En Plein Air
One reason I write is to try to evoke my experiences in nature as a source of inspiration. The experiences come readily—I need only walk in the woods, or in the mountains, or on a sweep of sand by the sea—but the writing does not. I toil to find the right words to describe a wild place, a wild moment, a wild animal, without resorting to cliché.
If only I were a painter, I’ve often thought, I’d have every color and tone in the rainbow to transform my blank canvas into the moodiness of a mountain sky before the rain, or the bliss of seeing a black bear graze huckleberries so bountiful and ripe that you feel the fullness in your own belly.
For our birthday last week, my twin sister and I went to see Monet at Étretat in downtown Seattle. Maybe it was the simple joy of being in a museum again that moved me that afternoon, my first time in many months celebrating art among strangers in an indoor space.
Or maybe it was the interpretive storytelling, which brought me a little closer to the impressionist whose masterpieces I’ve admired since I was in my twenties. (It all looked so easy back then—haystacks on a wall calendar, water lilies on a mug.) Monet’s work alone is enough to lift your spirits, of course. Who wouldn’t feel transformed by the ethereal winter light illuminating the cliffs below?
“To reach this vista,” the exhibit sign read, “Monet hiked with his painting gear for about 40 minutes along the southwest path across the top of the cliffs, beyond the Manneporte, to arrive at the Pointe de la Courtine.”
On days when foul coastal weather precluded his painting outdoors at Étretat, the artist apparently stationed himself in the annex of his hotel and made the best of his view. To his beloved Alice, he wrote: “So I worked all morning from this window, regretting I hadn’t done it sooner because I would have been able to quietly create some superb things.”
I took comfort in learning that even Monet struggled to do justice to his muse—that “he would sometimes despair is his letters that it was impossible to recapture the initial sense of the place.” He toiled and persisted and, fortunately for us, the world finally took notice.
Three days after our trip to the Seattle Art Museum, I stood on a ridge in the North Cascades and wondered how I could rewild my words, one keystroke at a time.
