Serendipitous sketches
Made a few sketches in my journal this weekend. One sketch was after a paragraph about migration to my city and its growing population. 
The other sketch was about government corruption.
I didn’t intend the images to line up like this; both were just images of birds I saw while hiking this weekend. But the migration paragraph was followed by the image of migrating waterfowl, and the corruption paragraph was followed by an image of a woodpecker looking for insects in the branch it was perched on.
Escoda watercolor brushes
At lunch with an artist friend the other day we started talking about watercolors and he told me he had something to show me: his new Escoda brushes from Pablo Rubén. The brushes are beautiful by themselves, but he tells me they’ve changed the way he paints. He showed me some of his recent work and I can see the difference already.
This came up because we were talking about the inflection point at which it makes sense to buy better tools. I have often resisted buying better guitars until I feel I have played the ones I have to some kind of limit. But it’s hard to know: is this a limit of the instrument, or do I need to pay a different kind of attention to how I play?
Pretty sure I’ll be buying better watercolor paints soon, but for now I’m going to stick with my cheap brushes. (I mostly use brushes that have plastic reservoirs so I can quickly paint while hiking.)
Still, I’m making a note that it might not be long before I need to get some better brushes, too.
Last year I led a private, online discussion of Thucydides. Amazing experience. Thinking of starting up again.
Prairie.
New book by Matthew Dickerson
This is a lovely book, written by my friend and co-author, Matthew Dickerson, and illustrated by Matthew Clark with simple but enticing woodcuts and sketches.
Dickerson is a computer science professor, but also a poet, musician, novelist, and wonder-walker in this wonderful world we share. And he is attentive to nature and to his own spiritual journey in a way that invites readers to attend to our own inner lives and the world around us.
A study of one of the oxbows on the Big Sioux River. I sketched this yesterday from a photo I took this past weekend.
My pocket sketchbook
Two recent pages from my pocket sketchbook. One is from last week’s trip to the Paha Sapa (Black Hills); the other is from this morning’s walk along the Big Sioux River.
Aside, I am impressed by the way micro.blog generates the alt text. Makes me feel like a better artist! Thanks, @manton !
Sketching is a good practice for me. When I take a photo, I am instructing the light sensor to take in light. But when I sketch, I am forced to ask myself: what do I actually see? This is very different from asking what I think I see. And the sketch shows me whether what I see comes close to what I think I see.
A little more about Bio-Itzá, by my favorite photographer. Click the video link to hear my late mentor, Reginaldo Chayax Huex, speak Itzá. He was one of the last people to hear his ancestral language spoken by monolingual Itzá speakers, his parents.
Bio-Itzá: A Great Place to Visit in Guatemala
A great place to visit in Guatemala: www.bioitza.org/en
I just returned from a weeklong visit there, a place I’ve been to many times over the last two decades. I highly recommend it!
They can arrange local homestays, language lessons in Spanish and the endangered Itzá language, rainforest tours (with or without overnight stays), visits with local artisans making sustainable use of rainforest products, wildlife viewings, and visits to local sacred sites like Tikal and Yaxhá.
While you’re there, you can also take in Arcas animal rescue center (your visit will help to fund their efforts to save the scarlet macaw and other animals endangered by trafficking) and the beautiful island city of Flores. If you’re feeling even more adventurous, reach out to Fundaeco’s Francisco Asturias and let him bring you deep into the forest to see jaguars and to get to know the work Fundaeco is doing to conserve one of the last remaining extended rainforests in Central America.
Here is Asturias’ instagram, which is a good way to reach out to him:
And here is more about Arcas. They welcome volunteers! You can also learn about through the PBS film, “Jungle Animal Hospital”
All of these photos were taken by me during this visit. It’s a beautiful place with wonderful people.
Faces
A few faces from the Paha Sapa (Black Hills) of South Dakota this week.
After almost a month of travel for research and collaboration, I wanted a few days in the mountains to write and reflect. Here’s a little of what I saw.
It probably seems odd to drive so far to unwind after long travel but the Paha Sapa feels like a “thin space,” where my mind gets quiet and my heart opens wide.
(Images: bison and pronghorn antelope on short grass prairie.)
Yessica's Pencils
Seven or eight years ago I made a cultural blunder while working in rural Guatemala.
When I bring my students to Petén, I tend to rent a room in a local home. The woman who steers the ship of that home, Merlina, is a small woman with tremendous strength of heart. She has nine children, and most of them have children of their own. Some have grandchildren. Merlina knows them all, prays for them all, and provides food and shelter for any who happen to be living under who roof or visiting for a while.
When I stay with Merlina and her family, I spend time playing with the kids, and I usually bring some small gifts to share. One of Merlina’s granddaughters, Yessica, has often drawn pictures for me, and I save every one of them in the pocket at the back of my journal. Every now and then I take them out and look at them, and admire the way she has grown as an artist.
