"Becoming van Gogh"

Last weekend, Nan and I were in Denver to celebrate her birthday by attending the "Becoming van Gogh" exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. Curator Timothy Standring had brought together seventy different works by Vincent van Gogh, along with twenty works by his inspirational contemporaries, to chronicle van Gogh's rapid artistic development over his brief ten-year career, before his untimely death at age thirty-seven. The works were displayed in roughly chronological order, with van Gogh's hanging next to those of his post-impressionist associates. The differences were startling.

Early in his career, following a failed stint as a missionary in Belgium, van Gogh's efforts to depict the people and places of that region look crude and dark compared to the beautifully detailed and brightly colored work created by other artists of that time. Apparently, van Gogh recognized his shortcomings and undertook a nineteenth-century do-it-yourself drawing course, copying the illustrations in his course book over and over again until he was satisfied. What he lacked in early talent, he made up in devotion to his craft and clear-eyed self-evaluation, aided through his frequent correspondence with his older brother Theo, a Paris art dealer.

As Nan and I shuffled slowly through the over-crowded exhibit hall, dutifully listening to our audio players in front of painting after painting, we witnessed a remarkable transformation. Van Gogh was experimenting with every style he encountered, from Seurat's pointillistic brushwork to Japanese solid-color backgrounds, trying them on for size and then incorporating the best of what he discovered into his own artistic sensibility. He began to use "vibrating" complementary colors with varied brush strokes and achieved stunning results from subjects as simple as a bowl of oranges against a blue background.

At this point in the exhibit, the works hanging next to van Gogh's began to lose their luster compared to what he was able to achieve. I stood looking at his 1887 painting, "Grapes, Lemons, Pears and Apples", for several minutes, wondering at the shadow effects which give the impression of the fruit lifting off its abstract white background. I couldn't help but think, this is not how a normal person would paint this still-life. The effect of the concentric brushstrokes and the liberal use of white highlighting were almost psychedelic. Vincent was losing it, I thought.

But just two years later, he would paint "The Starry Night", which many, myself included, consider one of the greatest paintings of all time. Whatever mental or emotional troubles he may have had, van Gogh was able to command his faculties to channel his vision of the world into works we will love and admire forever.

Upcoming Trip to Savannah

I will be headed out to Savannah for a long Thanksgiving weekend in a little over a week. It will be a chance to check on Whispering Jesse for the first time since April and to spend some time with my parents. Nan will not be going with me. She is recovering from her hip replacement surgery and should not travel for a few more months. She is making excellent progress and is now fully mobile around the house with a walker and cane. We're looking forward to clearance from her doctor that she can drive again so she's not so housebound.

There are many boat projects awaiting me in Savannah. I have already placed orders with Defender Marine Outfitter for the replacement port navigation light and plastic scupper fitting that I wrote about earlier, along with some teak items: an outboard motor mount for the stern rail, a drinks and binoculars organizer for the binnacle, and some plugs to fill miscellaneous interior holes. And West Marine called yesterday to let me know that the order I placed with them is waiting at their store in Savannah: two lengths of L-shaped teak molding for making frames around the raw cut-outs in the cockpit, a quart of Cetol to varnish all the new teak with, some 3M 5200 sealant to fill some leaky deck holes, and a 12-volt receptacle like a car's cigarette lighter that I'm hoping to wire in for connection to an inverter for charging battery-powered electronics.

All that should keep me busy for a few days, but I'm also hoping to find a good length of pressure-treated 2x12 lumber to make a gangplank out of. I'm thinking it could serve double-duty as a ramp over the steep companionway steps to make it easier for Scout to get in and out of the cabin and possibly also as a ramp between the swim ladder and the water, with some fenders attached for flotation, to give Scout a way to get out of the water on his own.

More later from Savannah...

Nan's surgery

Nan's hip replacement surgery on Friday afternoon went well. The surgical team successfully replaced both of her hip joints in about three hours, with a minimum of blood loss. Now the long, slow recovery begins.

I'm sitting in Nan's room at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. She is drifting in and out of sleep, trying to find a balance between the pain and the nausea caused by the pain medication. The nurses have been trying different combinations to find what works best and encouraging her to eat more to buffer the oral medications, which are longer lasting than the ones administered through her I.V.

