Sketch the Morning

We joined a 3-hour morning workshop that took us in a bus to the area around Georgia O'Keeffe's house where she painted many of her famous landscapes in what she called her "back yard" (here, in front of a geological formation she called her "curtains") and her "front yard" (Cerro Pedernal, which she often painted, and where her ashes were scattered according to a request in her Will). After about an hour of tour, we were left on our own to paint, sketch, or make photographs with the stipulation that we could only walk in stream beds (arroyos) because the desert landscape is fragile and for many years tourists were not even allowed to go near it. The guide said O'Keeffe's paintings were influenced by her friendships with photographers and by her own lifelong passion for photography. There was Steiglitz of course, but also Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, and many others--she told us O'Keeffe painted with "a photographer's eye."

In the afternoon we went to a spectacular area 7 miles away from Ghost Ranch called Echo Amphitheatre, part of our National Park system (two extras, and the second one has Sue for scale). I should mention that the structures in the foreground of the first extra are picnic shelters. 

I can't begin to describe the beauty of this area. It defies words. I'll be going home with hundreds of photographs because everywhere I look, beauty. The cottonwood trees are vibrant yellow. The rocks are ochre, purple, mustard, vibrant red streaked with white and gray. Some sparkle. Some are just massive heaps that rise up out of a flatness and tower over the land like cathedrals of stone. You can't imagine it; you stand somewhere and turn in a circle and see beauty in every direction. What a privilege to be here.

I'm posting this at 2:30 a.m. because most of the time there is no wifi, and my cell phone has only one or two bars here, but the beauty and the quiet are waking me up at odd hours.