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10:09:2005 Entry: "Ann : Mountains"

Mountains

Each year when we get ready for our trip to Colorado, I anticipate the trip more and more. Each year, I enjoy seeing the mountains more and more. I didn't miss them when we moved from there. And frankly, I still really don't miss the mountains that I grew up with, the mountains that were just 10 miles or so to the west of our flat, non-mountainous Front Range town. Those mountains, as I've derogatively referred to as "big grey slabs of rock", do not hold any magic for me. I lived with them looming over my shoulder for 17 years, blocking out sunsets.

My first encounter with mountains was when I was about 6. We had just moved to Massachusetts from Indiana. My parents took me up to Maine, the coast, to Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor. It was foggy and I think it was Cadillac Mountain that hid behind clouds and fog. Suddenly, it peeked out, a dark green, almost black humungous formation that loomed ahead of us on the road. It scared and chilled me, and I was fascinated by it. In the motels and cabins my Mom read me The Hobbit. She said the moist, mountainous land with moss and ferns and vegetation was how she pictured Middle Earth.

When I was 10 we moved to Colorado. We arrived in Fort Collins on a snowy day. I kept hoping that the mountains would make themselves visible to me like Cadillac did, a dark, tall, ominous being hidden behind clouds. I waited for the right weather conditions. It never happened. The mountains didn't appear abruptly from the flat earth, they appeared gradually, in the distance.

Adolesence is a hard time to appreciate nature. One is more concerned with how one looks and finding a good radio station while travelling than with the scenery. I began to despise the mountains because I only travelled there when in the company of my parents. I arrived in Colorado at just the wrong time, a pre-adolescent in the early 70s. By the early 80s, I didn't travel with them anymore. The Rockies reminded me of Granola, Hippies, Ski Bums on Trust Funds, and Bad John Denver Songs, all of which were a complete anathema to me. I preferred Denver, the city.

In 1987 and 1988 Stan and I took a couple trips out west. The first was up to Seattle, down the west coast, and back up through Arizona and New Mexico. It was an epic trip. A part of it that really sticks in my mind was when we left Ogden, Utah and headed up toward Idaho in the morning. Everything was so green and lush, it was nothing like the west. I loved the desert in Arizona...it was surreal. The following year we travelled through Colorado and into Utah to see various places like Arches, Bryce, Zion and to swim in the Great Salt Lake. This was the part of the west I enjoyed, surreal landscapes, red rocks, and just vast hugeness like Zion. This wasn't the hippie ski bum mountains of the Front Range, covered in grey and Ponderosas. This was what I liked.

There's something about the climate on the Front Range that bothers me. It's a personal thing that I can't quite describe. But it doesn't know what it wants to be. It is sort of a northern climate; it has seasons, although not as starkly defined as they are here in the Midwest (Snow in June and September is to be expected as is suntanning in February). It's arid, yet deciduous trees grow. I guess I'm an either or type person. Either have your west with your cactus and red and pink and peach and gold rocks and oddly-shaped formations, or have your east with your lush deciduous forests and ferns and mosses and grass that never needs watering (except in droughts like this year). But this Fort Collins climate, a climate that can't decide what it wants is not for me. And so I'm here. 1000 miles away from wish-washy semi-arid land.

Maybe I had to leave Colorado so that I could appreciate it. The true appreciation didn't start until after Stan's dad died in 1997. That's when his mother moved from the little town on the Colorado Eastern Plains over to the Western Slope where her twin sister was living. That's when we started extending our yearly visits to include not just Fort Collins, but also Montrose. And some years, when vacation time isn't generous, it's hard to include both. Most of the time is spent in Fort Collins seeing people, but my favorite parts of the trip are travelling to and around the Western Slope. Heading west on I-70, the true magic of the mountains starts around Rifle or Parachute--along the edges of the interestate the beautiful formations start to show themselves. All colors imaginable are in the rocks, pinks, greys, golds, white, purple, red, orange, green.

Cortez is one of my favorite spots. From the highway you can see the beginnings of the incredible classic southwest land formations, the stone ships on the desert. If nothing was a barrier at this moment in time, I'd like to move there.

In anticipation of our trip, I did a maps.google.com search. Clicking on "hybrid" so that you can still see the highway markings, you will be presented with an aerial delight of mountain views. If you have never travelled in a plane over the rockies (which I never have), you will be in for a treat. The land is so dimensional and textural, like paint. Everyone has always told me that my art is like a topographical map. But they were wrong. My art is like a satellite map. Or satellite maps are like my art. Makes me want to paint again. Sometime.

4 Comments

I can see a strong relationship between your paintings and the maps.

By the way if John Denver songs and mountains are sort of something to do with bad songs were there any good songs about - perhaps - flat lands?

Posted by Stan @ 09:20:2005:05:34 PM CST

Just off the top of my head...Bauhaus "In the Flat Field," but maybe that's too literal an interpretation of the title.

Are you thinking of something else?

Posted by Ann @ 09:20:2005:05:36 PM CST

That would make a great song for someone like John Denver to cover - wouldn't it?

Posted by Stan @ 09:20:2005:05:37 PM CST

'the hell? Please, Stan, we're going to go eat. Don't ruin it.

Posted by Ann @ 09:20:2005:05:38 PM CST

By Ann @ 09:50 AM CST:10:09:05 ..::Link::..

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