Nan's sister Monica is staying with us for a few weeks to help with Nan's care. She has been wonderful. She just massaged Nan's legs and now she is helping her brush her teeth. She keeps Scout and me fed with her cooking, and she keeps family and friends up to date with texts and phone calls.

The hospital will not discharge Nan until she can walk out of here under her own power. She is making big strides already. The physical therapy people have had her up and walking with a walker twice a day. Today she walked to a chair and sat up for an hour. She should be able to go home on Wednesday or Thursday if all goes well.

The End of an Era

Nan has been running for 35 years. From March through November, you'll find her entering a race almost every weekend. And she does well, placing in the top three in her age division more often than not. She has boxes full of ribbons and trophies, and she can recite her best times at distances ranging from 5K to full marathons. In 2003, she ran in the New York City Marathon. She considers it the crowning achievement of her long running career.

Now it's all coming to an end. Osteoarthritis and endless miles have taken their toll. Nan has used up all the cartilage in her hip joints, leaving her in a bone-on-bone condition of constant pain. On Friday, she will undergo bilateral hip replacement surgery to replace her damaged hip joints with new bionic ones. The procedure is invasive and involves the removal of the tops of her femurs and the sockets of her hip joints. The prosthetic replacements are designed so that the remaining bone grows solidly and securely around them. Full recuperation normally takes up to twelve weeks, though she should be able to walk out of the hospital under her own power after a four-day recovery period.

Nan's new hips will relieve her pain, but they will not withstand the impact of running. She will need to give up running in favor of low-impact activities such as bicycling and swimming. She says it will be worth it, but you can sense her regret.

The photo above shows Nan in a final sprint to the finish line of the Boogie's Buddy 5, an annual Fourth of July race in Aspen, Colorado. She's not sure of the year, but it was probably taken at least ten years ago.

Please keep Nan in your thoughts this week as she prepares for her life-changing experience.

Storm King Mountain Memorial Trail

Our friends, the Shepherds, were in Colorado last weekend for their annual summer visit. They have a timeshare in Avon that they use twice a year, a week in the winter for skiing and another in the summer for hiking and biking. On Sunday morning, Nan, Scout and I met them at the Dairy Queen in West Glenwood, which is a fair distance compromise between Avon and Grand Junction. From there, we proceeded west on I-70 to Canyon Creek exit 109 and then doubled back on the north-side frontage road to where it dead-ends at the parking lot for the Storm King Mountain Memorial Trail's trailhead.

On July 6, 1994, fourteen firefighters died while battling the South Canyon Fire when high winds caused the flames to blow up suddenly, trapping them on an isolated slope. The memorial trail was created by friends and family wishing to visit the place where their loved ones lost their lives. It has since been improved by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, but it retains its original characteristics as a steep, rugged climb of a thousand vertical feet in a mile and a half. Hikers can't help but think of the brave young men and women who labored up this same slope, carrying heavy firefighting equipment, for the purpose of controlling a fire which threatened the nearby community of Canyon Creek.

The temperature was at least 93 degrees when we arrived at the trailhead in the early afternoon. We each carried CamelBaks full of ice and water, which we generously shared with Scout, who hurried quickly between shady spots while dancing over the hot dust of the well-worn trail. We stopped frequently to rest in the shade and to read the many informational signs along the way, which pointed out the sights and explained how forest fires are fought. The trail eventually leveled out and followed a hot, treeless ridge line to an observation point across from the deadly slope.

In my mind, I had imagined this place many times in the eighteen years since the fire, but it was nothing like I thought it would be. Instead of a canopy of evergreen trees, the steep slopes were covered in chest-high brush and junipers, and I pictured it engulfed in wind-driven flames, racing directly at the firefighters. There would have been nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Twelve of the firefighters died just below the opposite ridge and two others in a wash a few hundred yards away, directly below the peak of Storm King Mountain. If it had not been so hot, we would have continued our hike to those locations, where memorials have been erected, to pay our respects. We will need to return sometime soon to do so. You should too.

