I sail around in my little boat (whichever one I have currently – there have been 6 – 6 break-out-another-thousand stands for ‘boat’). It’s a floating studio, and learn about what I’m seeing. I’ve done this for decades, but since 2012, I’ve made one-page art stories of these little journeys for 48 North magazine in Seattle, 118 stories total, once a month without fail.
Anemones, whales, worms, birds, urchins, clams, salmon, it’s all been fair game, researched and painted. Time to do another issue? I just go for a sail and there would always be next month’s story.
This month, I wrote about this guy, a hermit crab – a crab that borrows other shells to live in. Here were the drawings I did to get it started.
Then it turned into this refined page, and I wrote some text to go with it.
This one will be my last. Time to go in another direction, don’t you think? I mean, really, 118!! And some artist’s claim they need, what, motivation or inspiration to get started?
For me, it all started with this issue in 2012. At the time, I had been writing similar stories, but much longer, for 48 North but also the Seattle Times, using my art with the words. It was in that order, write it, then paint it. These sketchbook journals were the opposite. I did the art first.
July 2012-The the first issue.
This was a colaboration with Nancy. Her photo, my drawings and words. Our boat!
And at the same time, I made a few covers for them. This one of our boat of the left, 1939 Sea Witch, and the otters that were living there as well. We had geraniums on the dock in summer. Locals will probably recognize those other boats, three historic woodies living together. The guy on the right makes high-end violin bows, the black hulled boat belonged to an architect, and us – painters of nature.
It’s been fun, but time to move into other types of paintings and writing. Time to explore other ideas and continue on with these huge National Park Service projects – and, boy, are they piled up awaiting.
More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to enjoy seeing my process.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
This was my 48 North magazine story for December, 2021. Since Port Townsend and most of Western Washington are locked in a deep-freeze snow event, I thought it might be interesting to pass this around. Above is the watercolor art, below is the final page of the journal.
And here’s the text for the art:
Baby, it’s cold outside. But compared with some other places, the Arctic, Alaska – the Salish Sea has a fairly balmy winter. So balmy that many thousands of birds migrate here to spend winters in relative comfort. It’s still cold, but birds have adapted and evolved to help them survive our winters. On average, a bird’s body temperature is 104OF, so they’re even more vulnerable to cold than we are. Probably their biggest adaptation is an innate knowledge that if they fly south, it’ll be more comfortable. And there are other physical adaptions to get them to spring. Most birds have the ability to control each one of those thousands of feathers individually – so they can fluff their feathers up to trap warm air between feathers and skin, creating a down coat. You may have seen birds ‘fluffing up’ this time of year in periodic motions.
Most birds also have feet and legs that aren’t as warm-blooded as their bodies. Instead, those parts are mostly bones and skin, so less heat is required than to warm fatty tissues. Legs and feet also have an intricate network of unusual intertwined blood vessels that is a built-in heat transfer system. This creates a counter-current of warm blood passing by the cold returning blood, a heat exchange system that keeps the heat in their bodies’ core instead of trying to keep external parts warm, too. When the cold blood from feet, now somewhat pre-warmed arrives in the core, it’s already back up to nearly body temperature. Other methods: when birds sleep, their bills get tucked under feathers to keep that part warm, but also to inhale warmer air into their lungs, again saving the effort to keep their body core warm. This of it as a down muff. Take a moment on that cold winter morning marina walk and watch these guys. See any ‘fluffing’ going on?
This is the original line drawing it all started with. I saw this gull downtown, leg tucked to keep it warm, nose in its feathers, one eyeball open (sort of). Two nights ago it hit 16 degrees, just so unlike our normal world here.
Happy Holidays and we welcome you to read along with our art and travels next year. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep stuffing wood in this big black hole.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
On a recent hike in the Olympic Mountains, I decided to turn my paintbrush towards the endemic Olympic Marmot. There are five mammals and nine others (fish and amphibians) that are only found here and nowhere else on the planet. That’s right, only here! So if you see an alpine chipmunk, it’s the Olympic Chipmunk!
The Olympic Marmot is a woodchuck-type critter that lives in burrows just at treeline. They’re worth painting. I also did some watercolors of their world, a rare place with fragile flowers and manicured meadows, streams falling and pocket ponds people would pay big money for at home – but here it’s just why I come in the first place, and the only real cost is sweat. It’s a singular place like no other I know.
