Hello Autumn

Rains have come, the river is high and fast and the ducks and herons are staying far away. The cattails are beginning to bend and bunch together. It must be tiring standing up all summer long!

The mallows are drying up. I'll draw the seed pods in January. Right now, I'll content myself with drawing the cheerful, bright yellow Coreopsis flowers along the river bank. I think they are the last hurrah before a final trumpet blast of fall foliage. Then the drenching cold rain and wind can come and strip it all away.

In the winter I will pore over my drawings from warmer and sunnier days and think of next year.

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Students Island, Aug. 2023

Here are a few sketchbook pages from a trip to the Maine woods last week. Students Island is a short paddle on Mooselookmeguntic Lake from the headquarters of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Preserve in Oquossoc, Maine.

We spent three nights roughing it and cooking over a campfire. Wildlife highlights included seeing at close range a family of mergansers chasing down and feeding on silvery minnows flashing in the afternoon sun.  There were loons, cormorants, sandpipers and bald eagles. No moose but the red squirrels serenaded us in camp and as we hiked around the island. —We have our campsite reserved for next year :)

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