My second night’s stop was at Lake Vermillion State Park just over the border into South Dakota. I had been excited about being able to sit right on a lake, and the view was pretty, but the riprap kept you from getting actually to the water, which was a disappointment for Mr. Darcy. Much like life, the less exciting photo in the Missouri state park actually turned out to be a more magical place, though I enjoyed this one too.

I ended up naming my camper Alice. There were all kinds of epic journeys to draw from. I always loved the Odyssey growing up. But I realized that I don’t want that kind of male-centric, testosterone-laden template for my own journeys. So I named her after Alice Steinbach, whose book Without Reservations was the middle aged version of Eat, Pray, Love ten full years before Liz wrote her book. Alice showed the way to step out into the world following your own curiosity, relying on yourself, enjoying your own company, but also making space for new friends along the way. It’s as a happy journey instead of a tortured. One, and one where she reclaimed her sense of self after subsuming it for years as a wife/mother/employee. That kind of gentle and intelligent journey is whaat I prefer to use as my model. Her wisdom was a huge influence on me as I stepped out of an overbearing relationship that spanned my 20’s and figured out who I was again. And I like having a female name without a lot of flourish or pretension. It suits the adventures I hope to have in this camper.

The biting flies drove us in earlier than I’d left the water the night before, but the sunset was glorious. And we had a lovely walk the next morning along the lake with a beautiful breeze before taking off. I also passed a milestone as an rv owner and managed to dump the sewage on my own without help (though I’d gotten a little early advice from a friend).

I just drove 2500 miles or so across the country in a smallish RV. I sketched every day but didn’t have the energy (or the wifi) to do blog posts as I travelled. So let me catch you up. I stopped in a different state park every night, which was delightful. I took all my own food and only had to touch gas pumps, water spigots, and the electric plugs ins at night (to keep the fridge going so I didn’t lose all my traveling food). I was much further away from people than I have been at home, where joggers routinely run up right behind me without warning while I’m walking in my park. It feels in some ways self indulgent to travel in these times, and my own safe traveling bubble is the only way I would even consider it, but I also hadn’t seen my partner since January, and if I didn’t go before snow hit, it would have been a full year and a half without seeing him in person. Part time is really perfect for me — I get deep art time and autonomous daily life while also having deep and loving time with someone else — but a year and a half was far too long. Plus, I really have felt safer walking where there’s not such a crowd.

My first night was my very favorite one, at Long Branch Lake State Park in Missouri. I lucked into a spot with a tiny private beach just down the path from my site. (I could see water in the photo of the campsite, so I chose it, and it turned out great.) The bigger RVs liked the level ground a little further in, so that worked out great for me. My camper is built on a Ford truck body. It’s exactly the perfect size for me and Mr. Darcy. I totally lucked into a 20 year old one. I would never, ever have dreamed of getting one before this situation, but I think it’s going to be the gift of the pandemic for me. Instead of driving across and schlepping a dog bed, banjo, cooler, and overnight stuff into a different motel every night in a not very scenic setting, I found myself sitting for a couple of hours on the beach, watching the sunset, hanging out with a great blue heron, and listening to the water lap the shore if a fishing boat came by. After the first night (and with some long distance consultations about how the fridge works on the various power systems), I felt easy and at home. I also loved the state park crew. There were lots of families, and I felt very safe staying on my own, especially with an 85 pound dog.

I've been really enjoying Saturday mornings this spring and summer. For the first time ever I signed up for a CSA, a standing vegetable order of whatever they have any given week from my favorite farmers. It's pushed me out of my cooking ruts, and it's a little like Christmas every week. I also love that for the first year they're at the market nearer my house, at the other end of midtown, so I can loop through lovely older neighborhoods, pick up my produce, and loop home through the park. I mix up the streets I take, but it ends up being just over 10 miles round trip. Today my carrot greens hung way over the side as I cycled home, and I felt pretty healthy and virtuous. Which I immediately rectified by cooking myself blueberry pancakes for brunch, but that's another deeply happy thing I've done for myself occasionally this summer. Small treats are good for big challenges.

Yesterday the Mail Center let me do some curbside shipping. I can usually print my own labels at home, but I had prints to send off to Europe that included customs forms and other complications. I appreciated the outside service, and I sketched Huey's across the street, my favorite burger joint, as I waited.

