy Bill. I really liked doing it. It was just the right level of difficulty to be both challenging and fun.

Its a puzzle of the art work "Isle Royale" by Charley Harper who is known for his geometric depictions of nature. Here's the entire puzzle.

The dominant dark shapes are two moose.

But the rest of the pictures are really oriented the other direction with birch and aspen trunks. There are also aspen and maple leaves that you can easily see.

And all the other animals are just hiding out in the trees. It would be too many pictures to highlight them all, but here are a few. The squirrel.

The butterfly.

A flicker.

And four wolves. I show this one, even though its tail bleeds off the edge because it has a blue jay on its back.

There are also a red-headed woodpecker, two chickadees, a sparrow, and a brown creeper.

It was a very busy day. I went to Muskegon to the dentist where they took new x-rays and said that the bone has grown back very well, so we scheduled a date in March for the implant!

And then, early this evening, I gave my program about the NCT via Zoom to the Green Mountain Club in Vermont. It would probably be more accurate to say they hosted it because people from anywhere could sign up. They said there were 123 people watching. And time for questions afterward. I love to share "my" trail with people!

See Delightful Cat Library

Chilly and Short

Had to do errands and get groceries today, so even though it was cold, I decided to walk. My body really wanted something more physical too.

Did the loop and spurs at Cartier Park which had been plowed, so it was better walking. But it was 11°!

This is Lincoln Lake.

Stumps had biscuits perched on top!

I spent the morning doing stuff for Confidence Camp, then all the on-the-go-stuff. Then a volunteer zoom meeting, and another meeting in 5 min. There you have my day.

Cartier Park, Ludington, MI, Loop and both spurs. 1.8 miles

See cARTier Trail

Adirondack NCT Hike - 1996

I spent all morning writing one of my newspaper columns. I spent most of the afternoon editing. Bell choir practice was cancelled, and it's still quite nasty outside. I didn't finish the current jigsaw puzzle. I didn't finish the prayer shawl. I need some different supplies to try more aspen trees.

So, you get another of my early hikes on the NCT.

In 1996, Marie, Mathilda and I decided to see the eastern terminus since we'd been to the west the year before. Sadly, David had to work for the summer although he really wanted to join us.

At that time, there wasn't even a hint of where the NCT route would be across the Adirondacks, except to say that it wouldn't go through the High Peaks. But the unofficial rule was that you could connect Crown Point with Forestport any way you wanted and it would count. So we decided that we wanted to see the High Peaks.

I was enchanted by the guidebook. Lower Wolf Jaw was described as "exceedingly steep." I couldn't wait!

The eastern terminus of the trail at that time was Crown Point on Lake Champlain. And the old bridge was still there. This was built in 1929, but was replaced in 2011 with the beautiful bridge with a pedestrian walkway that is now in this location.

We had to take some road walks to connect to the trail we were going to follow. This took us past Bulwagga Bay of Lake Champlain where we learned that they have their own "sea monster" whose name is Champ. These people claim to have seen him or her. We did not.

Hurrican Bertha was just winding down and managed to keep us wet quite a lot.

Lower Wolf Jaw did not disappoint. However, I have no pictures. We just felt lucky that we got up it. "Exceedingly steep" turned out to be a climb up a nearly vertical pile of rocks and mud. In the rain and wind that was the tail end of Hurricane Bertha. And, as some of you know, Mathilda is legally blind. I turned Chips loose to find his own way up. Of course, he beat all the rest of us. That day ended with the wet campsite we nicknamed our Frank Lloyd Wright "Falling Waters" site. That's the picture I used to advertise Confidence Camp.

Do you want to know more? The chapter about this hike in North Country Cache is one of the longer ones, and it will give you all the details. We sure had adventures! Most of them were good ones.

We found places where the ice never melts because no sun every reaches that deep into the rocks. We learned about peaty Adirondack mud. We learned that we needed to hang our cache bag higher! We learned a lot about being flexible in planning even when you've already started the hike.

The high point, literally and figuratively, was summitting Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York state at 5344 feet.

Our last big climb was over Indian Pass. Yes, we are on the trail. Yes, this was a piece of cake compared to Lower Wolf Jaw.

We ended at Henderson Lake, another place that was never destined to be on the North Country Trail. So years later, to finish my first hike of the NCT we had to start there and connect up because by that time there was at least an identified corridor where the NCT would go.

Tomorrow, I need to go to the store. Doug plowed our drive today, so I should be able to get out.

See North Dakota 1995

Trying Trees

OK, the trees are not testing my patience. I'm actually trying to paint trees. One of the reasons I didn't pursue art after high school was that to be good at it you have to practice, practice, practice and paint/draw, whatever, the same things over and over until you get them the way you want. I never could talk myself into that.

But here I am. This is four attempts at spring trees. Specifically, spring aspen trees. I need to keep trying until I get a style I'm happy with. This one is paper towel blobs with the black lines added after the paint. I like how the leaves look, but the trunk and branches are wrong for aspen.

This one is paintbrush with the black lines added after the paint. It's an OK tree, but it's not looking like early enough spring, and it's definitely not an aspen. It has good depth, but that also means it has too many leaves for the season I'm trying to capture.

Try number three is doing the black lines before the paint, and the paint is sponged on with the "wrong" kind of sponge. I watched some videos with this technique, and i like the result in theory, but this tree isn't right. The trunk and branches are too solid. The shape and branches are more aspen.

This one looks the most spring-like and it is beginning to look like an aspen, although I can't find my black paint, and the trunk needs to be gray. This was done with scrunched up tinfoil with the black added afterwards. Needs more layers of paint for depth, but the cheap paint is too translucent, and the tinfoil too "sparse," but I think I'm getting there. I've ordered the "right" kind of sponge and some pens that won't run in varying tip widths.

You need to know that these are done with el cheapo watercolors and paper from the box store. I'm not going to buy better paint and paper until I get better with technique.

There is a point to all this. If you've been around long enough, I last was working seriously on this project over ten years ago, but it made it on the blog if you remember that far back. Not quite ready to commit myself enough to post the goal yet. It's one of my many (embarrassing number of) unfinished projects.

In other news: I had a zoom meeting this morning and there were tech problems getting ready for it, so that took all morning. I put away the last of the Christmas decorations. I worked on most of the other projects a little bit each. May try to write a few more words more tonight.

See Art Center Bingo