Holiday Spirit

I love the holidays and really puff up with good cheer this time of year. Part of it is about giving - if I had unlimited resources I'd spend every waking hour finding fun and game-changing ways to give it away.

The other part is a kind of annual check-in with myself. I take advantage of my good humor to do a year end assessment of my situation. This year the focus seems to be on the physical extremes in which I live in.

On one hand, the winter landscape inspires me to take long, quiet and thought-provoking walks in a more sensible and reality-based environment. I ask critical questions and get sensible responses. On the other hand, tinsel town incites the emotionally fragile, out-of-control and unhealed human being that I am to do idiotic things without a shred of common sense.

While Nature prompts me to remember that the colors red and green existed in her landscape long before they did on holiday wrapping paper, Lady Portland reminds me of how much I really do like all things that glitter, sparkle and blink when she's fully plugged in.

The yin yang of it all goes on and on. But in short and in conclusion I have determined that both worlds are important, one not more or less than the other. It's a light and dark thing - an appreciation for one does not exist without an appreciation for the other.

Country Holiday Spirit • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200
City Holiday Spirit • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200

Still Fall

I painted this last week. It's been a great fall - couldn't ask for better weather.

Still Fall • 8" x 8" framed to 12" x 12" • $200

Parked

Ever feel like just parking yourself someplace for a while?  The first thing that popped into my mind was a cat of course.

Parked  • 8"x 8" framed to 12"x 12" • $200

Fall Moon

A couple of summers ago I was on Monhegan Island painting for a week. A bunch of us were hanging around on the lawn of The Trailing Ewe after dinner when someone pointed out a full moon behind us. We all stood up and turned around to look at it. The usual adjectives were tossed back and forth between us like shooting stars in the dark.

Inspired, I felt compelled to howl. So I did. My fellow artists were shocked and  embarrassed out of what, until that moment, had been a polite quietude.

Hey - I'm expressing my gratitude for the show, I said. Besides, it feels great, I added.

Little by little, an insanity locked inside us all burst forth in a few of my fellow lunatics who dared to cross the line from civil to un. They like me threw back their heads and let rip one howl after another.

When we were finished, we turned back around, sat down, crossed our legs and sighed inhaling the beauty of the night. In the returned silence however, a distant primal howl continued it's journey across the water to join others in a universal soup of eons.

Fall Moon • 8" x 8" framed to 12" x 12" • $200

Fall Color

The foliage in the mountains was decent while it lasted, but the talk up there was about the lack of bright red this year. This in turn initiated a debate about whether it was because of too much rain or too little rain. In the meantime, both sides had absolutely no science to back there arguments up with. So I decided to find out once and for all what the real story is. According to Dr. Kim Coder, professor of silvics (n. 1. The science treating of the life of trees in the forest. 2. Habit or behavior of a forest tree.), at the University of Georgia, there are key predictors that can help determine leaf color.

Leaf volume
The more leaves there are attached to trees entering the fall season, the more there will be to look at.  A summer drought can limit the amount of leaves, but a wet summer can also set up disease and insects. So you have to hope for a moderately dry summer - like those perfect summers we get in Maine once every seven years, if we're lucky.

Healthy leaves
Healthy leaves stay attached to trees longer. Pest and environmental problems can damage and disrupt leaf surfaces so much that they actually detract from a quality of the color of each leaf. Unfortunately, the number of pests can be a result of both weather and temperature during the summer growing season. I would interpret this to mean that in Maine the color of leaves is always going to be a crapshoot, just like the summers are.


Temperature and precipitation
Cool nights with no freezes, or frosts and cool, bright, unclouded sunny days will enhance the the leaf color, but so do slightly dry conditions in the last half of the growing season and on into the fall. Once again I'm thinking that a good color year in Maine is about as likely as finding a three-legged robin.


Strong wind
Sounds obvious, but it always takes me a minute to realize there are no leaves on the trees when I'm wondering why there is no color out there. Because Maine is always experiencing some kind of wind event, we will probably never see a full blown bloom in our lifetimes.

Freezing temperatures and hard frosts
These conditions will stop the color formation of leaves dead in it's tracks - just like it does in us Mainers.

The only way to really predict foliage color is to keep a journal. But who has time for that? So I guess I will continue to treat fall like one of those wonderful mysteries in nature - as it should be perhaps.

Fall Color • 8"x 8" watercolor framed to 12"x 12" • $200

Black Cats

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm ready to let go of the whole idea that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck. I encounter black cats on my walks all over the place here in Portland, and I'm really beginning to feel foolish crossing the street or turning around and going all the way around the block to avoid them.

It's time.

So I went on a search-and-find-out-the-real-story quest. Here's what I discovered.