But the marmots aren’t the wildlife I want to tell you about. Here’s a little story about one night there, very small tent and a big experience that was, in the end, a great memory. It was just getting dark and . . . .
I zipped my Lunar Solo tent’s fly shut, snuggled into my bag and fell sound asleep. No moon tonight, the night was pitch black except the amazing spectacle of the Milky Way above. Sometime later, I was suddenly awakened by someone, or something, rattling the tent, grunting, heavy breathing. I was in the Olympics, so no grizzlies, but still! It was really shaking.
Then, another set of major rattling and just as I started to yell a warning, down the tent came on top of my head, me in a sort of Lycra cocoon, fumbling both for the zipper and the light. Then more noises outside (wait, I WAS outside – nylon doesn’t count). I realized it was more deerlike than bear, I thought. I got the zipper open, and from my knee viewpoint there I was – looking up at two rather enormous bucks, lots of fuzzy antlers, and one of my hiking sticks in someone’s mouth. Deer slobber, yuck.
The Olympic Mountains of Washington are rare in that there aren’t any mineral deposits, no salts to licks, no seeps, and so all the animals are mineral-starved. The Olympic chipmunk wants your potato chip for the salt, not the food. The deer follow you around hoping you will urinate so they can lick it up, immediately. It’s a little off-putting at first, but then we all just get used to it – and these two were after the salt on my hiking stick’s handles. They weren’t going anywhere until I provided a diversion, so – well, with my light I walked over and found a big flat rock. I’d tell you what it was like to walk across a black meadow with two 200-lb. deer right on my heels, but I’ll let you imagine it.
Back in bed, I listened to both of them licking away, shoving each other, heavy breathing, some grunting. Just try to put that out of your mind and go back to sleep!
Glacier lilies form fields of yellow and white, thousands of them. These glorious flowers seem to prefer the sheltered meadows or under trees. I think they’re easily burned by the sun, so they’ve learned to grow best without the intense alpine sun blasting them.
Later in the hike, top of the pass. I soon turn 75 and feel seriously grateful I can still do this. Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
With this August 2021 edition, I’ve now done about 110 of these pages, and while I’ve been considering possibly NOT doing any more, I mean, how long can this go on? But I’ve just learned so very much about the Salish Sea by making these pieces of art, researching the details, that I really can’t stop. I see now that you can never learn too much about this stuff, especially in the middle of my seventh decade. It’s all the fine details about how these things live, how amazing it all is. And besides, it’s really fun to spot something interesting and rush home to write about it – paint it.
Here’s the original drawing, which I did some of while walking Port Townsend’s North Beach at low tide. A VERY low tide, possibly the lowest of the year. All this feather boa kelp was strewn about on the sand, making great abstract forms and shapes.
So, I wrote this in the 2021 August issue of 48 North.
Saw this feather boa on a low-tide beach walk. There was a sandy beach, solid boulders, a place where currents flow – and all that equals kelp. There are at least 140 types of brown seaweeds here in the Northwest and they all work in similar ways. The permanent base attaches itself to solid underwater rocks. These are usually on underwater reefs and onshore rocks down to about 50 feet deep. If you see kelp floating up ahead of you, there can only be one reason it’s there – ROCKS!
By summer, this plant joins the other kelps in creating real forests of lush green and brown plants waving in the current. While bull kelp stipes (the trunk) and blades (the leaves) can grow 100 feet a season, the feather boa gets to be about 30 feet long, and in my mind it’s the most beautiful of them all. Based on a single velvet-looking stipe about an inch wide, several different types of blades branch off in wild profusion. There are gas-filled bladders that hold the plant up towards the light like little life jackets, single leaves that look like tiny willow leaves, and skinnier lateral branches that look like twigs with smaller blades at each end. The entire thing is shimmery golden brown.
These plants are key habitat to almost countless other creatures and food for many crabs and snails, sea slugs and fish. When you spot feather boas on the beach at low tide, carefully turn over the blades and see what surprises await you. It’s possibly the best reason to come here.
To end, there are lots of parts in this thing. There’s the ‘main stem’ that looks like velcro. Then along the edges are bladders filled with gas so it floats up into the current. The leaves in between provide the photosynthesis to make it live that are all sorts of shapes and sizes, very random. All this on something possibly 20 feet long, and it all grows from a root clinging to an exposed rock, each and every summer!
Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
This is another page from my 48 North magazine monthly story series and I’m getting these on my website so there’s a record. This was published last fall. These little efforts aren’t big wall murals or carefully thought out paintings, but more like the art I like to do on backcountry hikes – quick and dirty paintings that are really fun for me. Sketchpad and a pencil.
Below is the text that went with this. I try not to press down with too much science, but some of these monthly efforts are really interesting when I get into them, and just have to pass it on. Anemones are favorite critters of mine, and a good thing since there are many varieties here where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The closest anemone? Probably a half mile from where I write this.
Anemones are predatory sea animals named after land-based flowering plants of the buttercup family. They really do look like flowers! Some can move around, most remain anchored in one place, others float near the surface. Often, anemones line rocks, waving their stinging tentacles in search of passing prey. Many are solitary but some form groups, like a garden in spring. The stubby rose anemone has carved out a life of being mostly buried in sand and gravel, often with only its short tentacles exposed, looking like a 4” wide red or pink pin cushion. Anemones often live in close association with small crabs, fish or other animals to their mutual benefit, each helping the others is subtle ways. When we describe something as an animal, we usually think of cats or bats, deer or mice, but anemones really are animals.
Muscles and nerves, stomach and mouth, arms and a column for a body – they’re like other animals in many ways. But anemones also have a few things most animals don’t have, like stinging tentacles that help subdue prey. The tentacles are armed with special cells that are defensive and also used to subdue prey. A tiny trigger hair, when brushed, sets off a harpoon that injects a lethal dose of toxin into the victim. Sometimes it’s another anemone and the battle can leave both injured. On a low tide, you can find these interesting animals, yes, animals, in gravelly sand, looking decidedly stressed they await incoming water to let it bloom again. Their stubby rose-colored arms are good descriptors, but there are also dozens of other anemones in the Salish Sea. The stubby rose has just recently been discovered to live here.
My model!
Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Several months ago this story and art were published in my monthly page at 48 North magazine. Here’s how I started, with a pencil sketch of the bird. Notice the ‘tube bill’ air vent. An adaption to keep seawater out of it’s lungs while still holding prey in it’s open mouth.
It was subtitled “A life in the open ocean” because these birds live out in the open Pacific and far from land for most of the time. It’s a good story.
Here is the text I wrote for the sketchbook painting.
You won’t see these gull-sized birds in Elliot Bay, or as you pass Port Townsend on your way to the big sail to Mexico, but once you take the turn at Neah Bay, you’ll see plenty. They vary in color from white to gray or brown, like gulls, but their behavior is very different with stiff-wings and quick flaps to keep them airborne. Flying close to the water’s surface, they grab prey on the wing, or make quick dives for a morsel just below the surface. Fish, squid, and jellyfish are normal fair, but recently they flock behind seafood factory ships. Fulmars use island sea cliffs to breed, gathering in large colonies to make primitive nests where the female lays one egg. Young take their time maturing and do not breed until they’re 10 years old, making them extremely vulnerable to changes.
We’ve all heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the two growing vortexes of plastics floating around the center of the ocean that is currently about 600,000 square miles in size. As all this plastic grinds together out there, it breaks up into ever-smaller pieces, and guess which birds pick up pieces thinking it’s food? Fulmars fly by and grab, and swallow. Some fulmars have been found to have dozens of plastic things in their stomachs, bottle tops, little plastic shards of bigger items, junk someone bought. While the plastic doesn’t digest, it does fill up a limited space in there, making it impossible for the bird to get enough to eat – or, basically it thinks it’s always full, which, I guess it is. That bottle you carelessly toss overboard, or the plastic bag that gets blown overboard – ALL will eventually get small enough to be eaten by wildlife. Maybe a little fulmar.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Two new published stories, both in 48 North magazine a couple of months ago, the summer of 2020. This first story was about possibly the showiest and most colorful rockfish in the Pacific Northwest. It is sort of rockfish heaven here, with 17 different species, all somewhat different.
Here’s my sketch before the color version.
My story was about rockfish that can live to be over one hundred and how conservation can actually work using science. Imagine that, using science! BELIEVE IN SCIENCE! By the way, DID YOU VOTE?
