Rhapsodies

Well my last full day in Maine was a bit of a comedy of errors. I went out to paint and chose a nice bit of cove the looked nice. It also had the benefit of having a dry place to sit. So I started to do the preliminary sketch and it went well until I reached for my paints only to discover that I’d left them at the house.

To move quicker I left my backpack there, after all it’s the middle of the woods, right? When I got back I met up with Finnegan a Golden Retriever I’d recovered a couple of times before, and his owner. Immediately I was asked if that had been my bag she had seen. While I knew she didn’t take it I was feeling chronically stupid for a second. (Not to mention Finnegan had a level of friendliness that could traumatize small children.)

The painting came out great. But as I was packing up I realized I couldn’t find my phone. Pulling on my headphones I pulled up what looked an iPhone made entirely of mud. It had fallen into the marsh and by the look of it had had a little time to marinate. At first I hoped the mess was just cosmetic but as I cleaned off the mud the screen began to streak. I shut it down and went back to clean it.

Unfortunately the streaking continued. Not to mention the battery was completely dead. I looked up a few forums to see if there were any ways to dry it but ultimately I had no choice but to give it time to dry and hope for the best.

I went out again to take more pictures and maybe do another painting. After taking a lot of pictures of an area called the Rock Glen, a very pretty stream with lots of moss covered borders, I filled up my camera’s data chip. While this was something I was hoping for it gave off a little bit of a “when it rains it pours” vibe, leaving me feeling a little bit burnt out and not feeling like painting.

My Mom and I spent the rest of the afternoon on another nature trail, which had a lot of stuff that I wish I had room in my camera to take. Including some amazing ferns. We spent an hour painting a view of the trail’s coastline.

We went home and I spent the rest of the evening packing and making sure everything was ready for the trip back west tomorrow.