Painting in the Big Bend entertains me. This is a land of surprises where being one with nature is the only given. I can go to the same location day after day and never see the same place twice. I can go to the same place twice and never see the scene I’d intended painting.

And that keeps painting this vast region fun for me.

Art should be fun for the artist. Too much work goes into creating art for it not to be fun. The behind-the scenes tasks of a professional artist can be daunting. Take deadlines.

Alpine’s annual Artwalk and Gallery Night happens the weekend before Thanksgiving.  It’s sort of dress-up time for us artists, when we hang new work in time for the holidays. I’m a resident artist at Kiowa Gallery, so Artwalk is my deadline for framing and hanging my next year’s collection. I’m allotted x-amount of wall space.  Gallery owner Keri Artzt and I confer as to what sizes, shapes and price ranges I'll fill that space with. This year, at the last minute, the gallery awarded me a significant chunk of extra wall turf. Keri wanted a four foot long pastel, and she wanted it to represent one of my favorite subjects, the Sierra del Carmens across the Rio Grande from Big Bend National Park. At sunset, she suggested, and I do not take my gallery owners’ suggestions lightly.

I recognized this as one of life’s mixed blessings, the sort that makes me clandestinely consume chocolate.  If I had the market, I’d regularly paint large canvases, but in this case, there literally wasn’t time to travel, paint and frame. So, I said “yes”.

We moved the RV to Marathon, intent on taking a couple of day trips into the National Park.  A wind storm swept through West Texas. We couldn’t sleep, the RV was rocking so. We rose before dawn and drove to Panther Junction, about 80 miles. Disappointed, we turned back after lunch. Paintings of dust storms and blowing cactus just don’t sell. The next day proved much the same. And the next.

The Border Patrol guys were getting to know us as the crazy folks who drove in and out of the Park with a parrot, a dog and a camera. (Painting on location wasn’t even an option.) I decided to try for a sunrise location, someplace nearby. We set the alarm for pre-dawn-thirty. Filled the Thermos. Drove twenty miles. Waited for the sun to rise and strike the Los Caballos formation. (This trip ultimately produced another large painting, but not until I got rained on. Snow and ice followed, keeping us parked in Marathon.) We ate buffalo burgers at the Gage Hotel another night. We’d been in Marathon a week and I still didn’t have a painting subject.

On Halloween, the last morning we could possibly stay gone and still have a life to go back to, we traveled once more into Big Bend. We finally got to hike, and we took lots of pictures, but nothing that said “Paint me Large”. We researched locations from which we could see the sunset color the del Carmens, then after much hiking and much discussion, we returned to our chosen spot.

We hiked up the rise about 4:30 pm.  Sat in the burning sun on a fossil bed amid cholla and ocotillo and lechiguilla and studied the view I wanted to paint.  It was clear and sunny, and the hill behind us promised to produce an interesting mass of shadow right at sunset. I sat, waiting.  Watching.

Jim kicked up a melon-sized rock. He analyzed it, then brought it to me. It was a fossilized egg, the shell clearly delineated.  The amber-colored head, neck, body and legs curled within. Striations on the outside of the “shell” seemed to indicate the beak’s attempts to break out. Before what? What happened to keep the prehistoric avian from hatching, walking this rise, flying over the del Carmens?  We felt connected to the stony creature.  Awed to experience such sacredness of nature.  It is a huge region, with hundreds of views of the del Carmens. We’d debated on where to set up. What had made us choose this very difficult to reach spot?

Jim took the fossil back and carefully replaced just as he’d found it, gently sinking it back into the nest of dusty ground that for eons had been its grave and almost, its birthplace.

The shadows on the del Carmens deepened, but the sun was still high. We were hot and thirsty, but didn’t want to hike back down to the truck for water. Jim started politely whining about needing a beer and a buffalo burger. I was tempted. How foolish to spend hours sitting in one spot, waiting on a five-minute window that might or might not happen?

Having chosen this spot, I was reluctant to move at all now. I played with pebbles around my knees. When I looked up, the full moon was rising over Pico. A gift to an artist. Waiting became instantly easier.

Almost three hours after we’d hiked up the mountainside, the hill behind us dramatically blocked the sun and cast a giant shadow that melted the red volcanic rocks into purples and blues. The moon hesitated in its arc across the deepening blue sky, and the del Carmens vibrated with lights and darks.

It was almost two hours back to Marathon. The animals had been shut up in the RV all day. We were tired and hungry and hoping the bar at the Gage was still serving burgers. We passed less than an handful of cars all the way back. Five minutes out of Marathon, our headlights illuminated a deer lying in the opposite lane of traffic. Her head was up, alertly looking around, but her mangled legs were twisted awkwardly beneath her body. She calmly facing death. Wondering why, or maybe knowing why.  She seemed so...aware.

We talked about stopping and shooting her.

We didn’t. And I thought about her all night.

For us, the things we didn’t do that busy day proved the most significant. We didn’t irreverently kick the fossilized chick aside. We marveled. We didn’t settle for merely spectacular scenery, and we didn't succumb to impatience so we didn’t miss moonrise.  We didn’t try to “fix” nature by putting the doe down.

Sunset. Timelessness. Life. Death. Moonrise.