Riding by the River and Other Natural Thoughts

My bicycle ride along the American River yesterday was peaceful and full of beauty. I refound my knowledge that I don't like to sketch "from life" but would rather study how things look as they are happening. I stood transfixed watching the perfect symmetry of the water cascade down a sidestream with the sun making perfectly symmetrical oval shadows just like a greek dome. I wondered if the first architects took this vision from nature to make those ancient domes with multiple arches down from the top center.

I studied the colors as the water tumbled over them too. The colors of the moss on the stones and the minerals in the stones themselves are intensely vivid - yellows, bright blues, yellowy greens. I sat looking at the greens along the river banks and the golden pale red texture of the river bottom exposed by our lack of rain since early spring, which is normal for this area but which takes more and more water from the river as the months drag on until the fall when the rains will begin again. I marvelled that I was walking on dry earth that only a few months before I had gazed at covered with swiftly flowing river water at least two feet higher than it was now.

On my ride on the shaded trail to and from my destination I studied the trees and how they really look with their leaves and shapes and how the branches reach up beyond their trunks. Squirrels were running all over in preparation for the winter I imagine. On this trail there is a certain kind of squirrel with a gray shawl shape on its shoulders. There are many of them along with the regular gray squirrels and I like noticing them in their distinctive "clothing." They seem to live in the ground and sit cutely so often on their back legs stretching up to see as far as they can into the short distance that is their world.

It was a lovely day though I was tired on the ride back and was glad to be home again to paint, which I did for 3 hours after I had some tea and chocolate, a lovely energizer.