A Time for Renewal

Milé and I just returned from an epic road trip, a five-week getaway that led us through ten states to the desert heart of Arizona.

Admittedly, it seems a bit strange to feel the need to escape when you are lucky enough to live in paradise, like we do. But come January, when paradise is frozen over and there is no apparent end in sight, it was time for us to get away and pursue some sunshine... and sunsets.

We had a gorgeous house to call home for the month in Mesa, just outside of Phoenix, so we loaded up the van with easel and canvases, sewing machine and puppet supplies, laptop and flip flops, and made a beeline for the border. Our timing couldn’t have been worse. Within the first day we were in the grip of the ‘Storm of the Century’ that was ravaging the United States. First we encountered an ice storm, which left our van covered in an inch of ice. We passed through St. Louis at rush hour, where the weather had completely shut the city down, leaving it eerily abandoned. On the highway, we passed car after car in the ditch. Then we started seeing the road signs that you never want to see: “UNSAFE ROAD CONDITIONS: SEEK SHELTER”. From our cheap hotel room in Springfield, Missouri, we watched the weather channel with dismay. The road we’d been planning on taking was closed. We chose a detour through the Ozark Mountains, which turned out to be a taste of wonder; the roads were mercifully clear and dry, but the bare trees were encased in ice; when the sun shone through them it was pure magic.

But it was a brief respite – through Oklahoma the roads were ridiculously dangerous, so we made an unscheduled overnight stop in Seminole. The next day we finally left the snow behind and entered the charming desert landscapes of New Mexico.

The drive down was not exactly a relaxing start to the trip, but we were so much the happier to arrive at our destination. After a first day of pure, blissful relaxation, we quickly got into a routine. Milé painted four paintings while we were there, including this gorgeous Arizona landscape:

'Near Lake Saguaro' -  36" x 48", oil on canvas, 2011, sold

I wrote an article for an upcoming issue of Horntrip Magazine, and penned a puppet show and a half. I sewed the image for this year's new silo banner (can you guess what it is?):

I also made 20 puppets in 4 different styles for an exhibition I have coming later this spring.

It was our first vacation in more than 2 years, so we didn’t forget to indulge ourselves. We went swimming. We ate in restaurants. We wandered around the desert and explored the art galleries of Scottsdale, and visited the Great Arizona Puppet Theater for an unforgettable puppet slam.

Puppet on display at The Great Arizona Puppet Theater

We were incredibly productive because of the lack of distractions. A few weeks ago, we celebrated one glorious year of living at Small Pond, and we love it completely, but when we’re at home there is always a mile-long to-do list; here we were free from all those responsibilities. We had the time and the space to work at our own speed, took breaks when we wanted, read books and watched movies. When you love what you do, it’s no hardship to work while you’re on vacation. But it’s also important to take time for yourself to do nothing, to let your brain relax and your thoughts meander with no purpose. I think that on this trip we found the perfect balance between work and play, and we’ve come home renewed, refreshed, and ready to dive in to all the great things that 2011 has in store for us.

Stunning Sedona

When we returned home a few days ago to our beloved Small Pond, I felt really good knowing that this place can provide just such an opportunity of renewal to other artists. All they need to do is make the time and we can give them the place to work, relax, find inspiration and refuel their creative engines; and take my word for it - renewal is a beautiful thing.



Two relaxed, happy artists visit the Grand Canyon



Hesperus

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintery sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

The Skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
for I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring,
Oh, say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog-bell on a rock bound coast!" --
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
Oh, say, what may it be?"
Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

The Wreck of the Hesperus
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I named this lovely and majestic Manitoba Maple "The Hesperus" early this spring (around about the time I took the picture at the very top of this post) without any intent to connect it to the ship in the poem by Longfellow or even the ancient Greek name for the Evening Star --the name just seemed to fit. One August morn even more so: unknown decades old, The Hesperus was downed by a storm in the wee hours of Monday 23 August 2010.

