Spirit of the Woods Hike- February 2026

Today was the annual hike and attached chili feed. We had a big group despite the cold and snow. We think 25 people hiked. A couple of them did not get in the picture.

The snow was unbroken, but our two stalwart Dans led the way and most of the group did a total of about 3 miles.

I turned around earlier. My knee is still sore, and I want it to get better not angrier. The return woods was quiet and the trail was nicely packed after all those people had been on it!

The rest of the event is held at the warming shelter at Big M Ski Area. Loren does most of the work for this. There's a nice wood stove, and she heated the chili. She's dishing some out in this picture.

People also brought other foods to complement the chili. There was lots of food! This is just one secton. (It's hard to take good pictures in the building because the light is from those huge windows and it's hard to get a shot without a big blob of light behind it)

We think the total head count was about 35. It's a great time every year, and having a slightly warmer indoor place to visit makes it really nice. Several new people came.

Miles walked in 2026: 30.5
Hike 100 Challenge: 10.2 miles

North Country Trail, Manistee Co, MI. Madison Rd north about 1.2 miles out and back

See SPW- January 2026

Moose in Boots- Page Five

Yes, I can count. I know that 4 comes after 3. But...

In order to do page 4, I need masking fluid. Mine is all dried up. Hobby Lobby (our only halfway decent local art supply) carries some. It had 3 reviews on line, all of which were bad. They all said that it doesn't come off the paper, tearing it and ruining the picture. Um, nope.

So I have ordered a different kind. But until that arrives (Tuesday or Wednesday), I have to skip that page.

Then I got serious about finding the original drawings. Took over an hour, but I've got them. They were actually in one of the places that made sense for them to be. It's just that it was the last of the places I thought to look. So now those are all re-scanned and saved. Losing the old computer files isn't too big a deal because I had printouts of everything, but it just takes more time.

I also located my watercolor pencils which are very handy for small spaces

Good thing page five wasn't too hard.

Here is the concept drawing. You can see that I seriously improved the cardinal. I'm also trying to remember to keep everything important a quarter-inch from the edges so they can bleed off the page when printed. I have to redo the computer files for the first two pages, but that's not hard. And I had thought to have bark stripped by a porcupine, but they don't really do that on aspen, so I skipped it.

So, I didn't really start working on today's page until about 11 am. And I needed to fool around to make sure I could get a nice gradient of yellow to green in the background. Here it is just before lunch.

And again, at about 3 pm.

I also had to run an errand and get groceries. Managed to edit a little bit too. So, all in all, today went well.

See Moose in Boots- Page 3

Moose In Boots- Page Three

In theory, this page should have been much easier than yesterday's. But it still took me all day.

As I half-promised, here is the concept page for this, sketched 16+ years ago. These were just pencil drawings. As you can see, this has two trees, and they are both hemlock not balsam. I wanted to start putting some hemlock in the book because the "northwoods" has both, and they look very different.

I started page 3 with the sketch, and put in a balsam fir. Then I wanted to see how the hemlocks would look.

So I sketched a hemlock and cut it out. Then I practice painted one (two- the first one wasn't right which is another good reason to do this), cut it out, and put both of them on the sketch. Hemlock will work.

Then I started painting. This was just before lunch.

This was about 3:00 in the afternoon. Still a long way to go.

I'm content with this one.

Not much else happened. A little editing, some crocheting, a few phone calls. I'm trying to stay focused while I have the time. I leave for the East on Feb 21, so there aren't enough days to be finished by then since I won't have entire days I can just work on this every day between now and then, and there aren't 26 days even if I did. I need to somehow hang on to my momentum.

See Moose In Boots- Page Two

Moose in Boots- Page Two

Page two is ready to show you, but I have to say that this is about all I did today. However, it is one of the more complex illustrations.

Do you want to see some of the process? I only took one picture of that, and it was early on- really I was just doing background washes and the balsam branches.

This might be fun. This is my test page where I was trying out things to get the look I wanted on the final copy or getting rid of excess paint.

I may get away with only having to do this one once. I'm fairly happy with it. (I may redo the first one- we'll see.)

I did pick up my car from being fixed, washed the dishes, and did tiny amounts of other things. But this project takes serious concentration. Layers have to dry completely, or sometimes just a bit before you do the next step. There's not much time between chunks of working on a page.

Maybe I'll also share the concept pages. I did spend some time looking for the original computer files. Can't find them. That was so many computers ago, they may be lost. I have 2 printouts, so they aren't totally lost. And I'm sure I have the original sketches, but I didn't even try to find those today.

And now I have a computer issue too. I'm posting this from my old computer. Sigh.

See Moose in Boots- Page One

Moose in Boots- Page One

I worked really hard to get this done today. It's much better than the concept page, but I'm not sure it's quite good enough yet. I'll let it go for now and go on to page 2. I can still do a few tweaks later.

Maybe I should say that this book was inspired by a warning we received from staff at Gunflint Lodge. It was May when we were hiking there, and they told us that mother moose do exactly what the text on this page says. They chase the teenagers away when the new babies are born and the youngsters are stupid and crazy. She said we needed to really watch out for them on the road.

I also wrote 203 words in Vacation from Dead Mule Swamp, did a row on the prayer shawl, dropped my car off to have a repair done, took a walk at Cartier Park and went to bell choir practice. Next stop- bed and book.

Miles walked in 2026: 29.3

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

See Improvements and Additions