There was a time - albeit a while ago in 3000 BC in ancient Egypt - when all cats were held in high esteem and protected by law from injury and death. A cat's death was mourned by entire families who embalmed the bodies of their pets, wrapping them in fine linen and placing them in mummy cases made of precious materials like bronze and wood - a scare commodity.

The first documented demonization of black cats came about  during the Middle Ages in Europe. Cats in general have always been survivors, and back then they quickly overpopulated major cities. It also helped that they were probably fed by poor, lonely old ladies. I'm sure there were lonely old men in the mix, but they aren't mentioned in my source for some reason.

When witch hysteria hit Europe, many of these homeless women were accused of practicing black magic, their cat companions (especially black ones) were also found guilty by association. In Lincolnshire in the 1560s, a tale tells of a father and his son who were frightened one moonless night when a black cat darted across their path and into a crawl space. Hurling stones into the opening, they saw the cat scurry out and limp into the adjacent home of a woman suspected by the town of being a witch. The next day the father and son were supposed to have seen the same woman on the street - her face was bruised, her arm bandaged and she walked with a limp. From that day on in Lincolnshire, all black cats were suspected of being witches in night disguise. The notion traveled with colonists across the pond. The belief that witches transformed themselves into black cats in order to prowl streets unobserved was especially potent in America during the Salem witch hunts.

Many societies in the late Middle Ages attempted to drive black cats into extinction. As the witch scare mounted to paranoia, many innocent women and their harmless pets were burned at the stake.  In France, thousands of cats were burned monthly until King Louis XIII halted the practice in the 1630s.

On the other hand, there were some, more enlightened societies that believed quite the opposite of the black cat. Many believed that a black cat brought good fortune and also, anyone who found the one perfect pure white hair in an all-black cat and plucked it out without being scratched, would find great wealth and good luck in love. In Britain, on the Yorkshire coast, wives of fishermen believed that their menfolk would return safely if a black cat was kept in the house, and English sailors believed that keeping black cats aboard their vessels content, would ensure fair weather when they went to sea.

Today a black cat in the audience on opening night portends a successful play. In the south of France, black cats are referred to as "matagots" or "magician cats." According to local superstition, they bring good luck to owners who feed them well and treat them with the respect. In the English Midlands, a black cat as a wedding present is thought to bring good luck to the bride.

I now feel as if a historically huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Black Cats • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200

Rock Cairns

The word cairn comes from the Irish carn (plural cairn) or Scottish Gaelic càrn (plural càirn). 

I encountered my first cairn hiking in Maine - I had never hiked until I came to Maine. For a couple of summers as a teenager, the only hiking I ever did was with a gang of Maine townies once a summer. The first summer we hiked Mt. Washington. I had never seen a mountain that big in person. The hike up and torturous stumble down just about killed me. But it was also a stunningly rude awakening to a whole new way of being I would eventually come to love.

Much, much later and as part of my get-mentally-and-emotionally-healthy-or-die phase, my therapist at the time informed me that I was a workaholic, among other things. Workaholic was the only ic I could relate to. All of the other ics were over my level of understanding at the time. All I know is I was working 24/7and loving it.

So what's wrong with that, I asked regarding working 24/7. I love it!
She asked me if I remembered my children's birthdays. 
She had me there.

As part of the the exercise I had to make a list of stuff I loved to do. 

Work, I said. 
No, she replied.  You have to find something else you like to do. You have to make a list of things you like to do and start doing them on weekends. You are not allowed to work on weekends any more.

I sat there and thought about my list.

I can't think of anything, I said.
Fake it, she replied.

So that night I made a list of stuff I was faking I liked to do. The only one I remember on my list is hiking because that's what I started doing. It didn't cost anything and I lived in Carrabassett Valley - hello - the hiking capital of Maine.

I spent a long time just hiking around the valley by myself. I didn't scale anything, I was just trying to get a feel for it. I hiked along through the woods and periodically asked myself, do I like this? I remember not being able to answer that question for a very long time. So I just pretended I liked it. I did however like the cairns I'd find along the trails. I liked adding my two cents worth and building some of my own.

I eventually got into seriously good shape, started running more - every day, did a 10k, scaled the Bigelow Range - my ultimate personal goal, and then hooked up with a bunch of other women hikers. As a group we hiked everything we could whenever we could.  It all culminated at Katahdin. For two years in a row we did Katahdin. It was incredible and the cairns up there were very cool.

I ended up hiking constantly for many years everywhere I traveled -  built cairns wherever I went - but gave it up when I moved to Portland. Maybe someday I'll get back into it, but for now I'll do a day hike with my brother when I go to California or with my kids when I go to Seattle. But that's it.

These days I hike along the beach and build rock cairns there.


Rock Cairns • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200