We like to name things here at Small Pond, but this was the only tree that was named, because, we figured, with 87 acres and thousands of trees, keeping track of them all would be...challenging. I didn't even name the 30-plus trees I planted myself. But this tree was special (I refer you once again to the very first image here), and it deserved a name.

Not having a chainsaw yet, we called the Black River Tree Company to chop it up into manageable portions, which I then moved to the side of the garage. Rolling and hauling each piece was my way of saying goodbye.

The Hesperus lives on, in a way, in the beautiful carvings of Peter Paylor (above) and the weird things we do here at the Pond (see Stickfest). And when we use it for firewood, it'll warm the friendly souls gathered around our fire pit --just a few metres from where it once stood proudly.

Survivor

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
--Charles Darwin

We depend on our well for our in-house water so, to help conserve this precious ground water as much as possible, we've been collecting rainwater in barrels for use outdoors. We have three of these big blue guys and three smaller Rubbermaid bins (designed for ordinary garbage use) paired up with them, plus one rogue bin near the barn (rough estimate: about a thousand litres, combined). 

That's a lot of water, but we had three vegetable gardens, nearly 30 baby trees, and many flower gardens that needed regular drinks, so when the summer got dry (with weeks between rainfalls), we had to prioritize: gardens first, flowers and trees second. At one desperate and troubling point we were drawing water from our well (via the bathtub) to water the veggies.

But we survived the brief droughts --as did the vegetables, trees, and flowers. However, a nasty byproduct of so much standing water is the proliferation of mosquitoes. They love it and they laid their eggs in our barrels every chance they got, producing grotesque squirming larvae which grew up into blood-sucking whiners. What to do?

Rather than resort to a potentially unhealthy chemical solution, I remembered what my good friend, Mike Teng, suggested: feeder fish. These little guys are cheap (a couple of bucks for a dozen fish) and are usually used either as food for bigger animals or as starter pets for kids. So I went to the pet shop and brought home a dozen and put in two fish per barrel.

The fish were happy and I was happy: for a couple of bucks I solved (part of) our mosquito problem with fish that were earning their keep by eating all the mosquito larvae while living luxuriously in giant barrels.

Then they started dying.

Every couple of days there was another dead fish. Was the rain water too acidic? Were birds pooping in the barrels? We still don't know. By the time we got down to three or four, I went to the pet shop again and got another dozen. I bought fish food to supplement their diet in case the mosquitoes took a break from propagating (fat chance!).

Still more deaths...until one last fish remained:

We kept referring to him (her?) as Survivor Fish. Since there was overlap between fish batches from the shops, I'm not certain if he's from the first group or the second, but I am certain he outlasted them all.

As October progressed, frost came more frequently in the mornings. Then ice. How could Survivor Fish survive the top 3-4cm of water in the rain barrel freezing solid? Well, cold water contains more oxygen and algae has been growing in the barrel for some time, so the conditions were still good for our little hero. 

But the days are getting colder and I wanted to reward him with more than a dis-honourable and icy burial at the bottom of a rain barrel. 

I decided to take him indoors. 

I knew I would have to re-introduce him to warmer temperatures gradually, so my first step was to take him out of the big blue barrel (the one by our garage) and keep him in a metal bucket in the garage where it wouldn't freeze. He survived the night, so I took him outside and let him bask in the sunshine until just before sunset:

Then I took him inside to the Gallery where it's still pretty chilly:

He seems to be quite happy with the transition (note the algae from the barrel in the bucket) and has now been indoors for two days. I have no idea what the odds are of him surviving the winter, but he's beaten some hefty odds already, so I wouldn't put it past him.

This little guy is definitely a Big Fish in my books:

UPDATE (13 Nov.): Survivor Fish didn't last a week indoors. Four days after I brought him inside I found him floating in his bucket; he couldn't adapt, after all. So long, little buddy.