When Yessica was an adolescent, she was plainly showing some autodidact artistic talent. She was also approaching the end of her time in free public schooling. I wanted to foster her talent however I could, so I gave her a new set of Staedtler pencils I’d brought for my own work. Six pencils of varying hardness, in a shiny metal tin. She was delighted. I left Merlina’s house that day feeling pretty good about the gift, even though it meant I’d have a smaller art kit to work with for the rest of the month that I’d be teaching abroad.
That evening when I got home Yessica was sad. Merlina had taken the pencils and shared them equally among all the grandchildren. I looked around and one was using a pencil to poke the dog. Another was using a pencil to dig holes in the dirt floor. I was very surprised and not very happy.
I told Merlina that those were special pencils for artists like Yessica, not ordinary pencils. Merlina patiently explained to me that in her culture it was up to her to provide for her family, and to ensure that everyone shared the good things that came into the household.
She was right, of course. I really wanted to help Yessica, but I was so focused on what I wanted for an individual that I was not thinking about different cultural norms, nor on the flourishing of the whole family. The next day I walked into town, bought a lot of common pencils and pens, and gave them to Merlina to give to her grandchildren as she saw fit. And I asked if she, as the head of the family, might consider setting aside the six Staedtler pencils for Yessica. She appreciated the gesture, I guess, and agreed to set them aside.
Funny thing: Yessica’s mom also heard the conversation, and, when she discovered that these pencils were special pencils, she decided Yessica was too young for them, so she set them aside for several years.
Seven years passed between my last visit to Petén and my visit two weeks ago. I’ve been homesick for that place, but COVID and a variety of other unexpected circumstances have kept me from returning until this winter.
For a variety of reasons I no longer teach that particular tropical ecology course, but I’ve stayed in close touch with some of my conservation partners in Petén. This winter my wife and I saw a window of opportunity and decided to fly down. In all my years of working in Guatemala, Christina had never been able to join me. This year, the stars aligned.
Naturally, we stayed at Merlina’s house again. Yessica is an adult now, and I’m happy to say she’s still making art. I opened my journal and showed her some of her youthful pictures. She laughed and covered her face. “I’ve gotten much better,” she said. “Let me show you.”
She retreated into one of the back rooms and emerged a minute later with hands full of watercolor paintings on canvas, a sketchbook, and loose pencil drawings. As I paged through the sketchbook my eyes filled with both wonder and tears. She’s so good! Without formal schooling in art, she has found online resources that have helped her to learn about value, form, texture, and color. Some of her sketches were almost like photos; others were deep abstractions that invited long examination. It filled my heart to see what she has been doing, and how she has been growing.
And then she showed me one more thing: the Staedtler pencil tin. Two of the pencils are gone, presumably worn down to nothing. A third is a mere stub. The others show signs of long wear. The tin has a patina that comes with frequent handling in a rainforest climate. Her mom held back the pencils until she thought Yessica was ready for them, and then handed them over so that Yessica could continue to grow as an artist.
I have to admit I cried a lot when I saw the art and the pencils. And then I reached into my art kit and, with Merlina’s permission, gave Yessica a new set of pencils and pens to work with, and a new pencil case to hold it all.
After I got home last week, Yessica sent me some photos of the work she has been doing recently, as an employee of the Ministry of Culture and Sports: she has been making indigenous-themed murals in her community. Which is to say: she’s working as an artist. It’s not her only work, but it’s part of what she does, and she does it well. My heart is full, Yessica. I’m so glad to see what you are doing, and I hope your art continues to grow and to fill other hearts in the community around you.
Sketching with Daniela in Tikal
We sat on top of the ruins of a Mayan temple, watching the sun sink towards the western horizon. Tikal National Park limits the number of people who can take a sunset tour each day, and I wanted to offer my wife something special. So we hired a guide, hiked in, and climbed the steep wooden stairs to sit on the platform. As the sky slipped into its evening colors, a keel-billed toucan sailed past, just above the treetops.
The platform on top of Mundo Perdido can hold about thirty people comfortably, but I thnk we were closer to thirty-five. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder with one another, perched above the dense canopy. In front of us we could see the combs of Temple IV and Temple I rising above the trees. In this part of Guatemala the land is low and level, with slight ridges undulating across the forest.
The colors of the trees are a lesson in ecosystems. They’re not just green. Most of them are topped with various kinds of bromeliads, plants that don’t send roots down into the soil but that live in the air. The main function of their roots is to cling to the branches. The bromeliads collect rain in their leaves, and get their energy from the sun and the air. Bright green succulents, yellow and orange orchids, and red fronds all arise between the leaves and flowers of the trees and vines. The nearest trees have vibrant colors; each wave of trees into the distance is darker green, fading to blue and purple into the far horizon.
Unzipping the backpack at my feet, I pulled out my sketchbook and colored pencils. Looking to the North, I began to sketch the slowly changing colors.
To my left sat a family from Spain. A girl who was maybe three or four years old sat between her youthful parents. She glanced at my sketchbook and then asked her father, “¿Papá, tienes un bolígrafo?” “Daddy, do you have a pen I can use?” No, he replied.