Ute Petroglyphs

Scout and I, and sometimes Nan, have continued to hike the Grand Junction area's desert trails this summer despite the record-setting heat. My interest in petroglyphs has had us hiking new trails almost every weekend in search of ever more impressive examples of the primitive rock art.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Scout and I hiked in the Dominguez Canyon, starting from the Bridgeport end that is accessible from Highway 50, south of town about 20 miles. After crossing the Gunnison River on a beautifully designed steel pedestrian bridge, we passed through the river rafters' campsites and worked our way up into the canyon on a well-used trail. In addition to the petroglyphs I hoped to see, some people we met on the trail told me about an impressive waterfall we should be sure to see that was off the trail about five minutes before the petroglyph area.

The petroglyphs were pecked into rock surfaces immediately adjacent to the trail, so there was no difficulty finding them. I noticed right away that the petroglyphs in these murals seemed much more recent than the ones I have seen around Moab and other places. The contrast between the art and the background was much more pronounced, and the images were more distinctly recognizable as humans, animals and symbolic designs. The biggest clue, though, was that several of the images depicted humans on horseback. Horses were introduced into the New World by Spanish explorers only 500 years ago, so these petroglyphs would have been created by the Native Americans who populated western Colorado in the years since then: the Utes.

The most dramatic of the murals showed several humans on horseback hunting an abstract-looking creature that I interpreted to be a bear based on the paw print associated with it. The lead hunter appears to be wearing an elaborate headdress and riding a larger horse. As is unfortunately the case with most petroglyphs, idiots have added graffiti to the mural in the form of initials and a crude, scratched-in version of a horse. True petroglyphs are pecked into the stone, not scratched.

On our way back down from the petroglyph area, Scout and I kept an eye on the stream that runs through the canyon to see if we could figure out where the waterfall would be. There was a point where the stream appeared to run into a wall of rock, so we left the trail to investigate. We found a spectacular waterfall where the stream took a sharp right turn at the rock wall and the water fell more than 50 feet to the gravel below. The stone surface beneath the stream, leading up to the falls, was well-worn, leaving shallow pools that Scout felt obliged to swim in and cool off.

The following weekend was Nan's and my wedding anniversary, and we celebrated by hiking the Palisade Rim Trail, at the far eastern end of Palisade, east of Grand Junction off Interstate 70 and above the Colorado River. Even with an early morning start, it was a hot and buggy hike. There was a large crew of volunteers working to get the trail into shape for mountain biking, which is the trend in this area: Trails that have been used by hikers and horseback riders for years are discovered by mountain bikers, modified to accommodate their needs, and then overrun by them. I'm not anti-mountain biking, but there are riders out there who could stand to learn some trail etiquette. The main reason I don't ride myself is because I don't think it would be fair to Scout to have him try to keep up with me. So I hike with him instead, and he is happy.

The petroglyphs we found on this hike were not so impressive. The murals were smaller, and there were fewer of them. The petroglyphs appeared to be of the same vintage as the Dominguez Canyon ones and depicted similar scenes, so we guessed that they were also created by the Utes who inhabited the area and perhaps used this remote mesa above the Colorado River as a hunting camp. The primary difference I noticed was that these petroglyphs were mostly of deer and elk, while the Dominguez Canyon ones were mostly of bears and bighorn sheep, leading me to think that the fauna in the two areas were at least somewhat different even though the areas were only 30 miles apart.

On Independence Day, Scout and I returned to Dominguez Canyon, this time with Nan. I wanted to share the petroglyphs and the waterfall with her. It had been very hot since Scout and I had done the hike a few weeks earlier, and the stream in the canyon had dried up. The waterfall was not flowing, and there was only a single pool of water left. It was filled with tadpoles striving to become desert frogs if the pool did not evaporate first.

Nan was having issues with her hips, so the dried-up waterfall was her turnaround point. Scout and I proceeded quickly up the trail from there to snap some photos of the petroglyphs to show Nan what she was missing. When we caught back up with her, she spotted some desert bighorn sheep in the fields on the other side of the canyon. There was a flock of about a dozen, grazing and keeping an eye on us. They were a thrill to see. I found out later that they had been recently reintroduced to the canyon, presumably after being hunted out of existence by the Utes many years before and leaving only their images on the stone walls to show they had once been there.

