September 22nd was a morning full of new-to-me discoveries in nature. That was more than a month ago; a time when temperatures were still in the upper 80’s and flowers in full bloom.
But plenty of hints of what was to come ….. the inevitable change in seasons ….. existed. There were seeds of spring and summer bloomers blowing in the wind; squirrels stockpiling pine nuts from recently shed cones; darkling beetles mating and laying eggs in the ground to hatch next year’s population; caterpillars feasting on energy-packed flower petals needed to spin their cocoons; the chortling chatter of sandhill cranes high overhead migrating to Bosque del Apache for the winter.
Still it is hard to believe that today, a little more than a month later, everything has turned brown, and our first hard frost is forecasted for tomorrow morning!
In an effort to cling to a not-so-long ago summer, this small selection of the botanical and entomological happenings on the cusp of Fall, is now a part of my nature journal. Enjoy!
Roy had a doctor’s appointment one morning in late September, at an office right off busy I-25, near the ABQ airport. Instead of hanging out in the sterile waiting room, Luna and I spent our time exploring the areas surrounding the office, just to see if there was anything worth observing.
For 2 miles, we wandered about the not quite urban/suburban/industrial/residential neighborhood ….. me looking for a sketchbook entry; Luna sniffing out messages left just for her by visiting dogs, squirrels, or bunnies.
Interesting discoveries seemed lacking, until Luna caught whiff of something irresistible. Tugging hard on her end of the leash, she urged me to run with her as she zeroed in on the source of the smell.
By a parking lot light, on the pavement next to a cement curb was an explosion of feathers, but Luna kept leading me on to something better. There! Lying on the curb was a still wet and bloody bird foot barely connected to what remained of the thigh. All clues pointed to the very recent drama, where a raptor (possibly a red-tailed hawk) had swooped in and nabbed the hapless victim (a feral pigeon), killed and then ate his prey from the platform atop the parking lot light. The inedible remains fell to the ground as a group of 2 dozen “relieved-it-wasn’t-me” pigeon friends looked on.
Quickly solving most of this puzzle in the time it took to pry the pigeon foot from Luna’s mouth, gave me the idea of sketching not only the foot, but to look for other unlikely nature discoveries in this urban/suburban/industrial/residential neighborhood setting.
Mentally armed with a keener power of observation and purpose, we retraced our earlier route with excitement! Now it was obvious an abundance of interesting and beautiful plants were growing from every sidewalk crack and along crumbled pavement edges throughout the ‘hood. How had I missed seeing these beauties?
And that’s how my idea for this 2-page layout was born, along with a reminder that finding bits of nature doesn’t have to occur at a botanical garden, wildlife preserve or national park. Nature is everywhere. If you just slow down and really look, even in the most unlikely places like sidewalk cracks, there’s always something to discover. So Remember to Explore the Cracks too and let me know what you find!
Photo display correction has been made in this second post, which has the identical in text as the first post presented earlier in the morning, please disregard the first post and apologies for any confusion. Barb
September 23 – October 7, 2024 For the last 7 years, I’ve participated in the annual, 2-week long sketching/drawing, painting and mixed media event, Sketchbook Revival, founded and hosted by a talented sketchbook artist, Karen Abend. Every year, Karen brings together a cast of creative artists for a mega on-line teaching marathon. Each day, 2 1-hour recorded sessions are available to hundreds of participants from around the world, providing an opportunity to interactively learn a skill or technique designed to begin or expand on a regular sketchbook practice. These sessions may include book binding, mark-making, collage, creating imaginary characters, urban sketching, composition, landscapes, flowers, mammals and bird painting, people or pet portrait drawing, nature journaling, Zentangle, map making, story telling, textiles, and on and on! Techniques shared by instructors involve a wide-variety materials, like watercolor, gouache, acrylic, markers, pencil and pen, colored pencil, and many forms of mixed-media.
The whole fun event is designed to stretch your creative comfort zone by experimenting with art supplies and new approaches to art making, and encourages play. And as incredible as it sounds, all you need to participate is your time and whatever materials you have on hand. Otherwise, it’s totally free! Wowza!