This is not the adventure I meant to have this year, but not much about this year looks as we expected it to. I've been trying madly to finish my book lately, so this is my first Quarantine Journal entry in a while. It felt good to just sketch again.

The book work has slowed down (and the journal work almost disappeared) as I've been trying to get the final layout/extra pages/last few letters done, and as I've started scanning in and cleaning up (mostly letters that got out of hand in thick fountain pen on bumpy watercolor paper). I'll have to do yet more digital work to put each on on exactly the right size file and make sure there's enough border and also make sure than ones like this with a little overlap will meet up in the right places. Definitely the less fun part to come. But I'm really excited and have drawn out all the pages now, with only three plus covers to color. It's coming. My printer is getting me proofs on the paper he intends to use, and then I'll just have to dive into the scanning more intensely.

About all that's going on over here right now is sketching in the forest on my morning walks and work on the forest ABC book from those sketches (and a bunch of old ones). I've also had a quieter weekend, visiting with my dad and a couple of friends from safe distances. I'm hoping to wind up the artwork for the book quite soon, and then I'll have to figure out all the digital stuff -- get the scans the right size, obtain an ISBN number, and all the less fun but still satisfying stuff.

Here's a shot of my back porch table (where I've been working except a handful of the hottest days, because the full summer heat makes me want to stop working and nap) with the line drawings for the book in the center surrounded by a host of older sketches I'm using for reference. I'm grateful for all the years of forest sketching I have in old books. It's proved more valuable than I dreamed.

And here's one more pair of recent morning sketches with my newish Sailor fude fountain pen that I'm still really enjoying. It's what I'm using for the book as well.

My Quarantine Journal is taking a serious back seat the last couple of weeks to this book project, but I figure it's always good to go with the thing that's strongly calling your name (unless you're on a different kind of deadline). It's good to be able to ride a bit of momentum on a project too. I'm having a lot of fun with this book and simultaneously trying to figure out how to push it on out into the world once I'm done. It's so local that I'll likely self publish, but I'm exploring a few options at the moment. It feels like a lot of years' worth of sketching in the forest have really come together all at once in my head. I'm grateful for the gift of that, unexpected and lovely.

I had a funghi kind of morning on my walk today. I caught a brief glimpse of the owl hunting as I walked (I heard the ruckus of the smaller birds trying to drive her off) but the fungi held still and posed for me today. I’m testing out the 55 degree angle Sailor fude pen. I’ve been using the 40 degree one, and this one feels very different. Thicker lines overall, but I can get the thinner ones if I concentrate. I also found out today that the Noodler’s permanent ink, which is supposed to be water fast to use with paint on top of, has a longer drying time that my fast sketching allows for. I got a bit of bleed when I moved straight onto watercolor. It’s doing great for the book project where I’m leaving it to cure overnight, but less great for sketching in the field where I don’t want to sit around and wait for the mosquitoes to find me.

I was supposed to go teach a workshop for the art guild in Mountain View, Arkansas, this month. I went last year and had a great time with the marvelous folks there, and they had been kind enough to invite me back. Obviously that's not happening anytime soon, and I've been thinking about that group on my morning walks lately. I decided to put up a new page on my website about the pen I've discovered this spring, how I'm using it, and a couple of different sketching projects that have been saving my sanity. All of that is on the page Sketching Tools if anyone else would like to play along. Sketching is a great way to notice new things in familiar surroundings as well as find new delight in those same places, something we all need at the moment.

I lived the first 15 years in this house without a screened in porch, and mosquitoes in Memphis are pretty fierce. A decade ago I finally tacked one on to the back of the house, just off the kitchen. The space was pretty small, so it contains a table and two chairs plus a one person hammock chair, and that's really all it can manage. But it has a blue ceiling, a ceiling fan, and lots of birdsong.

With the stay at home spring and my new-found fascination with birds, I've been eating more and more meals out there through the temperate part of the year. Sometimes it feels like a lot of trouble to carry things out, but I never regret it. Now I've got this new illustration project going, and, unlike my printing, it's beautifully portable. I've carried stacks of sketchbooks, my ipad, and my paints outside, and I've been spending all day making art on my porch. It's a delight. Yesterday, after my brain had shut off for serious work, I decided I wanted to put this period in my Quarantine Journal. The sketch isn't my best, but it does show you the chaotic, colorful process of illustration. The stack of sketchbooks are to look back at on-site sketches from the forest, done over years, to refresh my memory and keep the book vivid. I'm having a ball working on this project.