Place. A sense of place and the sense of belonging to place offers a deep commitment. The particulars of each place or region vary hugely not only in and of themselves but also in the particulars of each observer. We bring with us our prejudices, loves and longings, our preferences for hues and contrasts, arid and lush vegetation, the flat and the hill, the mountains and the woods, the canyonsor plains.

I live in Lower Piney Creek Valley east of the Big Horn Mountains. When my eyes open each morning I watch the salmon sun smooth the mountain peaks. Long fingered shadows stretch across the hay field, now in autumn, a haze of tans, lavenders, hints of green, brown, red, a palate of subtle intensity.

These colors and the fragility of their time apparent touch me. Sometimes within a few hours the balance and dynamics of contrast vanishes; the light flattens; what thrilled then becomes of vacant import. The sadness of loss is immediately felt.

Here I record the intense sensations of the moment in all moods, paying homage to the land that speaks in a metaphor for life. It is a love affair I have with this terrain; the dry weeds and thistles, the scrub shrubs, mountain mahogany, chokecherry bushes, the box elder trees, the grasses now dried by the sun’s relentless scorching and little rain, hills, coulees, draws, the creeks & reservoirs, the duck, deer, skunks, and even the snakes all play a part in the performance of a day, an hour, a month. They are as I am, part of the landscape.

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