Not every session needs to be done (and this year there were 30 sessions in 15 days); I usually find time to complete about half of them. But this year I did all but one session (and may even complete the one skipped). From the very diverse cast of artists/instructors, I was able to learn new tips, techniques, approaches, and was invites to try new art supplies that would be useful in my regular sketchbooking and nature journaling practice.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy my 2024 Sketchbook Revival “play!” Not all are great or even good (a few are downright awful!) but it was so much fun! Maybe something from my collection will have you laughing, or maybe even entice you to give Sketchbook Revival 2025 a whirl!
That’s all for Sketchbook Revival 2024. Let me know what you think!
September 23 – October 7, 2024 For the last 7 years, I’ve participated in the annual, 2-week long sketching/drawing, painting and mixed media event, Sketchbook Revival, founded and hosted by a talented sketchbook artist, Karen Abend. Every year, Karen brings together a cast of creative artists for a mega on-line teaching marathon. Each day, 2 1-hour recorded sessions are available to hundreds of participants from around the world, providing an opportunity to interactively learn a skill or technique designed to begin or expand on a regular sketchbook practice. These sessions may include book binding, mark-making, collage, creating imaginary characters, urban sketching, composition, landscapes, flowers, mammals and bird painting, people or pet portrait drawing, nature journaling, Zentangle, map making, story telling, textiles, and on and on! Techniques shared by instructors involve a wide-variety materials, like watercolor, gouache, acrylic, markers, pencil and pen, colored pencil, and many forms of mixed-media.
The whole fun event is designed to stretch your creative comfort zone by experimenting with art supplies and new approaches to art making, and encourages play. And as incredible as it sounds, all you need to participate is your time and whatever materials you have on hand. Otherwise, it’s totally free! Wowza!
Not every session needs to be done (and this year there were 30 sessions in 15 days); I usually find time to complete about half of them. But this year I did all but one session (and may even complete the one skipped). From the very diverse cast of artists/instructors, I was able to learn new tips, techniques, approaches, and was invites to try new art supplies that would be useful in my regular sketchbooking and nature journaling practice.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy my 2024 Sketchbook Revival “play!” Not all are great or even good (a few are downright awful!) but it was so much fun! Maybe something from my collection will have you laughing, or maybe even entice you to give Sketchbook Revival 2025 a whirl!
That’s all for Sketchbook Revival 2024. Let me know what you think!
Sometimes short adventures become the most memorable.
After pouring over our NM map, looking for new places to camp, based on a recommendation from good friends we decided to visit Charette Lakes. Located within the grasslands of NE New Mexico, this would be our kind of country. About time to check out the Shortgrass Prairie.
Planning to be gone 4-5 days, and as long as we were headed to Charette, why not also visit Clayton Lake State Park and Kiowa National Grasslands! The weather certainly looked good for a week, allowing easy access on backcountry 2-track dirt roads.
Felix at home just west of Lower Charette Lake
Charette Lakes
Arriving at Charette Lakes mid-day allowed plenty of time to set up camp with a view of the Lower (larger) lake, before heading off, on foot, to wander these lush grasslands. It seemed like Spring ….. so many wildflowers in bloom! Late afternoon saw a mass exodus of fisherpeople, and by 5:30 pm we pretty much had the entire area to ourselves! Hiking about some more, we encountered a small group of pronghorn, gazed skyward as hungry migratory ducks and Canada geese flew in to Upper Charette Lake, observed a number of beautiful kestrels, and enjoyed the antics of a coot flotilla on the lower lake.
The wind blew, the rains poured, but we managed several hikes across the short grass prairie surrounding Charette Lakes
By 6:00 pm we got caught in a downpour! Wait! This wasn’t supposed to happen! But the rain and gusty winds persisted until morning, as heavy gray clouds continued to roll by.
We found most of the migratory birds on and feeding at Upper Charette Lake. Mostly marshy and shallow, this small lake had more food for hungry birds than the larger and deeper Lower Charette a lake.
After rechecking the weather forecast, it seemed like this storm was headed north, well out of the area we planned to visit next ….. Clayton Lake State Park, in the extreme NE corner of NM, bordering TX.
We shook out our rain gear, toweled off the dog, packed up Felix and headed out, dropping down the basalt escarpment we ascended yesterday, thankful this section of steep decline was paved.