Skiing Whispering Jesse

Yesterday, I took the day off from work and skied at Snowmass with Nan, her brother Pat and Pat's son Aaron. Pat and Aaron were visiting from Wisconsin for a ski trip. In a few quick days, they skied with Nan at Powderhorn, Aspen Highlands, Aspen Mountain and Snowmass. The conditions have not been great this season, but Pat and Aaron seemed happy just to be skiing bigger terrain than what is available in the Midwest.

I don't know why I never thought of it before, but I don't have any photos of the ski run that shares its name with this blog, Whispering Jesse. Pat had his camera so I suggested that we swing by the run, which is located at the eastern edge of the Big Burn. It is one of my favorites, a rolling cruiser through glades of spruce trees. As I mentioned way back when, in "Where the name comes from", I'm sure Whispering Jesse the ski run influenced John Denver when he wrote his song of the same name. It definitely influenced me when I started this blog and chose a name for the sailboat I hope to own someday.

Nan's Charmed Birthday

Nan's birthday is today, but since today is a Monday, we celebrated over the weekend instead. Last year, we stayed in Grand Junction and went ice skating. I know, it would be hard to top that! Well, when I started looking for something fun to do, I discovered that the Denver Nuggets would be playing the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, January 8, at the Pepsi Center in Denver. I gritted my teeth and clicked the "Best Available" button on the tickets website. The tickets were expensive, but I figured, when would we ever get to see LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal play again?

We had good weather and light traffic for the drive to Denver. When we pulled up in front of the Hotel Monaco, the valet informed us that because we were driving a hybrid, the parking fee would be reduced by half. Nan mentioned at the front desk that we were there to celebrate her birthday, and the clerk upgraded us to a suite. And when I plugged in the laptop, I found out we belonged to the hotel's free Internet access program.

We had dinner reservations at The Capital Grille before the game. We had never eaten there before, but we had heard only good reviews so we were eager to try it. They must have known it was Nan's birthday. The table was decorated for the occasion and there was a gift card for a free dessert. The food, wine and service were excellent. As we were finishing our dinners, one of the restaurant's partners, Charlie Sauter, came over and chatted with us like we were old friends. If he had been a dog person instead of a cat person, I would have offered to send him a copy of Raising Charlie. A little while later, while we were eating Nan's birthday dessert and sipping coffee, Charlie came back to tell us that a person who preferred to remain anonymous had picked up our dinner bill. We thought he was joking, but he took the bill from the table and walked away with it. We were so overjoyed that we slipped our server Sydney an extra tip and a hug as Charlie escorted us out of the restaurant.

Feeling flush, we decided to take a bicycle rickshaw to the Pepsi Center. Our driver Chris wove deftly in and out of traffic while Nan and I sat in the back, awed and laughing at his fearlessness. He dropped us right at the door, and we rode the escalators up to our seats. As you can see from the photo, they weren't too bad. That's LeBron at the free throw line and Shaq back at the center line. The Nuggets played extremely well, despite missing Carmelo Anthony from their line-up, and squeaked out a 99-97 victory in the closing seconds.

It certainly was a charmed day for Nan's big celebration. When I told a friend about it today, he said she should have bought a lottery ticket!

Nan's good deed, part 3

This morning we were finally able to give Jerry his new used bike. We would have done it sooner but there were too many homeless people hanging out in the park whenever we drove by, and we didn't want anyone to take offense or for Jerry to be uncomfortable.

Nan and I parked across from the park and she called Jerry over. He seemed genuinely touched when Nan presented him with the bike and a good bike lock. He looked the bike over and said he had a plastic bread tray he could wire to the rack for Bear-Bear. In case there was ever a question about ownership of the bike, I took a photo of Nan giving it to Jerry. We could tell this made him a little uncomfortable, but he smiled and said we should come back after he had the bread tray in place to get another photo that included Bear-Bear.