Just as their name suggests, these guys prefer to live around rocks. 28 species of rockfish live in the Salish Sea, from 3-inch tide pool dwellers to 3-foot lunkers that live in deeper water and weigh in at 25 pounds. Most are slow-growing and long-lived, some live to be more than a century old. They have a completely different lifestyle from live-fast and die-young salmon. Foraging for other fish, they may swim only a few hundred miles in their lifetime. Rockfish tend to hang out together in groups around rock pinnacles or cliffs, places with lots of tidal current (which helps bring meals to them and not the other way around). Canary rockfish usually have three stripes angling down and backwards on the head, the middle one often runs across the eye. This is a very bright and distinctive fish.
The conservation of this fish is a real success story, and one that shows how science and government work together to make our lives, and the fish’s lives better. After discovering how good rockfish tastes, a definite over-exploitation of these tasty fish began in the 1800’s until canary rockfish were declared overfished in 2000 when it was discovered that rockfish had declined 70% since the 1960’s. Fish and Wildlife submitted a petition to have 14 rockfish species listed under the Endangered Species Act (eventually, all these were not listed). Enter science-based studies of them, plus just plain asking fishermen “where are you catching canary rockfish so we can have you fish elsewhere”. Fishing rules were changed, different gear was introduced and suddenly, in half the time it was thought it hopefully might happen, we have plenty of rockfish.
My second story was about another Northwest creature, one that has adapted to its environment in a beautiful way, but hiding underground from its predators.
A delicate flower-like anemone that is actually an animal. Yes, an animal that you’ll find just beneath your keel in sheltered mud-bottomed bays. While it looks more like a tube worm, this creature is actually related to jellyfish. Confusing, but to me it just shows the complexity of the underwater world we rarely see, and why I enjoy writing this page. These animals appear to have stout tubes below their tentacles waving in currents as they search for bits of food to snag, but they are actually soft and vulnerable. To protect themselves, they burrow into the mud and generate a fibrous string-like material they weave around themselves, almost like they’re knitting a sock. This can extend from above the surface down beside them into the mud as deep as three feet, a woven structure they live in, safe from predators. When one threatens, the anemone quickly pulls itself down into the protective tube.
While many anemones have stout fans of tentacles and large bodies holding them up into the current, this species relies on the mud substrate and a house of its own making. When its main predator, the giant nudibranch, grazes on the anemone’s tentacles, it also lays its eggs right on the outside of the anemone’s tube, putting the young’s first meal close at hand. You might think this would be the end of the anemone, but nature has evolved tentacles aplenty so both species survive. The anemone commonly lives up to 10 years and often congregates in colonies that resemble flower-filled meadows, the tenticles waving as blossoms in a gentle breeze. Flowers they are definitely not, animals are certainly are.
And here’s my original sketch before the color was added. Notice the unfinished part on the right, just part of the process.
I’ve written for this magazine for over a decade now. When it was a sailing journal, they used my art on the covers and published many of my longer stories. It’s a broader publication now, trying to a bigger audience, and it still gives me pleasure to contribute. It was sold to the Port Townsend Northwest Maritime Center a couple of years ago, bringing it closer to my home port where I continue to sail and kayak. It’s a meaningful bit of life to me, experiencing nature here at home and then writing and painting it for others to enjoy.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
I freely admit it, I can’t make big mileages hiking if I stop to do these paintings. I’m fast, but not THAT fast, so, I’ve learned to shorten my goals, keep it realistic – and enjoy myself. For this, I get art to take home, my old body thanks me for slowing down, and by taking care I get to come back again and again to do this. And one more perk that is the difference between hiking and making art. I get to actually LOOK at the landscape, see how it’s built and has evolved. I see and understand how the flowers grow beside that dainty little brook where it spills out of the lake. Or how the trail crews have built a little path of rocks hauled over from a scree pile possibly 50 years ago. Putting in mileage sure doesn’t get you this close connection – but making trail art does.
Fleabane-beside-the-creek
These paintings represent places that moved me enough to stop and draw. On this trip, fourth of the season, I didn’t take my paints, but instead just a pencil, long point pencil sharpener and some water color paper. The color was added back in my studio, and I loved reliving the trip in this way. It took less art-making time on the trail, yet provided a ‘second adventure’ for me here at home reliving the same places again. I recommend it, really!
Sunset-trail-toward-the-peak
In this painting, I liked the way the soft light from distant fires softened up the sky, made companion colors in the willows fit perfectly as they yellowed for fall. The fleabane flowers beside the creek were about spent, with only a few yellow and white petals remaining – but it was a beautiful little place with water gurgling by. Willows, their leaves chomped on here and there by the black-tailed deer, were sporting galls and little caterpillar cocoons awaiting first freeze so they could spend their winter safe under snow on the ground. The place looked felt very soft and settled. Both these paintings were created at places where I was also tired of walking, so it was good timing to take time, calm down, make some art.
