La Sals from Pack Creek Ranch, watercolor on paper, Meg G. Freyermuth ©2009.
The paintings shown in this post were painted in 2009 during my first trip to southern Utah as an adult. My family and I stayed at Pack Creek Ranch for a family reunion in September 2009, right as summer turned into fall according to our calendars. Our first reunion outing was to Arches National Park, where I bought Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire in the gift shop after I had spent the first night at the ranch reading the copy that was in the “cabin” we stayed in. I came to find out the next day that the owner of Pack Creek Ranch was Ken Sleight, a friend of Ed Abbey’s and the inspiration for Abbey’s famous Monkey-Wrench Gang character Seldom Seen Smith. I hadn’t yet read The Monkey-Wrench Gang but I was aware of it. In the meantime, I soaked in the beautiful Utah desert and Abbey’s tales of staying in Arches National Park in the 60’s, before all the roads were paved. He used to stay at Pack Creek Ranch, maybe slept in the bed I slept in, where I read his words and painted these paintings and wrote my own thoughts on the Utah desert.
Where the Seldom Seen Sun Last Sets, watercolor on paper, Meg G. Freyermuth ©2009
Mt. Tukuhnikivatz can be seen clearly from Pack Creek Ranch, from the back of the cabin we stayed in, where you can feed apples to the horses, paint, and play guitar in the presence of this beautiful peak whose name means “Where the Sun Last Sets” in the Ute language. This peak has left a lasting effect on me ever since I first noticed it in 2009. Every time I drive to Moab now, I can’t help staring at Tukuhnikivatz, gloriously shining in the sun. When I look at this peak, I think of Ed Abbey and other writers and artists and activists who have fought to protect these lands, going against all expectations of Western development and growth.
“We are at the crucial moment in the commission of a crime. Our hand is on the knife, the knife is at the victim’s throat. We are trained to kill. We are trained to turn the earth to account, to use it, market it, make money off it. To take it for granted. Logically, we will never be able to reverse this part of our culture in enough time to stop that knife in our hand. But that is the task at hand — to cease this act of violence.” -Chuck Bowden
Charles Bowden (known as Chuck) passed away recently, and it has affected me greatly. I’ve been reading his words, as well as those of many other activist writers of the southwestern US, writers who have known each other and inspired each other and fought for wilderness; writers like Abbey, like Rebecca Solnit, like Terry Tempest Williams; writers who have inspired me to paint and write and fight for the wild lands that so many don’t seem to care about. It is some of the best research I’ve ever done for my painting, to read about the importance of this wilderness from such great minds.
For Abbey, watercolor on paper, Meg G. Freyermuth ©2009
As I prepare to head to southern Utah next week for the Escalante Canyons Art Festival and plein air competition, I am remembering that 2009 trip and the powerful, naked feeling of being surrounded by red rock desert and some of the most intense canyons and mountains in the world. Utah’s landscape, like most deserts, is humbling and sublime and not to be taken for granted. I have been back several times since 2009, but this time I go for the sole purpose of painting as much as I can in celebration of Everett Ruess (the festival is also called the Everett Ruess Days) and Ed Abbey and Chuck Bowden and Rebecca Solnit and Georgia O’Keeffe and Terry Tempest Williams and hundreds of other artists and writers who felt what I feel in the American southwest, who fell head-over-heels in love with this wild land. I’m overwhelmed with excitement at painting in one of my favorite places in honor of my favorite people during my favorite time of year.
Pack Creek Cottonwood, watercolor on paper, Meg G. Freyermuth ©2009
Note: All of the paintings shown here have been sold. There is one painting left from this series of watercolors from my 2009 trip to Utah, and it is not pictured here.
Artist On The Road 