Happy Sunday 🍵☕
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The second day looked like it was already over.
Cold. Overcast. Wind that didn't let up — the kind that gets under a flimsy travel easel and makes every mark a argument. I'd had a full day at the South Rim the day before, seventy-plus degrees in mid-November, the Canyon doing everything it was supposed to do. I'd spent five hours on one piece. Started others I never finished. Took pictures I knew I’d never get around to working from, but couldn’t stop my eye from seeing, or my finger from pressing the shutter for. The highlight (I would later find out) was this once-in-a-lifetime photo taken of me drawing by photographer (Erica Robinson) but that night I went to sleep knowing I hadn't really gotten it, which is a strange feeling to have at a place with so much to offer.
So when day two came in gray and mean, I sat with it for a while.
Then I thought: I'm at the Grand Canyon; who knows when I’ll be coming back?
I got on the bus that loops the park. Draw or not, I was going to see more than the area by the visitor’s center.
I hopped off at a few stops, looked around, got back on. Nothing was speaking to me, and the day was running out. At one of the stops (the name starts with an H, I can picture the sign but can't pull the word) something about the perspective made me pause. I set up. The light was flat. The drawing wasn't coming. I kept at it anyway, the easel rattling, the clouds not moving, the whole thing feeling like stubbornness more than art.
And then the sky just.. opened.
Yellow first. Then the orange came. Then the red, everywhere, the whole rim lit up like it had been waiting all day for this exact moment to show me what it could do. I stayed as long as I possibly could, until the sky shifted from pink to purple and the last bus was the only option between me and miles of pitch black Canyon road (and howling coyotes.)
I left with a drawing I didn't love and a memory I'll never forget.
That's the thing about drawing plein air, especially at the Grand Canyon: there’s always too much to capture. You don't get the whole thing. Ever. You just show up, stay patient, and take what the day decides to give you.
That's what this newsletter is. One place at a time. Where I have been, what I have seen, and what I was personally moved by.
26 States down. 24 to go.
Want more from this trip.. photos, recommendations, stories that didn't make the cut? Just reply and ask. I've got plenty.
Just an Easel and a Dream is Cody's ongoing plein air pastel project: drawing in all 50 states, one landscape at a time.
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Thank You!