Looking out the studio windows this morning and there is a little snow falling. Not much expected, just a bit more than the dusting that fell overnight. Looking out at my driveway I thought reminded me of my daily walk over here and how much easier it is this time of year than it was for the first ten years in my old rustic studio in the woods.
That studio served me well for a decade but now sits idle, as Mother Nature constantly reclaims it as her own, which has been the subjectof a blog post or two here. For all its positive attributes, when I think of that early studio, I always think first of how cold it was in the winter when the wood pellet stove would not quite keep it comfortably warm, my breath coming out in visible mists at times as I worked at my table. I probably worked for those ten winters there in about an average of 45-50°, a fact I didn’t even realize until I moved into my current studio with an efficient heating system. But I also think of the path to it that I walked several times a day and did battle with each winter snowfall on my little plow. I wrote about that path many years ago and thought I would share that today:
GC Myers- Old Studio 1997-2007
For ten years I walked up the road through the woods to my old studio. It was a logging road from the two or so times the forest had been harvested over several decades and ran along a run-off creek that dries up most summers. It was just wide enough for a vehicle with two visible tracks from the tires of trucks that had climbed the gentle rise over the years and as the years passed, another track formed between them from my own footsteps.
This was the path I walked several times a day, up and down the hill. At first I thought nothing of it. It was simply a path. But over the years I began to notice things about it. I could walk the path in the absolute black of the darkest night without a problem, each step falling in a natural way directly to this path. If I tried to walk off the path it seemed unnatural and required a degree of attention to my stride so I wouldn’t stumble.
I came to realize that my trail was the path of least resistance. It was the path that carried me with the least effort. Each step fell naturally in place, accounting for the slightest change in the topography and had the same effect as water flowing down a creek.
I began to notice that the trails formed by deer and other animals were the same. When I followed them, they would move slightly in one direction or the other, just when your stride wanted to shift naturally and simply from gravity.
It occurred to me that the movement of these paths was much like the sense of rightness I talk about in my painting. They never veer drastically, always in smooth, subtle curves. They would always run along the grade as though were the elevation lines on a topographical map. There was a natural flow and following them required little effort or thought.
Going off the path was a different matter. It took thought, concentration and effort. There were new obstacles to overcome. Branches that crossed the path, blocking your view ahead and slapped the side of your head. Downed trees that had to be climbed over. Roots that rose through the dirt and tripped you.
It was real work.
I guess herein lies the point. If I wanted to go where others had went before me, I could follow their trail. This would be the simple and logical way. But if I wanted to go to a different place, one that was fresher and less visited, I might have to set my own path. It wouldn’t be easy. It would require more effort, more thought and the risk of not finding my way. But if I forged ahead and found my way, there would be a new hard won discovery and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.
I could blather on a little more but I think my little lesson learned from the land (nice alliteration, eh?) has come to an end. We all choose our paths. Some take the easier trail. Some blaze new trails. And some go into the woods and never come out…
I posted a picture on social media a few days ago of a tree that had been recently visited by one of the several large pileated woodpeckers that reside in the woods around my home and studio. Earlier that day I had been coming through the woods to the studio in the early morning, As I passed this tree I stopped because it looked like the tree was casting a shadow in the moonlight which wasn’t unusual except for the fact that there was no moon out. The light around the base of the tree turned out to be a large piles of woodchips created by the woodpecker.
In the first few years we lived here they seemed very evasive and we seldom caught sight of them but as we settled in and they grew accustomed to us, the sightings increased. I think they see us now as part of the forest and we definitely see them as an integral part of the woods. And while they appear to inflict damage on some of the trees of the forest, we know that the trees they work on are already being damaged and destroyed from the inside by boring insects, most often carpenter ants.
Redtree Times 