Pockets of Joy

My sister and me (standing)

by Neva Bodin

So many sorrows this fall for us: my sister’s death, friends battling cancer, other friends with other troubles. It seems as if the world is closing in on a personal level sometimes. But, as I wrote on a Facebook entry, pockets of joy can always be found on the gray fabric of our days.

As a fashion designer adds accents of color, lines or items to focus the attention on, and designs that flatter the figure, I believe our creator/fashion designer also splashed colors, lines, and objects that draw our attention, and then our ooo’s and ahhh’s. Just to help us forget if but for a moment, that we are dealing with issues that sear the soul and cause us grief and sadness.

On impulse I signed up for a plein air art workshop last week. This means painting a scene outside. The location was 44.8 miles from my house, on a ranch in an area we had never been—up the side of a mountain, round and round, past granite cliffs, open meadows, deer and cows. We reached a ranch where a beautiful black and white paint horse greeted us from the pasture by the yard.

My description of the scene convinced my hubby to go on a drive past the ranch and further into the mountains last Sunday. It was a designer’s dream, if you designed mountains, meadows and forest.

While we were atop mountains, we drove by several ranches, a recently built wind farm with multiple humongous wind mills, herds of deer and cattle, and finally the road trickled down, (as all roads in Wyoming seem to do) to a two rut trail. We rumbled over many cattle guards in this land of open range.

The sun was warm, the air cool and carrying scents of grass, wet fall foliage, and pine. A western Bluebird crossed our path. Mule deer watched curiously as we passed. And I’m sure many unseen creatures breathed sighs of relief when we didn’t stop near their hiding places.

So I share some of the pictures of the scenes we saw—my pockets of joy
in this autumn season.

Pockets of gold adorn this high altitude landscape

A creek on the ranch near the barn where barn dances were held years ago. A big red hip-roofed barn stands beside the creek.