As I hiked along and came into a big meadow, the vertical peaks of the Olympics really contrasted my view. Flat and stable, then vertical and jagged, rising fast and steep. That’s what these Olympic Mountains are, really steep. The Dungeness River starts up here and drops 7600 feet in only 28 miles to the Pacific Ocean, one of the steepest watersheds in the country. Ah, but those first dozen miles at the top, they’re just pure magic. One of the side secondary rivers begins here in this valley, surrounded by snowy peaks and a chain of lakes. Not a single lowland trail comes here, they’re all high subalpine or high-elevation trails that drop down into this magic place, giving it a Shangri-La feeling bounded by barriers on all sides.
Mountain-Gentian
Gentian : gen shenGentians are fall-blooming plants of subalpine wet meadows. They’re one of my favorite flowers because they start blooming as summer is fading, being downright gutsy about their timing. They grow in clusters from a solitary root, and are at first tightly zipped up, a dark midnight blue that is truly rare in color. I don’t know another alpine flower with this amazingly vibrant blue. As they open, the insides begin to show lighter shades of cobalt, and again this is color not often seen in the wild, anywhere. They’re spectacular, to say the least I can about a plant that’s learned to flower just before first frost. What timing!
Orange Mountain-dandelion
On the other side of the color spectrum, a nose-up look at these plants that were upslope and out in the open from the gentians showed an orange mixed with white, just a tad of white to tone it down. And a little bee getting a meal. This was an upclose and personal painting – the flowers are only two inches wide, max. Orange mountain-dandelion has a hyphen, meaning it’s not a real dandelion, but one that looks similar to it’s backyard relatives. I found these in a much drier place than the gentian but still beside the trail. Both give great color to a drying meadow in late August.
My Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo was a bit too spacious for just me, but I luxuriously lounged in it, spread my stuff all over the place like I lived there. I guess I did. It’s an amazingly big tent for its 45 ounces of weight. This tent, and the other ultralight gear is what’s getting me into these places these days, and allowing me to do it in comfort.
At this campsite, an outcropping of boulders provided some really good reflections in the little lake, and so a painting was needed. Oh, I could have just turned the paper upside down and drawn it a second time, but that’s cheating, and not very accurate. Beside me while I drew, this Olympic chipmunk joined me. The Olympic Peninsula has several endemic mammals that live only here. This is one, and possibly my favorite. It’s small, even looks small with its short nose. This moment, with the chippy and me, my pencil and paper, are what makes my hiking complete – close connections with nature that will remain in my mind throughout the winter.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
These two stories were published back in early summer in 48 North magazine. I always give the magazine first showing, wait a bit and then publish here, too. This first story was about a rather amazing little bird that migrates 38,000 miles each year, circumnavigating the Pacific, and in early summer they stop by here. Take a minute and read the brief little story after the paintings. Times are tough for wildlife, but this guy makes me want to make sure they continue their solitary lives in a healthy way. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but this means: VOTE! All of us, you and me, and these little birds will have a better chance if you do. For the first time in my long life, I see an election that is truly critical to our continued existence.
Published in a magazine that has sailing stories, I wrote about what you’d see offshore west of my home in Port Townsend, Washington. I’ve been out there and seen these little birds myself.
I hear you’re voyaging to Barkley Sound or Down-the-Outside this summer! When you’re out there, keep a sharp watch for this little crow-sized bird soaring past, sailing along like a miniature albatross. If you see one, you’ll be getting to know a REAL voyager. These small birds fly with quick stiff wingbeats and soar low over waves, using the uplifting power of air coming off the swells to expend little energy to keep aloft. They need that, because these oceanic aviators go astounding distances. Each year, they fly from nesting burrows or rock crevices on islands around New Zealand, Australia and South America, and head north, following a figure-8 pattern. Passing Japan in April, they head to the arctic and then pass us in the Northwest on their way back home.
