Desert Water and Desert Critters

One doesn't think of the desert as being a place where water collects. Yet, in Joshua Tree National Park, there are places where we can find water!

One such place is Barker Dam, constructed by 19th century white settlers/cattlemen who wanted to make sure they'd have a year-round water supply.

Of course, other critters besides cattle like having water around. In the painting I've shown (a commission I did a few years ago), the first view shows the entire painting. The second view is a detail, showing a scrub jay, undoubtedly looking for some tasty bugs who enjoy the aqueous environment.

Besides bugs and birds, this little lake attracts coyotes, bighorn sheep and other residents of an otherwise arid region.

Where there is desert water, there are desert critters.

Rainbow of Stone, Continued

In a previous post (1 November 2008), I showed a photo of a place I wanted to paint -- Rainbow Bridge.

Well, here's the painting! I may tweak it a little bit -- an artist friend made some recommendations. I'll need to decide if it's practical to do those things or save it for the next time I paint Rainbow Bridge.

The scene was actually more complicated to paint than I originally thought. One of the problems was: most of the time, the humidity at Rainbow Bridge is very low, even though it's near Lake Powell and, in fact, the water from the lake used to extend from the main body of the lake to under the bridge. (Now, with the ongoing drought in the West and water levels so low, the wash underneath the bridge is essentially dry).

Thus, very little atmospheric haze occurs there, which means as objects get farther away, they don't get lighter and grayer/bluer with the distance. Only the most distant mountain in the scene (Navajo Mountain) has a blue cast. So, I had to take a little artistic license and put some haze into the view, enough to separate the various overlapping features to indicate distance.

After all, the bridge is about a half mile/0.8km from this spot! It's also quite tall (290 feet/88.4m), and I wanted to give an sense that this thing is HUGE!!! Hopefully I succeeded.

Incidentally, if you want to go there, you can't drive to it, and a hike to it would take a lo-o-n-g time. People get there by boat, either your own or a rented small craft, or you pay for a tour that takes you there and back. For more information, go to http://www.nps.gov/rabr.

Raptors

One of the things I like about living in the desert is that I'm fairly close to the Living Desert!

The Living Desert is in Palm Desert, CA and is a combination desert botanical garden and zoo that specializes in desert-dwelling critters. The place started with North American animals, but has expanded to include many African species as well.

One activity I enjoy is "Wildlife Wonders," which is something like a trained animal act. However, the critters don't do cutesy, anthropomorphic tricks. They're trained to do things they normally do in nature, only they do these things on cue.

My favorites in this show are the raptors, or birds of prey: owls, hawks, eagles. I've inserted photos of three birds I've used, or intend to use, in my paintings of the desert. From left to right: Sundance the redtail hawk, Hudson the Harris' hawk, and Olympia the golden eagle. (So far, only Sundance hasn't appeared in a painting -- but she will some day!)

If you'd like to learn more about, or visit, the Living Desert, their Website URL is: http://www.livingdesert.org.

Final Leg of the Trip

After we left Death Valley (it's hard to believe we arrived there a week ago tonight!), we happened to pass a group of formations called the Trona Pinnacles. I've seen these surreal forms before in pictures, in at least one car commercial and in one of the "Star Trek" movies (I believe it was #5--"The Final Frontier," where Kirk and Spock encounter "God" who needs a starship). So when we could see these forms from the highway and we saw the road to them was about seven miles (11km), I decided to overcome my anathema to dirt roads (we and our truck hadn't recovered yet from our trip to the Racetrack) and make a quick drive to the Pinnacles.

A little TOO quick -- most of the dirt road was do-able, but we crossed one badly-eroded rut in the road that sent all of our stuff airborne and gave us quite a jolt. (Dirt roads ... bah ... humbug!!!) But we soon arrived at an overlook where we at least saw the Pinnacles from a high point. I would have liked to continue down the road where we'd be at the Pinnacles' base (as is the SUV in the photo), but we simply couldn't handle any more dirt road than what we HAD to negotiate to get out of there. Besides, clouds were rolling in, and the Pinnacles were already under a cloud's shadow while the distant hills were still sunlit.

