I was up early today to have time to convert my slide show for tonight's program into the right file format before I went to listen to a ranger talk over by Sheep Lakes. I did stop to go to the ranger talk, but unfortunately it took the entire rest of the day to get the file to work properly. There was a mischievous little leprechaun in my laptop that made images randomly and unpredictably disappear from the slide show each time I saved it or tried to convert it. With 100 large images, the process to fix and re-save took ages each time, and it ate up my entire day. In the end, I got it to work with just enough time to run home, have a quick dinner, and get packed up for my program. Perhaps the most challenging thing here so far is the lack of having power and internet in the same location. I have power in the cabin, but no internet. Internet at the VC if I sit in my car, but no power. Ended up spending four hours at the Estes Park library to make it happen today, and the upside is that the library had great views of the thunderstorm that rolled over. Now, don't get me wrong here, I enjoy unplugging and would not feel the need to connect, except that I obligated myself to keeping this daily blog, and it's bad enough that I have to post the next day.
I think my program went well enough. Many people gave very kind feedback and we had a good Q&A session. It was so difficult to decide what to cover with only 40 minutes, there are just so many topics I could talk about. In the end I opted to give an inside look at the South Unit of Badlands National Park. I had been asked by Rocky Mtn staff to talk about my experiences at Badlands, and with more than 25 weeks spend there as artist-in-residence, there is a plethora of material I can share. My website has the virtual badlands exhibit, with stories and park history, so I felt that if anyone really wanted to know about that, it's already out there. But what visitors can't get is a look inside of Palmer Creek or deep into the Stronghold. So that's where I went.
One thing I do wish I had time to discuss is the idea of why make art and/or why paint vs. photograph. Those are general questions, and then for me personally, there's also why paint in a traditionally realistic style. There's no right answer, and it's something that I have to work through every day in an attempt to figure out my answer. We have such a saturation of images in our culture, it's sometimes difficult to feel that there's any chance that something I do could have any real impact or importance. Yet the desire is there in abundance to do something or find something that makes things better. This is all very vague, but that's the motivation behind my work. I feel like there's something there that I have to give, or at least have to get out, and I just hope that someday I find the means to make what I do have some form of positive impact on the world. I feel the possibility, don't yet know the path. Being involved in the NPS and the residency programs at the parks feels right. I was never one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grow up, I had lots of ideas, and too many things that I loved and felt passion for. My cousin, who is like a sister, recently reminded me what I (apparently – I'd forgotten) used to say as a kid that I wanted when I grew up: to wear a uniform/suit and work outside. I realize now that this screams park ranger! But I knew nothing of that as a viable career possibility until recently, and now I have something I love even more: painting. I would not be happy shifting painting to hobby status in order to maintain a career as a ranger, but it would be glorious to be a park ranger as a hobby. I suppose that's almost what I'm doing when I'm AiR, only with much less visitor interaction and interpretive output. Perhaps I'll be a seasonal ranger one of these years. And I suppose my involvement with the Tubbs Hill Foundation at home relates as well.
Alright, that's sufficient pontification for an evening. I'm always questioning what I'm doing and why, and I never do seem to get my head around it and sit still with it. Perhaps that's a side effect of loving everything and wanting to do some of all of it.
