Big Meadow Fire

I am emerging from my cave, with apologies to all friends and family I was grumpy at this week. Another tall job with a short deadline, and that's all I need to say about that.

On more adventurous topics, now I can start to concentrate on the fact that I'm flying back to California on Sunday for another 10 day adventure in Yosemite! And this time it might start with more of an adventure that I was looking for, because there's a forest fire that's blocking the road that goes up to Tuolumne Meadows, where the trailhead I seek is located. To begin with, it's difficult to get to Tuolumne with public transportation (there's only one road, and the bus schedules don't mesh), and my angelic friends Dan and Mary Lee who live in Modesto were graciously planning on making a family adventure out of driving me up there...and all was going to be perfectly lovely and fun. But the Big Meadow Fire, a prescribed burn that got hugely out of control, is in the way and the road is closed from the west. One can drive in from the east, but it's a really really big circle. Something will work out though, and we can all keep our fingers crossed that the road might open again by Monday which would obviate all my current worries.

This all reminds me of one of my mannequin paintings. A few years ago my Dad scrounged some discarded store mannequins for me, and I used them for landscape canvas. Here's the forest fire.