In all, that’s 38,000 miles, or 1.5times the distance around the Earth. (Only arctic terns make a longer flight each year.) While doing this, they only rarely meet other shearwaters, and yet there are 20 -30 million of them doing this – and there’s a second race in the Atlantic flying a similar route. Imagine! When they all get back home for nesting season in the Southern Hemisphere, they get together, sometimes in massive flocks (probably to catch up on things). Watch for the silver wing flashes and a dull brown coloration – stiff wings and a plump body. Shearwaters are proof to me that, while we’re generally busy goofing things up, there are creatures out there that are pretty much oblivious to our presence.
Tracks in the Sand
This second story, published this summer, isn’t about the wildlife as much as it’s about the tracks left by them. You don’t need to ‘see’ the otter to know it was just there, ambling down the same beach you’re on now. And, if you know what you’re looking at, you realize it might not be an otter, but something else. The tracks in the illustration were life-size.
Here’s the story that went with the paintings:
Land your boat on a sandy beach and you’ll probably soon see animal tracks in the sand. The most common are dog, bobcat, mountain lion, river otter and people. If you’re lucky, it’s a mix of all four. River otters remind me of an extremely hairy dachshund, same size (to 30 pounds and 3 to 4 feet including tail. Their fur is long and thick, keeping them warm swimming in our cold waters. The long and strong trail helps propel them like a sculling oar, but they are also at home on land and can run up to 15 miles an hour. I’ve been cornered in a parking lot by an entire family of them.
The tracks in the sand you see could very well be river otters, but not sea otters that rarely come ashore and aren’t common in the Salish Sea anyway. Look for details. The hind feet show a single claw apart from the other four. Front feet show all five like a dog. All will show front claws and you might even see the connecting web between the toes. Dogs show claws, but not the separated hind toe. Cougars have huge prints like big dogs, but don’t show claws. Bobcat track: only 1.5” across and only four toes show. Here’s the thing to remember. It matters little that you actually SAW the critter that made the track, because you saw proof it was here. I’d say that’s good enough.
I have a long history with 48 North magazine and their parent organization, The Northwest Maritime Center, based in Port Townsend, WA. In the 90’s and early 2000s, I was on the board of the Wooden Boat Foundation, Nancy was store chandler selling all manner of wooden boat equipment – and now here I am, still plugging away at making art for the same group – but these days it’s published in their magazine. I enjoy these brief monthly forays into aquatic nature. I learn a lot.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Making art on the trail – it’s my way of taking home some souvenirs. The very act of making art means I have to slow down, stop forward motion and actually see nature around me. I often pass hikers so intent on the trail coming up before them they don’t even see me standing beside there, watching them and wondering if they’ll even notice me. Some don’t! I suspect it’s the same for the deer and bears they pass too. I imagine them saying “many people come here looking, but there are so few actually seeing”.
I’m an older hiker now in my mid-70’s, but I’m still passionate about continuing this odd sort of primitive act of strapping a bag on my back and walking up a mountain. I’ve done it for a very long time now, and I never feel so close to life as I do out when I’m out there. It seems important, and I want to continue to do this as long as I’m able. So, some changes had to be made a few years ago – lighter equipment, a lighter me, a healthier lifestyle, regular exercise and being more careful how I walk. I’m now much more aware of being safe, and I’m facing the fact that just one stupid stumble and it might be the last step of trail I ever do. So I’ve slowed my pace, shorten goals and buy new boots more often. This means there are some new perks, like going slow enough to inspect how nature works, see the vibrancy of nature and how it goes on in the wild without us messing with it.
My paint kit, paints, paper, pencil and sharpener weighs in at about 12 ounces.
This is a cheap way to have fun.
Slowing down means I can make art while I’m out there, although I’ve always done this in some form – even when I was running down the trails. There are lots of ways to do this, and I fool around with several processes. One is to draw out the sketches while on the trail, refine them at home and add color there. That way I don’t have to carry the paints and mess with water or the sun, and it takes less time. Other trips I take the entire kit of paints, pencil, paper and sharpener and a brush, sit down in a meadow in the morning or evening after hiking, and paint with it all on my lap. This way I can match the colors I see instead of translating information from memory or photos later at home – or just making it up. It’s a more authentic painting, I think, to do it all on the spot.
Equipment: I really like, am almost passionate about, Noir black wood HB#2 pencils from Ticonderoga, and I carry a tiny little pencil sharpener called a “Long Point”. This little thing keeps the pencil sharper far longer than normal sharpeners, important when I’m in the flow of seeing and drawing.