I dug into my backpack and pulled out some more paper, and laid a sheet down on the wood in front of them, and put down a tri-colored ballpoint pen where the girl could reach it. “¿Quieres dibujar el bosque conmigo?” “Do you want to sketch the forest with me?” She looked at her parents, who nodded their approval, and she began to draw. Her parents looked at me with smiles, and watched their daughter draw. Soon she was frustrated that her sketch didn’t look the way she wanted it to, so I opened my pencil case in front of her and chatted with her about what colors we saw in the trees and in the sky. Each time we named a color, she took the appropriate pencil and drew some more. We continued that way for the next twenty minutes or so until the sun began to touch the horizon and it became both too dark and too brilliant to keep sketching. Together we all watched the sun blaze and shoot out rays above a small cloud before disappearing below the distant hills.
Before we parted that evening, I asked if I could take a photo of her art, telling her it was one of the nicest drawings I’d seen in a long time. She smiled and said I could.
The next day, while walking through the park again, we ran into the family and I asked her name. “Daniela,” she said. Daniela, I hope you had a wonderful time in Tikal, and I hope you keep making art. Thanks for sharing the moment with me!
Dogs.
These are my son’s and daughter-in-law’s dogs. They watched us as we said goodnight in the driveway after a visit this evening. I liked the light, and their faces.
Bumblebees in Patagonia
Spent part of February in Aysén, Chile. Kept seeing things that made me want to slow down, like these two bumblebees. The orange one was drenched with rain and clinging to a thistle, so I’m not at all confident in its ID, but I think it is a bombus dahlbomii, which is endangered and indigenous. It is also called the Patagonian Bumblebee. Only saw this one. The other was abundant and easy to find. I believe it is bombus ruderatus, which is imported and invasive, brought to South America from Europe in order to pollinate red clover. I feel fortunate to have see the endangered bee. I looked for more of them but never saw another.
Pelican marine phone case
I don’t do much product review anymore (I had an outdoor product review blog 25 years ago when I was an outdoors and fly fishing guide) but every now and then I find something that really impresses me. This Pelican marine phone case with lanyard (pictured) and I just came back from a week of rafting in Aysén, Chile. I used it every day on white water and felt very confident in the lanyard and case. The touchscreen works well enough and the photos were crisp and clear. I used this with my iPhone 14 Pro, which is also in an Otterbox case. Didn’t have to remove the Otterbox case to fit into the Pelican pouch, though it was snug. The pouch is nicely padded with sealed air pockets that protect the phone and that would probably help it float, though I did not test that out!
I’m between airplanes so this will be brief: check out @jthingelstad and his Weekly Thing.
So grateful for people like Jamie who help me keep learning a little more every day.
Left to my own devices on airplanes I often turn off the screen and think about mathematics, ecology, or both. Often I think with pen and paper, giving me a record of questions to look into when I get home.
Related to my previous post, here’s something I wrote about the time I invited a beggar to lunch. The conversation did not go as I thought it would. It went even better.
Originally published in Sojourners online:
Who is my neighbor?
The Good Samaritan story and loving our neighbors.
A short piece of my conversation with John Meyer on his Leadmore podcast:
Environmental Writing Now
This afternoon several of my alums and I talked about what it means to be an environmental writer and storyteller right now. We look back on those who inspired us and, much as we love their work, we recognize that our own writing needs to respond to a different moment.
I’ve been revisiting a number of the writers who inspired me this year: Rachel Carson, Ursula LeGuin, Kathleen Dean Moore, Henry Bugbee, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Parker Palmer, Wendell Berry, John Elder, Gary Snyder, Wes Jackson, Bill Vitek, Robin Lee Carlson, Cindy Crosby, Suzanne Simard, Norman Wirzba, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Thomas Berry, Dan O’Brien, Aldo Leopold, Terry Tempest Williams, Strachan Donnelly…the list is longer than that, but those ones are a good sampling.
Each one has their place in my personal canon. Each one has helped me see something where and when they live. Each one brings their experience and shows me how they use it. Kathleen Dean Moore’s job might be most like my own; Aldo Leopold’s and Cindy Crosby’s landscapes are most like mine. Robin Lee Carlson has helped me become a better teacher. LeGuin has helped me to imagine worlds differently. And so on.
My alums both feel deeply the urge to make a difference with their lives. Both have earned graduate degrees, and do good work in their fields. But they—and I—share the sense that we need good stories.
The question is: what do those stories look like right now?
A.I. is a new challenge. How long until we are hit with a deluge of words not handcrafted crafted in the forge of human imagination but mass-produced by machines?
Another challenge: some say idylls and paeans to nature are a luxury we can no longer afford. Others point out that we are already weary of lamentations and nature obituaries.
Many of us want to write words of hope, be we also know they have to be tempered with sobriety.
For today, at least, we have settled on this: right now, as we welcome our children and grandchildren into the world, we want to bear witness, to testify to what we see, while we see it.