Road Trip Reminescence

by Jane Elsdon

Sometime in the crystalline sunlight of March, spring begins to hum in our ears. So does freedom. Exploration. Kick-back times ahead.

Nothing signals these dreams like getting out the Atlas and putting our heads together. Where would we like to go this summer? What would we like to see and do? There's also nothing like a road trip to get the creative juices flowing. So wherever we go, whatever we do, there has to be a pad and pen and a sketchpad, pencil, and watercolor field kit in our backpacks. We never know when the epiphany will occur. One certainty, however, is that it will. They will.

When Gene and I take a road trip, he drives an hour or so, then I drive an hour or so. It is often during these intervals, with the music of the tires on the road humming in our ears that ideas arise like magic. Of course we have pads and pens in the glove box. Whoever is in the passenger seat takes dictation for the one driving, who is fielding the inspirations suddenly abundant. We've found we must catch them on the fly. They can dissolve in midair. It's not unusual for a full line or stanza to appear on the white board of my mind at times like this.

The Arches in southern Utah is a vast, mysterious landscape rich with nature's matchless sculpture. Its silence is almost heart stopping, it feels so sacred. We have to be willing to take it all in, dwell in the silence for a while, and to record the snippets sweeping across our inner screens to ponder later. To take our photographs for future inspiration and recollection. Gene frequently paints from photos he has taken. What a gift it is that those photos later on down the road can time travel us back to the day they were taken and assist our efforts to convey the experiences.

The rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state is the setting for the second painting. (We were inveterate campers for decades.) However, the poem accompanying that painting was written on the Mendocino Coast at Van Damme State Park in California. Artists have a way of elasticizing limits. We call it poetic license or "a lie that tells the truth." I would like to tell you who said that originally, but it was a long while ago.

Happy dreaming and planning while you nestle into the warm nest of spring with your maps all around you.

Arch Light Colorful red rock glory, dramatic with freeform sculptures formed by wind and water, whispers mysteries. Sun streams through curved arches like a torch, ignites the thorn bush with its famished flame, sets it ablaze. Astounded, we scan, then search, the terracotta landscape, vast and empty, in urgent quest, our hearts pounding. Where are you, Moses? Where? Do you see it standing there luminous as a blessing? Like long ago, it is not consumed. It sends a message miraculous: surely anything is possible.

Fern Canyon We tramp Fern Canyon's winding trails, eyes searching for clues, ears straining to hear secrets ferns congregate in filigreed masses to reveal wisdom that redwoods hold at their hearts and murmur for those who can hear. How profound that ferns should kneel in such numbers at the feet of these trees. How crucial that clusters of young trees clamber to grow in shadows of great ones scarred by fires of a half century before. Tender green fern-spears thrust upward through deadwood of decades, evidence of life's eternal resurrection of the fragile. These open secrets seem to whisper In silence discover your strength, savor serenity, learn simply to be. . .be. . .be. . .

Paintings by Gene Elsdon
Butterfly Banner Image by David Farris