The Seventh Seal

Pic is a pen and inc watercolor I did when first arrived...a control burned meadow. I make postcards out of some paintings, with the thought someday to market postcards, but I doubt if I'll ever get to it...one of the "sometime" things.




CNN is on with the Jena story...


I'm still mulling yesterdays start at a post...I want to get at the 19th Century authors tone...from Muir to Melville, Poe to Emerson, Whitman to Longfellow, and a lot of others I'm not that familiar with...Mark Twain too. I think all of them were over come by America's natural beauty and landscape, and the discoveries of Darwin and the geologists, something of what goes on with the Hudsen Valley painters...this might take a bit of thinking!


One pioneer posed the question, Was the discovery of Yosemite the opening of the Seventh Seal?...when I find that quote's source I'll add it...



I found an account of Whitney's journey through the valley and surroundings, which I want to work with too, and his quarrel about the Glaciers with Muir.

quote from early newspaper account of Huthchings' visit...
San Francisco Daily California Chronicle, August 18, 1855

From Mr. Hunt’s store, we kept an east-of-north course, up the divide between the Fresno and Chowchillah valleys; thence descending towards the South Fork of the Merced river, and winding around a very rocky point, we climbed nearly to the ridge of the Middle or main fork of the Merced, and descending towards the Yo-Semity valley, we came upon a high point, clear of trees, from whence we had our first view of this singular and romantic valley; and, as the scene opened in full view before us, we were almost speechless with wondering admiration at its wild and sublime grandeur. “What!” exclaimed one at length, “have we come to the end of all things?” “Can this be the opening of the Seventh Seal?” cries another.

end quote

Sublime, that's the word, the 19th century pursued the Sublime in Nature...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 21, 2007