Moonrise in the Skagit Delta
oil on linen on panel
16x12 inches
John W. Stinson ©2011
I keep a couple of handy reference tools at my desk to keep a eye on the local tides and full moons. Capt'n Jack's Tide & Current Almanac and a printout of the full moon schedule for the current year and if I'm feeling so inclined I'll check on the schedule and see if there might be some promise of an event that might be favorable and then keep my eye of what out local weather guru Cliff Mass has to say on his blog about the weather. If everything lines up and I do mean everything then sometimes an adventure is in the making. I usually just go when I go but sometimes a bit of planning goes a long way to get the ideas and images burned into your head for a painting.
I asked my wife if she wanted to come along for a full moon walk in the skagit delta if the weather was going to cooperate. She said sure so the date was set. She started asking questions when we did not park at our usual location. Oh I guess I forgot to mention we will be trespassing since it will be after sunset long before we get out of there. This amused her. "We will be breaking the law? What if we get caught?"
"Yes, sweetie we are going to break the law and if anyone with a badge or uniform stops us you lay on the accent and say I did not know the rules! You do all the talking and I'll just grunt. Follow up with I'm soooo very sorry sir."
Oh boy, some excitement for her ordered and spiritual life.
"Yes, let's do it."
The area in the Skagit Wildlife Area we were walking in is not a natural area at all. The site has been altered to give hunters a haven to harvest the waterfowl who think this is a haven for them. Bait and switch I guess. 100 acres are planted annually with cereal grains (corn, pasture grass and/or barley) by local farmers under a sharecrop lease type agreement. Pheasants are released on site for hunting and in the daylight hours from the parking lot we usually use you can see the holding/rearing pens with pheasant in them. The area is heavily used for walk-in waterfowl and pheasant hunting, fishing, bird dog training and bird watching. Wiley slough is just east of here and there is a two-mile loop dike-top walking trail also attracts dog walkers and after hours a couple of trespassers on an adventure. One of the things I like in the delta crop fields is not all the crop is harvested. The share croppers come in and harvest some and leave large areas unharvested giving contrast and interest to what would usually be just a harvested field.
The evening was in early October and the time between sunset and moonrise overlaps. The moon wasn't quite full but bright and large and close enough to get what I was looking for. We avoided seeing any one in authority or even another trespasser on our adventure but barely avoided a collision with a spooked mallard as we were walking one of the planted fields.
Usually these paintings are posted a couple of layers shy of completion. It helps for me to get an idea how the painting looks on the web because sometimes you have looked so long at the painting in front of you it can not be seen.
