Coming into my last weekend I had an out of hand to-do list. Things to buy, Instagram posts to share, emails to return, taxes to file, incomplete paintings to finish- you get the idea. The paintings were at the bottom of the list. Not that they were the least important, but as long as there were tasks left incomplete I would not be giving the art my full time and attention. I needed to enter a new form of lazy- one where I shirked my to-do list and made myself so busy I had no time for any of it. I would focus on making art over sharing it, on climbing partway up a mountain instead of looking at someone else's photo of one.
I woke up at 04:45 Monday morning (my Saturday) and considered staying in bed. Before I could really put much thought into it I was biking by headlamp out to the caldera. I was outbound.
8 hours later I was in the last mile to Red Hill Cabin, 10,000* feet up the slopes of Mauna Loa. The only permit holder for that night, it was easy to hold some gratefulness for all of those people who do not hike- for they were giving me this landscape for the next 24 hours.
The process in which I fall for a place usually starts with documenting the locations that are important to my experience; my residence, then the views I see most regularly, then views of the places where I look out from. In a 16 hour time on the mountain I went through the whole cycle. Now when I look at Mauna Loa I see my experiences there along with the martian landscape and the volcano.
*full disclosure* I could get cell phone reception on the mountain and called my grandmother while scrambling around. I sent under 10 messages/ photos. Otherwise I was unplugged. Also I did not hike 10,000 feet, I started from a trailhead and dealt with about 3,500 feet of gain.
I woke up at 04:45 Monday morning (my Saturday) and considered staying in bed. Before I could really put much thought into it I was biking by headlamp out to the caldera. I was outbound.
8 hours later I was in the last mile to Red Hill Cabin, 10,000* feet up the slopes of Mauna Loa. The only permit holder for that night, it was easy to hold some gratefulness for all of those people who do not hike- for they were giving me this landscape for the next 24 hours.
The process in which I fall for a place usually starts with documenting the locations that are important to my experience; my residence, then the views I see most regularly, then views of the places where I look out from. In a 16 hour time on the mountain I went through the whole cycle. Now when I look at Mauna Loa I see my experiences there along with the martian landscape and the volcano.
*full disclosure* I could get cell phone reception on the mountain and called my grandmother while scrambling around. I sent under 10 messages/ photos. Otherwise I was unplugged. Also I did not hike 10,000 feet, I started from a trailhead and dealt with about 3,500 feet of gain.
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