Lake O'Hara

This is how one thing leads to another in the moving/redecorating/remodeling department. This picture of Lake O'Hara hung above our mantle in Berkeley. We used to go to this magical place in the Canadian Rockies every fall for a week of hiking. Fall is the favored time for artists and photographers because the larches turn yellow when the weather begins to turn cold. Larches are scrawny deciduous conifers which only grow in poor soil at high altitudes, and we used to be smugly amused at the locals who would wax eloquent over the exact moment when the trees would be at their peak of yellowness. After ten years, we had learned to appreciate the prominent bands of yellow across the high alpine landscape, and were well versed in what constituted the perfect yellowness, which only lasts a few days before it starts to turn to brown.

One year we came across the artist of this picture, Horace Champagne, who came to Lake O'Hara most years to do plen air pastels, sitting on his little camp stool in the snow working on this picture, and we decided on the spot that we wanted to buy it. That is another story, but we did ultimately acquire it, and have never stopped enjoying it. Now it is more a memory than a reminder because it has been quite a few years since we were last there.

The transformation of our TV room/library has just about been completed with the delivery of a couch and a chair. A new media console arrives next week. I spent a couple of hours this morning putting in the new shelves for the library and arranging the books and "decor items" on them.*. This involved bringing a few more boxes up from the garage including the box containing this picture. There's only one small problem. We don't really have a mantle, and what passes for one is at an awkward height, too close to the ceiling. No room for Horace Champagne. Now we're discussing how we can create a mantle at the correct height, and maybe even cover up the white painted stone,or rip it out altogether, so that he can go where he belongs....

*Note to self: I must remember to go to Petaluma and reclaim my grandmother's clock from the clock shop. The clock lady thought all "he" needed to do was spend a little time on the shelf with all the other clocks to learn some manners and start striking again.