Wilderness Paintings

This summer, July 2021, I drove from Santa Barbara to Kennedy Meadows, with my little dog, Riley, to paint. Kennedy Meadows is situated one mile off 108 at the base of the Sonora Pass. It is a rustic jumping-off place where backpackers and horseback riders enter the wilderness. It is an area I’ve gone all my life, starting with my parents when I was two. I know this land like a child knows it. My mother and I camped by the river every summer, bringing up water in buckets, cooking over a campfire, and sleeping on cots outside. When I was eight, and had my own horse, I rode with the cowboys, taking campers and their supplies high into the Emigrant Basin.

Eventually my family bought a cabin at Kennedy Meadows that we owned for forty-five years, and that I’d had to sell in 2013. For years I grieved its loss, but eventually realized I could still go there and paint the area I loved so much. Friends owned a cabin near mine and agreed to let me use it for my painting trip.

I’d painted a mountain and waterfall when, climbing familiar granite rocks, I saw the Juniper tree. Its shape made me gasp. Looking at its form I knew I was in the presence of endurance itself, timelessness, the struggle to live, and eldership. Some of its silver, dead branches were covered in brilliant, green moss. Its larger branches and trunk were varied colors of black, yellow, orange and silver, but twisted as though some giant storm grabbed hold of it and wrung it like a towel. Staring at the Juniper was like staring at holiness.