The North Slope

            My wife Nora and I spent a couple of hours on the north slope of Rattlesnake Bluff recently. It was a fair early spring day, the kind we usually get in early to mid April but which has arrived later this year. It was a long winter, and I am thankful to have spring weather at last.

            The north slope of Rattlesnake Bluff faces toward Lake Pepin and is located on the Minnesota side of the lake. It is covered with mature hardwood forest. At this early season there is obviously no leaf canopy. The sun shines through to the ground. The ground is covered deeply with fallen leaves. There is very little undergrowth, for during the growing season little sunlight gets through the canopy. The slopes here are also scattered abundantly with boulders of many shapes and sizes that have fallen from higher up and come to rest where the steep slopes ease and flatten. I don’t know, but I imagine that most of these rocks were broken loose during the post glacial melting that took place up until as recently (as geological time is reckoned) as ten thousand years ago.

            I brought along a painting I did here two years ago with the thought that I might work on it some more and improve it. It is a painting that has some striking notes from nature in it, along with some others not so well observed, and which is not composed well enough to show. However, I did not find the painting’s location where I expected to find it. While looking for it in the wrong places, I found some things I hadn’t seen before.

            I was attracted by a large boulder planted diagonally on a mound, showing a green moss colored back on its sunny side. I ascended the slope to assess the view. Looking uphill I saw a ravine descending from the upper slopes. A movement across the slope above me caused me to stop; a white tail deer leaping elegantly and seemingly easily across steep terrain strewn with rocks and fallen trees. The forequarters go up over an obstacle and at the top of the arc, just as they begin to descend, the hindquarters are pulled up as if by a string. It covers more ground in two or three bounds than I can in as many minutes of trudging noisily through the litter. I continue up the slope pausing regularly, and the white tail continues uphill a hundred yards and more in front of me, pausing to look back over its shoulder, although not in a panic. It seems to understand I can’t keep up, but it does not want to become any more well acquainted. Humans, after all, extend their reach with guns and bows, albeit not at this time of year. It picks its way out of sight along the east edge of the ravine. There’s a kind of loneliness I don’t know how to describe in the flight of the deer, and in the sight of a dead skunk in a hollow below, its black and white fur disturbed in an unnatural way, its head concealed under litter.

            From the skunk carcass I look up to take in the whole ravine for the first time. It goes a long way up the bluff. There are steep places with exposed rocks with cavernous spaces showing beneath, and tumbled boulders in hollows as the thing descends in irregular steps. At the top two angled slopes appear to meet, and irregular shapes of blue sky show between tree trunks and crisscrossing limbs. The spirit sings a ravine; my heart and imagination rise in response. I picture a hard ascent, possibly snakes, possibly a skid and a fall, bruises, scrapes, possibly blood; certainly exertion and straining. Well, that’s if I were a younger man, or had prepared to do it today. I won’t do such a thing on an impulse anymore. I could still pull it off, but then I might not be able to do anything at all tomorrow.

            There are paintings to find in the ravine, and if I keep coming back I’ll find one someday. I’m not in a hurry to do so. I’m going to let it percolate for a while. Any given site will yield compositions. Study the sites in seasons and under varying light conditions. Come and go with a fresh eye. Learn to distinguish the spirit moving you from an errant impulse. For example, the spirit may be urgent, but it will never rush you. If it rushes you, it’s a spirit of another sort; it urges you to point and shoot, omitting the aim. Patience and determination uncover what is there to be found. Impulses make for misses.

            I walk west for a while, carefully picking my way through the litter. The drifts of leaves conceal fallen limbs, holes, ankle turners and things that cause one to lurch suddenly to one side or the other. At last I find the rock I painted two years ago, although the morning is too advanced by now to work on that painting today. I recall on that past morning I saw that rock standing out in the sunlight almost as soon as I entered the woods. It was like it beckoned me. I don’t see it highlighted like that today. It’s darker with moss than it was then. Almost like it is… not hiding; but turning away. I won’t paint here today. I’ll return another time.

Monolith, oil on panel, 16 x 12
Copyright 2010 Peter Bougie

The photo above is not a professional scan. It is the first painting I did at this location, back in 2010. Weathered, eroded limestone, intensely green moss, irregular patchy sunlight. A hauntingly beautiful place.