While there are far better papers, the 5.5″ x 8.5″ 400 Series Strathmore Watercolor blocks ($5 for 12 sheets) are cheap, hold up well with scrubbing out goofs and provide a way to store finished paintings on the trail. Keep the paper small and paintings go quicker. Prang double set of watercolors ($11.50) provide a closed kit for hiking and yet opens to a nice set of paints opposite lots of mixing trays. It comes with a nice brush, big enough for wash work, small enough for details – and it stores in the pallet.
You don’t need more. For under $20, the entire painting kit weighs about 12 ounces and can be tucked into my pack, just waiting, tantalizing me, offering to make my hike a far better memory. It’s saying, “take me out, open me up”. Want proof, you’re reading this, aren’t you?
This is how I work
On a lunch break, I was standing beside a back eddy on Heather Creek. The stream was high and quick, running fast with a warm day’s runoff from the melting snows upslope. Suddenly, I noticed a flash in the water, then movement, then more. Half a dozen brook trout were holding in the back eddy, facing downstream. Occasionally, a fish would break rank, dart out into the opposite-flowing current and snatch up an insect floating by.
These fish were perfectly color matched with their rocky surroundings, and the slight reddish pectoral fin was all that gave them away. That fin, just behind the eye, the one that often lays flat so it shows from above was what told me which trout species I was seeing. That slight bit of warm red was only occasionally visible, or I’d have missed seeing them altogether. So, now here’s the best part of this experience. I did this piece of art standing right in front of them, and now, as I write this, I realized those fish are most likely still there, still going about their business in that bit of stream. I may be gone from there, but this bit of nature is probably not. I have a good memory, but it will always maintained by this painting of them. This gives me great satisfaction, some small token of this trip that I can conger up later to remember what I thought was a superior moment.
I was waiting for dinner
Like many solo hikers, I use a JetBoil stove that gives me a liter of boiling water in 100 seconds. It’s light, stores all its parts inside the pot, and I can have morning Starbucks coffee in one minute flat. Think of that! I started camping in a time when a wood fire was all I had, all anyone had to get a hot cup of coffee or a warm meal. It was a true ordeal, scratching up raw dirt for a fire pit so I wouldn’t burn the place down, scrounging around under bigger trees for small dry twigs and then bigger branches, finding dry duff for tinder – then hoping the darned thing actually started. I still makes fires occasionally, but the urgency in the past is past. Instead, I can paint a little picture of what I saw, the kitchen – or the open meadows before me, clouds breaking off the peaks above Royal Basin to the west. I used the two ancient Douglas-firs snags for the center of interest and two matching little firs just starting life for the foreground.
It may not seem apparent from these little watercolor paintings, but I’m really not that abstract all the time. I paint bigger stuff, I mean BIGGER stuff, often for the National Park Service for parks around the country.
I recently used my knowledge of the Olympic Mountains to paint 500 sq feet of murals for the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center, and the process wasn’t really much different than hiking up a trail and learning what the place looks like. Yes, it’s the same guy doing both the trail paintings and these huge wall paintings. Me.
Also for Olympic National Park, I’ve painted several large wall murals of the Elwha Dam deconstruction, the largest dam removal in US history. The murals showed how the river would look after nature heals and was used for community outreach in libraries, visitor centers and schools. These were painted using day hikes to gain references, and again it was the process of studying nature and then just putting it down on a huge canvas. To tell you the truth, while I like doing these big paintings – standing by a river and drawing fish in the back country is much more fun.
Elwha River Estuary Olympic National Park
Finally, about the Tent
You can see my sketch pad in the foreground, in front of my camp, the tent set up for the evening. This is my routine, set it up, make water for the night with my filter down by the creek or lake, then settle in and make some art while there’s still light. Because I’m not carrying 40+ lbs any more, I can paint instead of licking my wounds. I feel good, and this tent is helping. It’s a Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo from a small company in the Portland, Oregon area. They sent me this to use, and my packed tent weight went from 6 lbs to 1 lb 10 ounces. It’s an amazing shelter, I think, that uses my single hiking stick as the pole. No tent poles means an even lighter tent.
This brings me back to how I started this story, about older people getting out, experiencing nature and bringing back memories. It’s a subtle hint that, if you like what I’m writing about here, you can do this too. Get some cheap or used gear to start, do some short hikes, sleep under the stars and find some real happiness in these strange times.
Go to the mountains, it will heal your soul.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com, down the right side of the home page.
