Frozen Missouri

A story: After I moved from Oregon the last time (to Ohio), I found it almost impossible to appreciate any kind of beauty outside of my jagged-mountains, crashing-ocean, evergreen-trees, always-raining home. I was not living in the most beautiful place in the world at the time. Actually, I was living in one of the ugliest places I have ever been. However, I was also living in the hills of Appalachia, near Amish country, near rural Ohio. Even seeing lovely forests and hills could not make me appreciate them as beautiful. I saw any landscape East of Colorado as tame and boring, because if it can’t likely kill you with its beauty then what’s the point? But, when on one of my frequent (daily) visits to the public library, I found a birdwatcher’s memoir called Out of the Woods by Ora E. Anderson. People talk about books that changed their lives because the book was inspiring, or helpful, or gave the person the courage to do the right thing –clichés like that. This book was not about grapping the stars and wearing a blue bird of hope, perched jauntily on the side of a sunhat. I didn’t feel as if I could “be anything/do anything”. But, in a way, it did change my life. The book is a very gentle memoir of an eighty-year-old naturalist. He is observant, and I would say, in fact, wise. He can really see the beauty in the world, and has the wonder of a child and the knowledge of his age. He’s the sort of person I would want to be instructed by. As it happens, he lived in Appalachia. I don’t think my life was changed in that I could suddenly touch the moon. But, I wanted to see the world in this way and not simply sit around in my teenaged angst, listening to Goth music and feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t go to the beach. His observations really broke me out of my inability to appreciate the variety of beauty.

Out of the Woods is still one of my favorite books, and I suggest it.

I am now living in Kansas, and I can honestly say that, like Oregon or Appalachia, it has many beautiful places. I still miss Oregon, but I don’t hate Kansas for this. This painting I did after a snow, while overlooking the Missouri River. I only had a few tubes of paint, one brush, and I painted it with melted snow and much shivering. I wanted to capture all the unusual colors of an icy day overlooking the river.

Acrylic and snow on paper.