To make sure the bike fit him well, we asked Jerry to take a quick spin around the parking lot. More smiles. Nan told him to be careful--"No more falls!"--and crossed the street to talk with Jerry's friend Scott, who was in the park with Bear-Bear. Jerry shook my hand and said, "Thank you. Thank you Jesus." I told him he was welcome and watched as he carefully pushed the bike across the street and locked it to a tree. Nan returned in a few minutes to say that she had told Scott it might take a few weeks but that we would get him a bike of his own to thank him for looking after Jerry. As we drove away, Bear-Bear was sniffing the bike like she wasn't sure what to make of this new thing in her life. We hope she enjoys her new ride.

Nan's good deed, part 2

Due to her unpredictable work schedule, it took Nan a few weeks to work out the details of getting Jerry a new used bike. This morning she did some shopping at Wal-Mart and bought a leash for Jerry's dog Bear-Bear to help keep her safe from traffic. She stopped by the park to give it to him and talk to him about the bike idea. He was still interested, so when she got home she called Brown Cycles and asked about their used bikes. Mary told her that the nice Trek mountain bike George had shown me when I picked up Jerry's used-up bike had been sold but that they had other bikes in the basement that might work.

Nan stopped by there this afternoon and picked out a good used Trek Antelope cruiser. She is about the same size as Jerry, so she had them size the bike for her and then took it out for a quick test ride. It worked perfectly. She added a bell and a nice Blackburn rack to the package and then brought the bike home to clean it up a little. We haven't figured out how to work out a way to transport Bear-Bear on the bike yet, but we'll see what Jerry thinks when we drop the bike off with him tomorrow. If everything works out well, we'll go back to Brown Cycles to find another bike for Jerry's friend Scott and maybe also a basket for Bear-Bear. Stay tuned.

Nan's good deed

A few weeks before Christmas, Nan noticed that a homeless man who hangs around at a busy intersection downtown had a dog. It was a medium-sized, rust-colored mutt, and it followed the man everywhere. Sometimes she would see the man riding an old bicycle with the dog balanced on a rack on the back. When she told me about them, she said she felt sorry for the dog. We both smiled about that because we have a saying that when you see a homeless guy with a dog, you always feel worse for the dog than you do for the guy. She said she was going to buy a bag of Kibbles & Bits and give it to them. I told her it was a thoughtful thing to do but that she should be careful.

So Nan went about her shopping and errands with a bag of dog food in the car for a few days until she spotted the man and his dog at a small park near the busy intersection. She pulled up at the curb, rolled down the window and called the man over. She handed him the dog food, saying only that she thought he could use some food for his dog. She said he was touched and genuinely thankful, and not threatening in any way. The next day we saw the man pushing his bike with the dog food strapped to the rack and the dog trailing behind. I could tell Nan was pleased to know that the dog was being well fed now.

But then we didn't see the man and his dog for several days. The next time Nan spotted the dog, it was walking with a different man. There had been a report on the news about the murder of a homeless man by another homeless man, and we both worried that maybe the victim was the dog's owner. When she saw the new man and the dog a second time, Nan stopped the car and asked about the other man. The new man was kind and said that the other man had taken a bad fall and was laid up for a while but that he was getting better and would be around again before too long.

Just before Christmas, Nan asked if she could share an idea with me. She said she had noticed that the man's bike was in rough shape and she wanted to get it repaired for him. I told her it was fine with me and that I would help in any way I could. She said she would try to figure out a way to coordinate it and let me know.

It wasn't until after Christmas that Nan saw the man and his dog together again, walking up the street with the bike and the other man. She went to the grocery store to get another bag of dog food and then went looking for them to discuss her idea. She found them in the park and walked over with the dog food to talk with them. She found out that the dog's name was Bear-Bear, the man's name was Jerry and that the other man was Scott, Jerry's friend. Jerry said the bike wasn't working so well, that the back brakes were shot and that it wouldn't shift gears, so if there was anything that could be done to fix it, he sure would appreciate it. Nan told him she would be back the next day to pick it up and take it to a bike shop to get it fixed.

