We've spent little time in Escalante since we moved. And that is a shame. We still love the area and the people who live there. But, last week was the annual plein air painting competition, so Valerie had an excuse to spend the week painting and taking advantage of Ms. Sharol's hospitality. Her output was excellent, and she had several very nice works to submit to the competition. Unfortunately, the judging seemed to favor the surreal and the, um, weird over the skilled and the beautiful. There were a number of masterful works that received not a mention. Valerie's was one of them, but her friend, Randy Russell, the water-colorist, was surely robbed. It seems strange that a "plein air" competition would reward something other than the strongest representations of that beautiful place, but if that is the trend, I guess we will reconsider next year.In any case, Friday and Saturday were art festival days, and that gave the rest of the family an excuse to spend some time in Ellen's home town. We drove over on Thursday afternoon and camped in Dead Mare Wash. We ran into Dirk Durfey and one of his boys at our camp, and that made it feel like we were back where we belonged. On Friday, we went into town and had time to see the Mortensens, Keefe, Keith Adams, Mrs. Young, and some of the locals, but the afternoon was hot and the festival was slow so we went back to the Upper Valley and spent some time hiking in Henrieville Creek.
On Saturday, I didn't feel much like going into town. It's not that I didn't want to see some of the pards and help with the festival, but it was hot and the art festival seems to draw all the weirdos. I'd had a poor night's sleep and I thought that if I saw one more long-hair with an "all who wander are not lost" bumper sticker, I might deliberately drive the Chev through a V-dub. So, Ellen and I went back down the Blues and poked around in Henrieville Creek for a few hours. She found a coyote scat, full of rabbit fir, and I found one from a skunk, full of russian olive berries, and it was more like what we love to do than to watch the hippies and the yuppies pretend to discover Escalante.
