Tag Archives: #nancycherryeifert

Backpacking, Hiking, Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post

Sheltering in Place, a Painting Campout

April 12, 2020 Brush Man

Down through the ’33’, a piece of forest that’s like a park. The name came from how much it cost.

Nancy and I are truly fortunate to have our own bit of nature here that’s big enough to actually camp in. Through the years, we’ve added to it, strategically bought chunks here and there, and now it’s a very tasty place to walk. So, since we’re supposed to stay home, how about a little backpack with Nancy as the supporting photographer and me as painter!

This patch of trilliums come up each spring, getting bigger each time and is at the start of a little loop that is really a complex bunch of deer trails. I have some new equipment, so, out we went with that new Six Moon Designs pack on to try out their new tent, a Lunar Duo. If I can’t do it up a mountain somewhere, I can try it out here.

Along the way, I tried to get a couple of small paintings going, just jestures of how it felt here on a warm spring day in a forest I know better than any. This huge big-leaf maple is a favorite of mine, a giant sprawling mass of life that changes each year as branches fall off in winter storms. A couple of years ago, a fawn was born here.

A little way down the deer trail this little scene unfolds. I made the trail a bit wider in the painting, hopefully the deer won’t notice.

My new Lunar Duo tent from 6 Moon Designs – a perfect tent for an old guy.

Here’s a little tent review for the Lunar Duo, a perfect ultralight two-person tent:

This tent is already a hit with me. Less than half the weight of my old standby, yet much bigger in size. For decades I’ve carried a free-standing tent, one with enough complicated poles that you wouldn’t want to put it together in the dark. The Lunar Duo comes in at 2.5lbs and uses one carbon fiber pole and my hiking stick, that’s it. (my old tent was about 6lbs. and had about 30 little poles all stuck together with bungies)

I’ve read this one takes some fiddling and adjusting to put it up, and requires ground soft enough for the titanium stakes, but that’s the same as the other one – I never camp on rocks and still had to connect it to the ground. With a floating floor, this was up in minutes and I was set for the night. The floating floor means it just floats around under you like a little water tight boat under a waterproof cover.

Thanks for reading this week. Stay well out there so you can join me in the next addition of this little journey. Art and nature, they go together well, even if you’re still at home.

All photos by Nancy Cherry Eifert using the old Nikon backpacking camera without post processing.

Larry Eifert

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Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

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Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Posts about other stuff, Wildlife

Eifert Painting on the Ferry

January 30, 2020 Brush Man

Yesterday we were coming home to Port Townsend on our little ferry. Parked on the car deck and walked up to confront one of my paintings in jigsaw puzzle form right on the table in front of us. Perfect, said Nancy and proceeded to put the thing together. I mostly watched a gloriously calm sunset after a big blow in the morning that shut the boat down, but still added a few pieces to the effort. This is a painting I did for Mount Rainier National Park years ago and is still installed there, the main attraction to the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center. It’s also still a puzzle – and who knows how many of these things are floating around the world. Thousands.

Now, I know it’s a bit of a stretch to say this is actually ‘public art’, but bear with me. I first figured out how to put my better National Park art on puzzles in the 1990’s, first with a company from Germany, then we did it ourselves through a great group called Impact Photographics. It takes a pile of doubt or at least a credit score. Various others have made puzzles, too, and I’m guessing we’ve published over 80 different images. Currently, Nautilus Puzzles from California is actually making them out of real laser-cut wood that cost as much as some of my early paintings did!

These days, we’re not as aggressive with this, but still supply them to parks and stores. We once found one in Hawaii at the Pahoa Farmer’s Market under a pile of used clothes and books.

I’m not here to advertise buying puzzles, but instead to just say that this sure has been a wide and complex life. I have painting projects going on right now about restoring Northwest salmon, a bison mural in South Dakota, a Florida project involving dolphins and octopus, nesting terns and sharks. I’m proud to say I’m sponsored by a great backpacking equipment company called Six Moon Designs that help get me out there in comfort, and by a truly wonderful partner. Nancy keeps it all running behind the scenes as well as on the road – or on the ferry.

I guess what this post is all about is for me to just say thanks to everyone for all of this. It takes an amazing number of consistently interested people to keep our little lifestyle going for all these decades. I wish I could give back, but with the next paintings in progress, maybe I am.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.