Florid, pockmarked rocks, weathered remnants of the volcanic activity that mothered the Davis Mountains rise above our high country West Texas homesite.  Our mountains maintain my interest, not just because mountains, by nature, are splendid things—these craggy red mountains, tumbled and stacked with no regard to order or symmetry, seem to have lanterns inside them. Spotty varnishes of kiwi-colored lichen make me dig past my comfortable earth-colored pastel sticks and into my little-used box of exotic greens. Sunrise to sunset, deep shadows appear to move through them, as well as across the jumbles of rock rising irregularly above the high desert.  This is a good place for an artist.

Cedar and pinon tuck snaking roots into thimbles of soil.  Stunted oak twist skyward at odd angles. Prickly pear, lechiguilla and cholla hide their thorns under brambles of catclaw. These mountains hum with life and whisper survive. Lions, golden cougars rule the high country; coyotes, foxes, bobcats compete for jackrabbits and whatever scrawny meal. Mule deer scramble up and down steep slopes; bands of javelina unearth rock-covered delicacies, scorpions and centipedes; Mojave rattlers alternately stretch their length beneath the high Texas sun, or hide from it. Solitary tarantulas march stoically across rugged ground where prehistoric Native Americans tended hearth fires and flaked points from this mountain’s snow white chert, then left behind thin, rosy beads and burned rock middens. This mountain was apparently a good camp for hunter-gatherers.  They, too, must have admired the morning sun striking these volcanic rocks with such splendid drama.

Ranchers put cattle on this mountain over a hundred years ago, and cattle have grazed it ever since.  But this volcanic castle in the high country is a blessing to artists but a curse to cattlemen—I almost titled this painting “Where Cattle Go When They Stray.”  There’s a water trough high on the mountain’s backside, constant water in what passes for meadow in this country. You’d think the cattle would hang out on the grassy, level ground near that water. You’d think. But I’ll glance up at the cliffs and see big, slow-moving shapes. Shapes that shouldn’t be there:  Cattle, on a slope so steep, a cow’s head can rise six feet higher than its rump. Cattle, grazing slopes where rocks pre-empt grass.  There are better pastures for cattle. Easier places to live.

Of course, life isn’t as simple as just surviving.

Maybe, like me, they just enjoy the view.

BREAKING DAWN IN THE HIGH COUNTRY  9" x 18" pastel copyright Lindy Cook Severns 2010

Exhibited at Trappings of Texas Invitational Western Art and Cowboy Gear Show 2011
Museum of the Big Bend, Alpine, TX

See an enlarged image of this painting at BigBendArtist.com