Munds Wagon trail on Schnebly Hill

A bit of history; this morning's hike was up along a  familiar historic pathway carved up out of Sedona to the top of the Mogollon rim by a pioneer rancher named Jim Munds. I heard that settlers had to disassemble their wagons and haul them up to the top and then reassemble them before taking the two day long trip to Flagstaff to sell their produce. An onerous process, but still better and quicker than trying to scrabble a way up around and onto the sheer rim's cliffs.  more information

Art thoughts:   I keep thinking, gotta catch the rim light on these massive buttresses looming above us. It's 5:30 am and the sun is already starting to make its presence felt just over the top of the rim. It provides the contrast that helps light up the massive sandstone monuments wallowing in the early morning shade. The colors become spectacular. My wife Karen and I have become addicted to this cool, clean, fresh time of day that soon will be frying in near 100 degree heat. This morning on the hike up the trail we had our eyes always up on the slowly passing cliffs above us, but when we finally decided to turn around and head back down Karen got an idea for a neat children's book that had us both with our noses to the ground photographing minute details she can incorporate into her book idea. Good hiking shoes and an excellent digital camera are absolutely required equipment for all of the hikes around the Sedona area. So I photograph like a tourist on steroids because there is so much to see and the light moves so inexorably that it is intimidating to try to do much in the way of pleinaire sketching. 

This painting was done quite a while ago of the same area as the hike, and I kind of like it.

This is the soft effect of morning light that I am trying to learn to master. The muted soft grays and tones are acquired by mixing complementary colors (colors located directly across the color wheel with lots of water so the white of the paper functions to present luminous but subtle colors.