Field Sketches From Alaska
Alaska has one of the most visually arresting landscapes I have yet encountered. The feeling of its wilderness around you is truly inspiring. It is different than hiking in the Blue Ridge, biking in back country Central Texas trails, different than any other place I’ve been. It is the lighting directly overhead, spiraling around you never below the horizon. It is just a dirt road, a rambling oil pipeline and once that gets out of view, long stunning rolling hills of green and yellow, dashes of purple and red, blue blue mountains blocking the horizon miles away.
The sky has a volume to it. The clouds with their weighted rain filled bases wrapping up into the air turning into wisps and puffs of shape. On a clear day, looking to the Brooks range everything is just as far away as the first mountain, all others around it blending together. Then the clouds start to roll and suddenly something you thought was 20 miles away now has clouds forming between it and the other mountains that are no longer so close. Dumping sheets of gray purple rain this atmosphere creeps towards you, faster than in most places I have been. Just when you think it is getting close the cloud catches another wind drift from one of the rolling valleys and starts to wander off in another direction.
the benthos 
Love your writing! It’s been many many years since I visited Alaska, but I can still recall the majestic beauty! Glad you got to experience it!
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wonderful sketches…..i can feel the volume of the sky as well as the texture and mass of the landscape….where do you go from here? is this a series or the next step to paint?
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