Skip to main content

Denali


Yesterday I had the flight of a lifetime. Stan Steck is a pilot who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where I'm teaching a 5-day painting workshop. Retired after flying many years for the National Park Service and now a pilot with K2 Aviation, he has his own single engine airplane, called a Maule. Stan offered to take me for a flight to see Denali (formerly called Mt. McKinley). The day was cloudless with brilliant sunshine and no wind. A perfect day for flying.



We drove over the marshland, lakes and tundra which cover the 250 miles of flatland between Anchorage and Denali. Rising to 20, 322 feet, Denali is the tallest mountain in North America. Stan ferries hundreds of rock climbers each year up to a base camp on Denali as well as offering flights to sightseers like me.

I was fairly nervous setting out, with the idea that we might circle this enormous mountain and land on a glacier!

The trip was beyond my wildest imaginings. We flew up glaciers and through what seemed impossibly narrow mountain passes.




We saw a thick glacier where ski planes had left their marks while delivering rock climbers to start their journeys. And we flew into all the nooks and crannies Stan knows intimately, while he reeled off the names of the peaks and passes and glaciers as we passed around and over them.  Climbing up to 12000 feet we crossed over a glacier, still 8000 ft below the top of Denali, to see the mountains that drop suddenly into a valley on the other side.







Two times this year, I've been awe-struck at the magnificence of this world. The first was seeing the configurations of the basalt columns on the far side of the Cape on Skagafjordur, where the Baer Art Center is located. Now this.

Each time, I heard Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in my mind.

















Labels:

Comments

  1. kimSeptember 12, 2016 at 4:37 AM

    love this!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Judy MartinSeptember 12, 2016 at 5:15 AM

    wow janice. You have been allowing in so much awesomeness.
    You must be so excited about the paintings that will come forth over the next few months. xo

    ReplyDelete
  3. Art KilgourSeptember 13, 2016 at 2:07 PM

    Awesome Janice. You're very lucky. Since you've seen the mountain intimately, can I suggest this "disaster" book, which I read last year (if you're into this type of story): https://www.amazon.ca/Denalis-Howl-Deadliest-Climbing-Disaster/dp/0525954066

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Janice Mason SteevesSeptember 13, 2016 at 9:09 PM

      Sort of glad that I didn't hear of this before my flight Art!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liminal Time

 The word liminal comes from the Latin, limen meaning threshold. an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing. Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places. Crepuscular animals, like foxes and coyotes are most active at this time of day, a time that is considered a magical time in Celtic spirituality and to Indigenous people which is perhaps the origin of their designation as tricksters.   As I write this, the northern hemisphere has just passed the vernal equinox, where day and night are of equal length.We are in a liminal space between winter and spring right now, unsure if we will have one more storm or snowfall before spring finally settles in. We're also in a liminal place as we live through this pandemic with the  anxiety and discomfort of not  knowing. A  time of great transition for the entire world, wondering what we've learned from this and what lessons we'll carry forward.     Author and Fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland   I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article   here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resultin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Am I Too Old to Change? Embracing Life

Photo by  Miguel Á. Padriñán  from  Pexels I'm in the process, at last, of working on the book that came to me in a dream seven years ago. It has circled my head all these years, demanding I get at it. It's called: We're Not Done Yet: Coming to Art Later in Life .  It has actually hung in the air a couple of feet behind my head, attached by a string like a helium balloon, like a cartoon cloud, waiting for me to get to it. Some of you will know of it because I posted a request on Facebook  in 2019 asking for artists who have come to art later in life to reply to me if they'd like to answer a questionnaire. I received 168 responses plus earlier interviews I did before the put out the questionnaire. There was some overlap, and some didn't respond after they'd offered to. All in all, I received 128 responses.  By a huge majority it was women who responded to my questionnaire.  By the time we get into our 60's we bring a rich life experience to our work: m...
Post a Comment
Read more