Fall on the Mesa

Well into autumn in Chinle with some warm sunny days and cold evenings and mornings with occasional wind storms that blow red dust across the land scape and leave me with grit in my teeth and eyes.   Dark comes early but the rose and indigo sunsets that fill the sky are worth the early nightfall.

Creation stories are told only in the winter but with snow on distant mountains it is time.  I went to a string story telling in the hospital hogan.  With a fire in the stove it was warm and toasty.  My "many stars" sting design still needs work.  Can't quite make my fingers work or remember the finger moves but I can see the appeal cosy and relaxing.

Autumn has also found me on the Hopi Mesa buying Kchina dolls, Standin' on the Corner in Winslow Arizona walking in the Little Painted Desert at sunset and watching a bull roping.

The Sky is my Ocean

The sky is my ocean, the mesa my beach...... So the high dessert is becoming home.

But part of me will always be a beach person.  See what the blog Drawrite has to say about A BEACH TAIL:

Ages 3-6  Drawrite blog

I pick books the way most children would – by looking at the cover. Children are extremely perceptive. They notice, observe and pick up faster than most adults. I think books done for them have to be especially mindful and thoughtful.

One such book is ‘A Beach Tail’. It is about a little boy, Greg, who draws a tailless lion on a beach and calls it Sandy. With specific instructions from his dad to not go in the water and to not leave Sandy, he draws a tail. He draws and he draws. He circles a jellyfish and passes a sand castle; he zigzags around a horse shoe crab and around a tiny ghost crab; he writes his name and realizes that he has gone too far. Yet, he didn’t go in the water and he didn’t leave Sandy.

Written by Karen Lynn Williams and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, the spirit of the story is wonderful and the pictures, stellar. This is probably one of the best examples of pastels work I have ever seen!

 AND I WOULD ADD, I LOVE THE WAY FLOYD HAS CAPTURED THE FEEL OF THE BEACH.  SAND EVERYWHERE.  Oh yes the Beach.  Here in Chinle, red dust dances in little dervishes across the landscape.