EHJ

Last week, EDO had a cousin come to visit.  EHJ lives in the Boston area, and needed about 10 hours of travelling—each way—to see a little of southern Utah.  I made the picture, above, at the airport in SLC before her return flight.  As you can see, the two girls have slightly different personalities.  But, there is certainly a special bond between cousins:  Closer than friends, but maybe not as irritating as siblings.  Oh, and BTW, the vehicle in the picture does not belong to Rural Ways.

Ridiculous

We've had a cheap indoor-outdoor thermometer posted over our kitchen sink for four or five years.  Despite the brand name, we are not convinced of its accuracy.  Nonetheless, with a little mental calibration, we can estimate the temperature.  For example, when it is really hot, I usually discount the outdoor number by a couple of degrees because, while the sensor doesn't sit in the sun, it is in a hot location.  This week, though, it hasn't mattered how much discounting I've done.  Nothing can change the fact that we've reached the limit of human habitation.  You could subtract 40 from the right-hand number in the picture and it would still be too hot for me.

Tolerable

This was supposed to be an El Nino year.  And I guess it still is.  El Nino summers in the western US should be extra hot.  And I guess that is right, too.  We are in the middle of one of those long, dry spells with temperatures near triple-digits every day.  Not my kind of weather.  I would, in fact, feel OK if July were simply banned from the calendar.  The only place to work right now is above 10,000 feet.  On Thursday, I found this nice little stand of aspen.  And lupine.  Aspen and lupine at 10,000 feet.  A place I could tolerate.

I Was Right

Well.  In my last post I declared that VSO deserved Best in Show for her work at the CBAA last week.  I was not wrong, and the judges saved themselves from, ahem, an unfortunate backing accident in the parking lot.  The funny thing is, the organizers awarded BIS for the painting at the top of the wall just below her name (above), which is a studio piece of Zion submitted before the Cedar Breaks competition began.  On the other hand, they said they were recognizing the "body of work," which makes sense because VSO plainly made the best twenty paintings.  Here is another one (below).  The other interesting thing is that buyers also voted with their wallets.  Within five-minutes of the doors opening, both of the paintings that I had selected for the Best in Show award (featured in my previous post) were snapped up.

She Nailed It

The Cedar Breaks Arts Afire ends today.  I've already selected the "Best in Show."  Actually, it is a split award this year.  The two paintings in the middle of the photo above will share the honors.  Both of them are by VSO.  You can see them at the Southern Utah Museum of Art tonight from 6p to 8p.  If they don't have blue ribbons on them when you see them, you can rest assured that I will be examining the professional competence of the judges, and throwing out the decisions of those with whom I disagree.

Making Sense of the Landscape

My last post was about the difficulty of imaging Cedar Breaks.  One solution to the difficulty is, of course, to turn away from the rim.  With your back to the breaks, the ground is relatively flat and you have only to sort out the vegetation.  One way to do that is to frame up a pleasing collection of vertical shapes—spruce, fir, elk weed—emerging from a lush bed of ligusticum and columbine.  Another is to isolate a little stand and set it against the sky.  Better?

It's a Mess

Next week starts the Cedar Breaks Arts Afire.  The organizers have invited a very nice line-up of painters this year and VSO is, of course, one of them.  We've been up a couple of times for some pre-event work.  It is a damn difficult place paint.  The landscape is a mess, and the painter has to work really hard to simplify it.  Otherwise no one can tell what the painting is about.  Even for me, and I can walk around until I get rid of everything I don't like, it is difficult to make a good picture.  The one at top was about the best I could do.  Though I also liked the dead bristlecone perched over the abyss.

Frass

In the woods the other day, I could hear a soft patter on the forest floor.  It was like the sound of a gentle rain.  "Hear that?" I asked one of my colleagues.  "It is poop.  It is raining poop.  Worm poop."  We were walking through a western spruce budworm (WSB) outbreak.  For a few weeks in June, as the WSB larvae grow, they eat all the buds and new needles from infested trees.  What goes in one end as foliage, comes out the other as frass.  The frass is round, and somewhat sticky.  If you sit down, you have to wipe it off your pants.  "Don't," I reminded my friend, "open your mouth when you look up."

Columbine Time

This week, at about 9,000 feet, it was columbine time.  The nettles are about one week behind.