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The title track

11/20/2014

I am on the move again, heading back to the north country and returning to a beloved place for me. In Yosemite I grew as an artist and a person thanks to some amazing friends. I painted down to the last day and left some new work at the Ansel Adam's Gallery for the winter months. Most of my projects were finished to conclusion, but as I return to a place I thought I would't return to, I know that what I think is a finished sentence may be a comma.

Here is a quote from the book On Travel that seems appropriate at the moment.

"Defy ephemerality. Wander not always ahead of yourself in thought, but neither dawdle in the past. It is the art of arrival. Of being in one, only one, place at a time. Of absorbing it with all of your senses. Its beauty, its ugliness, its singularity. Of allowing yourself to be overwhelmed, fearlessly. The art of being where you are."

Sprouting Grouping Attending Discovering

11/20/2014

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Guest post by author Perrin Pring

11/8/2014

Hi MaryEllen! Thanks for having me on your blog today. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Perrin Pring, author of the Ryo Myths. My first book Appointment at the Edge of Forever and my second book, Tomorrow is Too Late are both available on Amazon and Barnesandnobel.com. The Ryo Myths is a science fiction/fantasy trilogy that even people who aren’t sci fi nerds seem to enjoy. (Think Star Wars or Firefly.)

Today, MaryEllen asked me to talk about how my sense of place affects my writing. If you haven’t checked out MaryEllen’s paintings, place is a very important theme in her work. In fact, she’s helped me develop my ability to see where I am (If you scroll down to the blog titled Glory Days, you will notice a quote at the bottom there, “You see things I miss when I walk to work looking down.” Yup, that’s me. I’m not so good in the mornings. Good thing MaryEllen paints what I miss.

The question MaryEllen posed to me is, when I create planets and other places in my writing, am I writing about places I know, or am I creating places from scratch?

I’d have to go with the former on that. I take places I’ve traveled to or lived in and augment them to be whatever I want them to be. That’s the beauty of writing science fiction. I don’t have to write reality as I see it. Some of the most inspiring places I’ve ever been are volcanic landscapes. I love hot springs and mud pots and cinder cones. I just can’t get enough. In the final book of the Ryo Myths (still unnamed at this point) my characters all end up on a volcanic planet. I created that planet kind of like Thomas Moran created some of his famous paintings of the West. I put together a lot of features I enjoy about a volcanic landscape and had them all exist in the same place. I made the sky a sweet color I’ve never seen before and blew out the color on the rest of the landscape to make it what I wanted it to be, which is based off of what I know but is in no way a replication of it.

This being said, I could not, in anyway, create any meaningful places in my writing if I hadn’t traveled or lived in so many places. For example, I’d always heard the American North West was rainy, but I didn’t really get it until I lived there for a winter. In my first book, Appointment at the Edge of Forever, one of the main characters ends up on a planet called Bok, which is a very rainy planet. While Bok is only a stopover for the character, I know the details I included about Bok are much more meaningful and realistic because I spent a third of a year in constant rain.

As I said, I’m Perrin Pring, author of the Ryo Myths. Check out my writing, follow my reviews, and get my books at:

www.perrinpring.com, Facebook, G+, Goodreads, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon.com, and Barnesandnoble.com

We all were seeing it.

11/5/2014

A couple of weeks ago myself and two of my friends, a photographer and a writer, went on a mission to document the evening up at Sentinel Dome in Yosemite. We each worked in our respective mediums, setting out to capture the valley that has been our home this season. We shared the experience with a dozen others, most of whom were plainly from out of town. But even the drunken guy was exclaiming to his friends how spectacular the view was. I didn't mind it. I know how amazing this place is, but I still like to be reminded that even in the moments when it seems pretty mundane, (not that evening by any means) someone is passing through on their once in a lifetime visit.

The disadvantage of my process is that in the two or so hours we were up there, I only left with one image. With only an hour or so of good light I can't spend a lot of time looking at different angles to paint and the 360 degree view from Sentinel Dome proves to be a test of commitment. My choice was to look toward El Capitain, one of the more famous features of the valley and one I somehow had not painted at all this season. Part way through, a "hopefully-so-mesmerized-by-the-sight-that-I-am-unaware-of-my-surroundings" visitor stood in front of me to take his pictures for a few minutes. I tried to appreciate the opportunity it gave me to just look for a little while.

