Day 5. I’ve made some progress on the bark beetle drawing, but avoided the background. The sudden bolt of insight to tell me what to do with it sadly has not occurred.

Routine

The routine is wake up around 6 AM, eat breakfast and start painting until I get hungry around noon. That’s when it starts to warm up and I finally venture outside. I hit lunch hour for some of the HJA staff so I had some much appreciated company. Mark came to our picnic table with his strawberry hazelnut spread sandwich. These people are awesome. After lunch it’s time to explore the forest.

I returned to the same spot on Lookout Creek that I had been going to for the past 2 days. There was one more clump of bark beetle galleries that I wanted to photograph, but to get to them I had to wade in the creek. I wasn’t prepared for that yesterday. Today I donned my Keens and quick drying shorts to venture mid thigh into the water. The pain from the cold water didn’t last too long, but I knew I wouldn’t last too long either before getting too cold. It was a short, but sweet photo session.