Where Water Comes Together: North Cascades

Last weekend I taught a watercolor workshop, Pacific Northwest by Brush, for the North Cascades Institute. I was joined by a group of 16 painters, excited to learn and savor the Park environment. The weather was very unsettled, bringing us sunshine on Friday night, rain all day on Saturday, and cloudy skies on Sunday. It was an ideal way to experience North Cascades National Park: giving us a very firsthand knowledge of where our water and power comes from, and visions of lush ferns, incredible waterfalls, including Ladder Creek Falls outside of the Gorge Dam powerhouse in Newhalem. Katie Roloson, who is the Curriculum Coordinator and longtime staff member at the Institute, assisted me in the workshop. She suggested we take a short drive downriver from the Learning Center on the bus on Saturday evening--what a surprise--I had never seen it before and thought it one of the most beautiful falls I've ever seen. This is how much of the upper Skagit must have looked before the dams. We saw it in early evening light in drizzly skies that had been dark all day, and the mosses and dripping cedars and douglas firs glowed as if they were incandescent. In the center of the falls and raging creek, huge boulders were stuck between narrowing banks and the water surged wildly around them.

Here an American Dipper sits on a mossy boulder above the river. There is a Raymond Carver poem called Where Water Comes Together with Other Water.  He was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, which must have given him a very deep appreciation for water, as it sits below the Oregon Coast Range on the Columbia River where it flows out to the Pacific. I love several of the lines:

But the big streams have my heart too

And the places streams flow into rivers where they join the sea.

The places where water comes together

With other water. Those places stand out

In my mind like holy places.

Comments

[Simona]

Beautiful lines, indeed. They made me think about the mouth of the Klamath River: I never tire of admiring it. I have another nice bird to show you, once I get the photos off my camera.

[Beverly Choltco-Devlin]

Thank you, Molly, for another amazing weekend of painting and helping us to see and visualize the beauty and drama of the North Cascades! For those reading this; this was my second year in taking this workshop with Molly. She is an amazing teacher and I gained so much in the way of new insights. Molly has an incredible way of creating a learning environment that helps everyone of any skill level whatsoever to make tremendous strides in their painting. And even more importantly, she help us to see the world around us differently.