Here is an excerpt from Roger Minick's 2012 field notes about some realizations he had while photographing his Sightseer series over the course of 30 years. The full website is sightseerseries.com.

"Throughout my hours of driving and time spent at hundreds of overlooks––from Yosemite National Park to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Old Faithful Geyser to the rim of the Grand Canyon, from Niagara Falls to the St. Louis Arch, from the Crazy Horse Memorial to the World Trade Center, from The Alamo to the Washington Mall, from Zion Canyon National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains––there was one question that continued to press upon me for an answer. What was it that motivated people, by the hundreds of thousands, at great expense of time, money, and effort, to visit these far-off places of wonder and curiosity? I must confess that there were times in my travels, squeezed elbow-to-elbow with my fellow travelers, that I viewed their presence at the overlooks as nothing more than another example of mindless, boorish, behavior. I thought they were there simply to get their pictures taken as quickly as possible, the one tangible validation of their trip, and then head on to the next overlook, the next campground, motel, bus stop, then home––the experience at any one of the dozens of overlooks remembered only later through a snapshot they barely recalled taking.

But in the end I came to believe that there was something more meaningful going on––something stronger and more compelling, something that seemed almost woven into the fabric of the American psyche. I would witness this most dramatically when I watched first-timers arrive at a particularly spectacular overlook and see their expressions become instantly awestruck at this their first sighting of some iconic beauty or curiosity or wonder. After seeing this happen innumerable times, I began to compare what I was seeing to the religious pilgrimages of the Middle East and Asia, where the pilgrims are not just making a trip to make a trip, or simply to return home with some tangible piece of evidence that they were there––the snapshot––they have instead come seeking something deeper, beyond themselves, and are finding it in this moment of visitation. For as with all pilgrimages, they have made the journey, they have arrived, and are now experiencing the quickening sense of recognition and affirmation, that universal sense of a shared past and present, and, with any luck, a shared future."

After the fact.

11/5/2014

From "We are a Camera" by Nick Paumgarten

"For two days in the Idaho mountains, Chase’s cameras had been rolling virtually non-stop. Now, with his companions lagging behind, he started down the trail, which descended steeply into an alpine meadow. As he accelerated, he noticed, to his left, an elk galloping toward him from the ridge. He glanced at the trail, looked again to his left, and saw a herd, maybe thirty elk, running at full tilt alongside his bike, like a pod of dolphins chasing a boat. After a moment, they rumbled past him and crossed the trail, neither he nor the elk slowing, dust kicking up and glowing in the early-evening sun, amid a thundering of hooves. It was a magical sight. The light was perfect. And, as usual, Chase was wearing two GoPros. Here was his money shot—the stuff of TV ads and real bucks...

Once the herd was gone, it was as though it’d never been there at all—Sasquatch, E.T., yeti. Pics or it didn’t happen. Still, one doesn’t often find oneself swept up in a stampede of wild animals. Might as well hope to wingsuit through a triple rainbow. So you’d think that, cameras or not, he’d remember the moment with some fondness. But no. “It was hell,” Chase says now."

***

A few months ago I was crossing Stoneman Bridge in Yosemite Valley when I saw the light of a passing car reflect off of some animal's eyes along the Merced river. A minute later I heard some splashing and looked down to see a raccoon swimming after fish. I don't think it caught any but I was pretty excited to watch it actually perform like a wild animal unaware of the nearby Camp Curry Pizza Deck and numerous visitors who would be happy to share their dinners for a good photo-op. Before bed that night I sketched out what I remembered and over the course of the following months I have slowly finished a painting.

It may not have been a heard of elk, a marmot licking a go pro camera, or a whale coming up below my kayak, but it was a rare sight none-the-less, and one I am glad to have documentation of. I love cameras. I love photography, but in that moment, I am glad I can build a memory on paper, after the fact.

6 1/2 x 6 1/2" Gouache on paper.

The title track

Sprouting Grouping Attending Discovering

Guest post by author Perrin Pring

We all were seeing it.

After the fact.

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