We ended up spending winters in the Sedona area for ten years. I modelled my teaching program there on my Campobello program, focusing on just a few students at a time, usually no more than four, and making it a morning program, which left students time to explore with family and friends or to paint on their own in the afternoons. Again, as with Campobello, I accrued a wealth of knowledge about the area and enjoyed sharing my "secret spots" with my students. I liked Sedona so much I even wrote a small guide: Paint Sedona!: A Plein Air Painter's Field Guide to Sedona, Arizona.
Sedona is "Red Rock Country." Settled over a hundred years ago along Oak Creek, at the bottom of Oak Creek Canyon, it presents beautiful vistas of the underlying geology, exposed by wind and water. Thunder Mountain, Courthouse Butte, Bell Rock, Snoopy Rock—if you've ever been to Sedona, these names will immediately conjure up a visual of a skyline of curious shapes that glow with a powerful incandescence at sunset. But even better, for the hiker or painter, there are many trails that take you right into this landscape. We have many favorites that we hiked repeatedly, but while we were there, we continued to discover new hikes, new vistas.
Sedona is a beautiful place, but it is being "loved to death," as the saying goes. Squeezed into a corner by national forest and the topology of the local landscape, it has three congested roads in and out, each of them scenic. I thought about describing the travel issues here but decided to keep things light and cheery; just know that Sedona has traffic. I had a student from Los Angeles come and ask, "What traffic?" but for a person who loves rural life, believe me, it has traffic. But more than that, increasingly the surrounding forest is being over-used and commercialized by jeep and bus tours and other ventures.
As much as we loved the Sedona landscape, after renting a couple of winters, we began looking for to buy that would be a little quieter. We soon discovered interesting towns to the south: Page Springs, home of many vineyards and wineries; Cottonwood, a "service town" that had a not-so-well-known Old Town section; Clarkdale, once a flourishing copper mine town; Jerome, a ghost town perched on a steep hillside and which was recently revived by an art culture moving in; and our favorite, Cornville, which, despite its name, doesn't have a single cornfield and was once the home of Senator John McCain. We finally chose Cornville.
Our community in Cornville sat at the confluence of Oak and Spring Creeks where, because of spring floods, much of the flood zone was left natural, with huge cottonwood trees, cobbly sandbars and cattails. Two trails followed the creeks, and each of them ultimately took you out of the community and into national forest, where you could hike for a very long time before running into another person. On our hikes along the creeks, we saw ducks and flycatchers, herons and bald eagles, turtles and river otters. I especially loved the smell of the young cottonwoods in the fall as the leaves turned yellow; it was a wild scent that whispered of secrets yet to be found on our hikes. As part of my workshop week, even though I continued to teach in Sedona, I always included a day in our community to share something different and equally beautiful.
During this time, I began to invite master artists to teach workshops for me, both in Maine and in Arizona. Both Albert Handell and Doug Dawson, with whom we became good friends, have taught mentoring workshops in Sedona and Lubec. Although it took a lot of work to market and coordinate, for me each week was like a vacation; I didn't have to teach. Also enlightening was to see my landscape through the eyes of these excellent painters. One of my favorite comments was from Doug, who said, "If I see the obvious, I turn around 180 degrees and paint something else." He made this in the context of a visit to a lighthouse with the students, and I think they were all surprised that he painted an exquisite vignette of a clump of trees rather than the obvious.
I should also mention that I began to take road trips with another painter. M.L. Coleman lived in town, had a Lazydays RV, and liked to go out on excursions to paint. He invited me along, and we began to make it an annual date with at least one trip. We took trips to Grand Canyon, both the North and South Rims; the Arizona Strip and Vermilion Cliffs; and Canyon de Chelly. But we also just explored the local scenery around Sedona. Going out "boondocking"—camping without hookups to water or electricity—in your own neighborhood is much different than just driving off to paint for a couple of hours. You get to see the landscape sunrise to sundown, moonrise to moonset, and to experience it at its fullest. There's nothing quite like hearing the coyotes a few feet away on the other side of paper-thin metal siding at 2 a.m.
Then Trina discovered a property for sale in Ramah, New Mexico—just a few miles from where we first came to New Mexico to work as caretakers on a small ranch, 20 years ago.
