Idle Minutes

I’m going to be posting several paintings of RMNP over the next few days. As I said in the original post, it is a place about wildlife and beauty.

When I go to such places, I look for those things that others overlook and find the beauty in them. It’s quite common to paint or sketch the main attractions. For that reason, I try to record the beauty that is “passed by”. I try to find a story in those images too.

Certainly, the main attractions are “main” for a reason. They simply are known for producing an overwhelming sense of awe. The Grand Canyon, Biltmore Estate, Pikes Peak, The Tetons, Mt. Rushmore, Niagra…so many…never ending it seems. We are fortunate here in America…so very fortunate.

In all of these places, there is also great, even grand beauty in the details and stories that are off the beaten path. One but has to go and look…and risk perhaps, not seeing something beautiful. I’ve very rarely been dissapointed in wandering away from the main.

Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” sums up my angle on the observation of life, places and people.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.