Clayton Lake State Park
Excited to see more of the grasslands and the famous Dinosaur Trackways, a historic landmark site managed by the State Park, we approached from Raton, NM, very close to the Colorado border. Traveling about 50+/- miles SE (leaving the rain behind), the surrounding shortgrass prairie was dotted with a number of resting volcanoes, including Capulin (managed by the National Park Service).
Our route from Charette Lakes to Clayton Lake State Park and Dinosaur Trackways passed through more shortgrass prairie habitat adjoining a cluster of Forest Service-managed grasslands (Kiowa in NM; Rita Blanca in TX; Cimarron in KS; Comanche in CO), remnants of the vast “sea” of grasslands that used to be.
Arriving at Clayton Lake SP about noon, we quickly parked Felix, then walked the 1/4 mile to the Dino Trackways! Very, very cool. It’s hard to imagine that 100 million years ago this area of NM/TX was a beach along the western side of a great inland sea! Paleontologists believe the dinosaur tracks were made by both plant and meat eaters that migrated north and south along this sandy beach. The tracks showed the plant eaters likely moved about in herds as they foraged for food. There were also foot long tube worm tunnels and some pretty interesting mud cracks preserved in today’s hard sandstone.
At Clayton Lake State Park we learned about the 100 million years old dinosaur tracks uncovered during the construction of the Clayton Lake emergency spillway, found some wind-stunted and deformed plants lining the the earthen dam, discovered a new grasshopper and beetle, and enjoyed watching terns perform aerobatic stunts over the lake.
Dinner time and it began raining (what!), varying from drizzle to deluge, we started to have second thoughts about tomorrow’s access into Mills Canyon on the Kiowa National Grasslands. But the radar showed this area wasn’t getting rain, and we felt it was worth a try (as long as we were so close!).
One of many cows that graze the grasslands on allotments that often span private, State and Federal lands.
Clayton Lake to Mills Canyon (Kiowa NG)
Early morning sunrise was gorgeous, then from who-knows-where, storm clouds rumbled in, and kept coming nearly the entire way to the Kiowa. But nearing our arrival, the clouds cleared out and things looked promising; so much so that we agreed to try our luck.
Long abandoned and “melting” into the soil, the shortgrass prairie saw its share of homesteaders back in the middle to late 1800s.
The Grasslands boundary was six miles off the pavement, on dirt and gravel ranch roads. Once on the Grasslands 2-track access to the campground our luck nearly ran out. Down down down the road went, saturated with the last several days of pouring rain. But we didn’t really know this, and began the descent. It wasn’t 200 slippery yards later, Roy’s executive decision to reverse course probably saved us being stranded somewhere for days! As he began backing Felix up the sloppy slick road, conditions somehow felt worse. Felix had a mind of his own and began weaving all over the place, half the time getting stuck in the ruts we made during our descent.
What looks like a lonely landscape is actually lush and thriving grasslands thanks, in part, to an abundance of rain this year. And Wow! Did it ever rain!
Finally after 30 minutes of careful maneuvering, Roy managed to coax the RV back to the Grasslands boundary. Our relief to be back on somewhat solid ground overshadowed our disappointment in not being able to visit this dramatic canyon area. But we were safe even though both the truck and Felix were coated above the axles with 6-8 inches of mucky sticky clay.
So, with this area and any other likely destinations soaking wet, and only being 3 hours from home, we agreed to end this crazy camping trip, promising ourselves to return another day. Turns out the decision was wise, as we drove through one downpour after another on the way home! (The rain was so hard at times, visibility was zip! But the good news was it rained so hard that most of that mucky sticky clay got washed away.)
The End…..
And that was the ending to a short, yet memorable trip. Of course by the time we got home, the clouds had cleared totally, and we haven’t had a drop of rain since! Go figure!
A pronghorn wary of our presence, passing with a herd between Upper and Lower Charette Lakes.
World Smile Day is an annual celebration of the simple yet powerful act of smiling and spreading joy to others. It was created by commercial artist Harvey Ball in 1999 to honor the iconic smiley face he created in 1963. On this day, people are encouraged to perform acts of kindness and make others smile, both in person and through social media. World Smile Day is celebrated on the first Friday in October.
a curious nature 