We'd always wanted to return to that part of New Mexico. Fond memories drew us back, but there were other reasons, too. The landscape is unlike anywhere else, what with the lava fields, cinder cones, sandstone mesas and granite hills. But it's also an ancient place where many cultures lived and traveled: the prehistoric Chacoan indigenous cultures, the Spanish explorers and their descendents, today's Zuni and Navajo tribes, and the Anglo ranchers. In fact, the highway that goes through the area is nicknamed the "Ancient Way." You can visit Inscription Rock and see carved into the sandstone petroglyphs made by the prehistoric indigenous cultures; phrases scratched in the rock by the Spaniard explorers; and the names, incised with a 19th century flourish worthy of a stone engraver, of U.S. Army members who camped under the 200-foot-tall cliffs. After climbing to the top of Inscription Rock and casting your eye over the ponderosa-clad hills and chamisa-studded plains, you can easily imagine these travelers off in the distance, slowly approaching the perennial pool at the cliff's base on foot, on horseback, in covered wagon.
When a house in that area came up for auction while we were in Sedona one winter, we bid—and won. Although Sedona had been good to us, we knew we could always go back to teach and hike. We had many friends there. Plus, it wasn't like we would be leaving the Southwest. Everywhere I wanted to paint would still be just a few hours' drive away: Santa Fe, three hours; Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch, four hours, with Grand Canyon just a little farther off; Arches and Canyonlands, five hours; and Zion National Park, six hours. Even Sedona would be only four hours away.
So, just before our annual spring trip east to Campobello, we moved. But it wasn't until we returned to the west in the fall that we were able to unpack much. And first, we had to get basic systems running. Although we'd been told the house, which had been empty for two years, had been winterized, we discovered major leaks when we turned on the water. Also, anything with an igniter—furnace, ventless heater, pellet stove—needed to have the igniters replaced, as they were all broken. We had electrical work to do, too, not to mention fixing windows and doors and getting things sealed up for winter. With the house perched at 7000 feet, we knew we could expect winter, and had to be ready for it. (Winters were still much sunnier here than in New England, but we did get snow and below-zero temperatures.)
That winter, we set up house and studio. I furnished a grand studio. It had been the home's second-floor master suite, with a porch accessed by a pair of french doors, a long view of the valley, and a large bathroom and dressing area. Because of the leaks, we decided to de-plumb the bathroom (the house had three others) and convert it into a comfortable reading area. A wall that was partially glass block provided a sunny southern exposure. The dressing area became storage space for art materials. The suite was large enough that I could set up two studio easels as well as an office. Everything was far enough removed from the rest of the house that I could play music while I worked without disturbing anyone.
The immediate landscape offered much in the way of walks. From the house, I could walk up the ridge behind us—the house sat near the bottom of a long cuesta—to get views to the east of the dormant volcanoes that make up the Chain of Craters and, to the southwest, the mesa tops of Zuni. If I hiked a little to the west on the ridge through the ponderosa pines, I could overlook the lake and the candy-striped cliffs that tower over it. Also, from the house, I could scramble down the ridge, and into a box canyon that seemed a very secret place. From there, trails led here and there, over the rocks, up the canyons and, rumor has it, to even a natural bridge. And, if I wanted to drive, in just a few miles I can get to Inscription Rock, El Calderon (an extinct and very accessible volcano), and the ancient Zuni-Acoma Trail, which wanders tantalizingly across the lava fields of El Malpais. I say "tantalizing," because the trail is sometimes hard to follow across the knife-sharp lava beds, even with cairns.
And this is where we are today.
Some winters are snowier than others. But between snows, most times we enjoy abundant sunshine and temperatures near 50 degrees. I can usually get out to paint. Even at 35 degrees, the strong New Mexican sunshine can feel almost tropical, even when you are surrounded by snow. Winter is also a perfect time for turning inward and working on writing projects. But fall and spring are delightful, too; I enjoy the fall color change of the cottonwoods and willows to dull orange and red, and in the spring, I eagerly anticipate the return of cliff swallows by the lake.
By the way, we did end up selling the house on Campobello Island. But we still return each summer for a few months and stay with family.
So here I am. While writing these essays, I've tried to puzzle out the origin of my love of landscape and how I became a painter. I think I've discovered a few things. You can love the landscape—meaning you can have a love of landscapes in general—and you can also love a landscape, meaning you can love a particular place. Some of these places we return to, again and again, but others we enjoy only once in person. The latter, however, we can revisit in our minds, and if we have painted them and studied them, the memory is all the more vivid.
Truly enjoyed this series Michael. It was inspiring to read about your journey as an artist, a writer, and a human in the landscape. Thank you for sharing it.
And now I must sleep and welcome the expanded horizons that your story calls forth. With so much gratitude for all of it.