Nan had me put the bike rack on the back of the car and drive over to the park with her. Jerry, Scott and Bear-Bear were waiting for us with the bike. Jerry walked it over and introduced himself to me. He looked to be in his mid-forties and rough from living outdoors, but there was no look of drug addiction or smell of alcohol about him. When I shook his gloved hand, it was gnarled and twisted. He said the fall he had taken had knocked him out and that he had frostbitten his fingers as a result. He would be going to the hospital for surgery in a few days to have the affected fingertips removed. Nan told me later that Jerry had been sleeping outside during this unusually cold winter because the local shelter would not allow animals and Jerry would not leave Bear-Bear outside alone. They were camping down by the Colorado River and he had slipped on an ice-covered stone.

Jerry and I looked his bike over for problems, and I started making a mental list. Jerry said the bike had sentimental value because it had gotten him from Florida to Grand Junction, so he was really hoping it could be fixed. I tried to imagine him riding this bike that far and then I tried to picture Bear-Bear riding on the rack. It boggled the mind.

Nan told Jerry and Scott that she would let them know what the bike shop had to say, and we drove over to Brown Cycles to see what they could do. We explained the situation to Chris, the owner, while he looked the bike over. He said that while the bike was a classic, a mid-80s Peugeot, it might be beyond help. He pointed at the seat post, which was jammed all the way into the frame and causing the seat tube to chip and break. He said he would try to fix this problem first to determine whether the rest of it was worth fixing. We told Chris about Bear-Bear balancing on the rack and he showed us some baskets that would make for a safer ride. And we looked at a new bell, one that said, "I 'heart' MY BIKE".

Chris called a few days later to say that George, his bike mechanic, had worked on the seat post problem and determined that it could not be fixed. The bike was used up. It was time to look at a new one or maybe a new used one. I stopped by the shop to pick up the bike and talk with George about it. He showed me exactly what the problem was, and I asked how much we owed for his work on it. He said there was no charge, that he and Chris appreciated what we were trying to do. Then he showed me some used bikes they had in the back. They were not too expensive but they were still less than the estimate Chris had given us on the repair. I said we would need to talk with Jerry about it and let them know. George said we should try to get Jerry to come in so we could be sure we were getting a bike that would fit him. I said I would have Nan talk to him about that.

Nan and I discussed it that evening and decided that the best thing we could do would be to buy Jerry a new used bike, with a basket for Bear-Bear, and also buy Scott one as a thank-you for looking after Jerry and Bear-Bear. Nan also suggested that she would help Jerry coordinate a new hospital appointment, since he missed his first one, to make sure he gets treatment for his frostbitten fingers, but that might be a little more complicated.

Yesterday, Nan took Jerry's bike back to him. She apologized that it could not be fixed and told him about our idea to get him and Scott new used bikes. Jerry was sad about his old bike but happy about getting a new one. Nan and I will go take a closer look at what Chris and George have available next week and then work out the details with Jerry and Scott. I'll let you know what happens.

Nan's Birthday

Today is Nan's birthday. I won't reveal her new age, but I will say that we made the most of her special day. After I made omelettes for breakfast and Nan opened her gifts, we went ice skating at the almost-new Glacier Ice Arena here in Grand Junction. Neither of us has skated in many years, Nan in about twenty and me in almost forty, since I discovered skiing at age ten. We were both a little nervous as we stepped onto the ice, which is much slipperier than either of us remembered. After a few tentative steps we were both gliding along, though a little unsteadily, with big smiles on our faces. We spent most of our hour on the ice holding hands as we skated around the oval dodging falling kids and trying not to fall ourselves. It was a blast, and we will definitely do it again.

Nan organized a poetry contest with her family to get them involved in celebrating her birthday. The idea was for each family member to submit a poem or limerick with Nan as the theme. The fourteen entries were compiled and voted on, with the winner receiving a gift certificate to TJ Maxx, Nan's favorite shopping destination. The winner was Nan's brother Jim, whose limerick conjectured about Nan's fictitious choice of running over liposuction. My entry was disqualified because I am too close to the subject, giving me an unfair advantage, but here it is anyway:

Listen up, everyone, I’m not “Nancy,”
You know that I’m never that fancy,
My name is just “Nan,”
Yes, I’m always this tan,
It’s my birthday, so don’t make me antsy!