Monday’s become my officially unofficial day of unstructured time in the Park. I’m not sure how often you have one of these days but it seems that mine started out early in the morning, and headed in the wrong direction. By the time the world began waking up around me I was looking for reasons to be grumpy… the only surefire cure was to disappear into the Park do whatever my heart desired. So, today was sketching out a Calcite Springs (Mondays are also the day Little George is in daycare). I didn’t set out to go anywhere particular but I just started heading east and made up my mind to stop wherever it seemed ‘right’. There was a black bear near Geode Creek and a pile of cars from tourists with cameras - this was not the experience I was after today. After weaving through the traffic and moving bodies it seemed right to stop at the Calcite Springs overlook. I spent the next several hours getting sunburn on the back of my neck, talking to visitors and making pencil studies of the canyon, the bluffs and various rapids surrounding rocks in the Yellowstone River. So cathartic was this day without an agenda, that I didn’t even mind when three of my best drawings fell out of the notebook and caught by the blustery winds, sailed off over a 500 foot cliff into the canyon… c’est la vie, I got what I came for - and it wasn’t something that couldn’t be put on paper.

Some pencil studies in the calcite Springs area including Bumpus butte, a unique Douglas for tree and some rapids in the Yellowstone River.

Some pencil studies that did make it onto paper from Calcite Springs area including Bumpus Butte, a unique Douglas fir tree and some rapids in the Yellowstone River.