POBL Retreat 2007

For the past seven years, my illustration critique group (POBL) has been spending a long weekend in September 'retreating' to a cabin up in the mountains. Mt. Rainier makes a dramatic backdrop.


The higher elevations are quite beautiful in September. There are still wildflowers and butterflies...


It is mostly forested. Conifers dripping with moss and lichen. Understory of vanilla leaf, huckleberries, and knickknick -


Mountain ash and ferns. If we're lucky, it will have rained recently and then there are also *mushrooms*! This was NOT one of those years. Which is maybe good - we get much more actual artwork done if we're not out compulsively mushrooming.


Mountains, forests and lakes.... Could it be more atmospheric?

Utah Mountains - Family Reunion...

I am home and catching up from a week on the back side of Mount Timpanogos in Utah. We were attending a reunion at a family camp there...

It was a lovely and remote feeling location - remote enough and high enough that it took a few days to even begin to acclimate to the altitude (I live at nearly sea level! What a difference!). Luckily, the temperatures are cooler that high up, since it has been MUCH warmer in Utah than our typical Seattle summer climate to which I am happily accustomed. There was also a thunder storm every afternoon which helped to drop the temperature about 20 degrees(F) for a few hours following. Hurray for summer rain!

We were surrounded by coniferous forests and mountain streams. Interspersed with lodges, playing fields and sport courts...

We each had a little 'rustic cabin' per family. It was very quiet. And dark at night - despite the full moon that week.

It made a very atmospheric environment in which to read the last volume of Harry Potter. I generally wanted to read a bit longer than the other members of my family wanted to be awake, so much of that book was read in the dark, by flashlight. It felt like my childhood all over again. At least I didn't have to pull the covers over my head to hide the fact that I was still up.

The complex was cross-sectioned by mossy streams and trails....

And if one continued further up the mountain, you were quickly surrounded by endless groves of the graphically black-and-white-barked trunks of quaking aspens.

When I was younger, I found these aspen groves absolutely magical. Especially in the fall when their leaves all turned golden at the same time. I thought it must be how Lothlorien (of Tolkien fame) looked and would make a point of visiting "middle earth" every autumn that I lived in the area.