Oh, well. Maybe another time, when the Trona Pinnacles will be the FIRST leg of the trip.

Death Valley Part 2

Last Saturday, the Wiffee and I made a pilgrimage to one of the places in Death Valley we hadn't visited yet -- the Racetrack.

The Racetrack is the name of a playa -- a basin where water runoff from the surrounding mountains collects and evaporates. In this case (and in many other cases in Death Valley), the runoff contains various salts and minerals. When the water evaporates, the salts are left behind as a completely flat, level, dazzling-white lakebed.

This particular playa is named the Racetrack because one can sometimes find rocks scattered about with evidence of the rocks moving across the flats. It's believed high winds blow the rocks around while water levels are low and the rocks skid across the slippery mud, leaving tracks behind them. (That's the theory, anyway -- no one has actually seen the rocks move).

It was fun visiting the Racetrack -- the quiet was unworldly, as was the place itself. The downside was: getting there and back. One must travel a dirt road, washboardy in some places and rocky in others. For 27 miles!!! EACH WAY!!!!! (That's 43.5km for you metric folks). Drive time each way was 1.5-2 hours. ("Racetrack" definitely does NOT describe the road!) We made it OK with our two wheel-drive pickup truck, although some parts came loose along the way.

The views we saw there and on the "road" (I'm using the term loosely here!) were fantastic, and I'm glad we went. But I doubt we'll ever return to the Racetrack, unless the National Park Service improves the road significantly.

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On a related note: the night before, we heard a singer, Kerry Christensen, performing cowboy songs. We bought one of his CDs, and one of the tunes is "Cool Water." I've heard the song's first two verses many times about two guys trying to find water in a place that may have been quite similar to Death Valley. I hadn't heard the third verse before, and for me, it makes the song especially sad and tragic:

The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water,

Cool water.

And way up there He'll hear our prayer and show us where there's water,

Cool Water.

If you'd like to check out Kerry's music (some of these are accompanied by his daughter, Emilie), his Website is: http://www.kerrychristensen.com/

And, of course, don't forget -- MY Website is: http://www.southwestspaces.com/!

Death Valley Part 1

We visited Death Valley National Park, CA for a few days -- in part because it's just a beautiful place and feels like a second home to me; also, a western art show and other activities were going on that weekend. I used to participate in that show for many years, so this was a great opportunity to visit artist friends that we don't otherwise get to see.

What felt strange was not running all over the place taking millions of pictures to use for making paintings. But we've visited Death Valley many times and have already taken millions of pictures. Almost all of those millions are in the form of slides, which I can scan to make digital images; however, I wouldn't consider the quality high enough to post here.

Nevertheless, I did manage to take lots of digital pictures of sites I haven't photographed before, including some along an absolutely horrid dirt road we took (more on that in Part 2).

For all the times I've been in Death Valley, I haven't gotten around to painting more than a handful of pieces of the place. I just gotta do something about that. Soon!

The photo shows a portion of the Mesquite Flats sand dunes, one of the sites I have managed to paint a few times.

A Western Place for Westerns

We just returned from a three-day trip to Death Valley and some other places on the way there and back. I'll discuss some of these places in the next few posts.

On the way there, we stopped in an area called the Alabama Hills, which are not in Alabama but California. This place is immediately west of Lone Pine. Besides appearing in some photos I've seen, many western movies have been shot there. (One of my personal favorites is "Joe Kidd" starring Clint Eastwood).

The Alabama Hills feature low-growing scrub, formations that look like piles of boulders, and the eastern face of the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains, including Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states of the USA. (It turns out the highest AND lowest points in the 48 continental states are about two hours' drive apart -- the lowest spot is Badwater in Death Valley).

We plan to go back to the Alabama Hills some day and spend more time there, preferably before the day gets too late and the sun is too far behind the mountains, placing them in their own shadow -- that was somewhat of a problem the day we were there. Although the picture I've shown here doesn't happen to include Mt. Whitney (which is to the left of this view), it gives a good idea of what this place looks like. If you're a fan of westerns, you may even have a deja vu moment!