Agate Beach, Patrick’s Point State Park, CA
Part 2. Bring your paintbrush.
On my previous Blog I showed my painting of Agate Beach on the Northern California coast, a favorite place to go. That area of the world keeps pulling us back, even now after we have moved so far away. What triggers this yearning? What is the pull of the Great Outdoors? Is it living among the amazing wonders of sea and sand, the changing wind, forest trails? Hearing the bark of sea lions on the rocks, Swainson’s thrushes sing along the rim trail? Feeling the constant sea breeze, or watching the follow–the–leader line of brown pelicans that navigate the coastline to watch for schools of fish that might set off the excitement of a feeding frenzy?
The first time you visit, it is all sensation. Of course you have to make camp and be sure everyone will be dry, warm, comfortable at night, and that meal arrangements will work. All through that time you are sensing your surroundings. Sensation is physical—getting used to everything: the coolness, the moist air, the vegetation, finding the trails, discovering the wildlife, respecting the life around you, enjoying all the sights, smells, and sounds as you find your way around.
After a day or two you may notice more. It’s perhaps when the birds wing through camp on their evening vesper flight, or maybe you discover early fog in the trees at dawn, or maybe on a night when the moon lights a path between darkened Douglas fir trees, it feels like there is something more. The absolute beauty of the scene takes the breath away. It may stop you in your tracks. You have to pause and breathe deeply. If you are lucky to be in a quiet camp, you may have such silence and solitude that you can perhaps sense a spreading peace, a feeling of mystery, surely a profound sense of wonder. It just happens. Nothing to explain. Let it happen. For me, it’s all about the wonder, the beauty. I have to stop and let it sink in, let it surround me. I yearn to somehow connect with that. To relax into it. To be part of it.
That’s why I sit on damp sand, and paint as fast as I can before the advance of the oncoming misty cloud cover. Maybe this time I’ll connect for at least one brief moment to the “hidden wholeness” that Thomas Merton talked about. A Trappist Monk and mystic well grounded by personal experience in the outdoors, Merton found the language to share the moment. May we all seek and find the “hidden wholeness” that links us to the Source of creation.
Bring your paintbrush.
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What draws you to the Great Outdoors? Have you ever experienced that yearning?
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Painting Info: watercolor on paper, 18×24 in., 1976.
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**The Road to Beaver Park, Painting, Perception, and Pilgrimage, by J. E. Kirk (Resource Pub/Wipf & Stock Pub.: 2016)
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