Little Bluff Cabin cam January 31 - not much more ice during the night but a chilly 16 degrees at dawn - our plastic fence caught a lot of drift from yesterday - HAPPY WARM TUESDAY TO YOU!

Our CANVAS GALLERY is available for appointments most anytime - click for info.

Print Of The Week special (above, click here)

01/01/23 When you go to bed really early on New Years Eve (we’ve not seen midnight but only once or twice this century) you tend to naturally wake up early to greet the New Year. It was 4-something this morning when I wandered out to the back deck of the cabin, brand new camera in hand, and took my very first photo of 2023. Being still pitch black out and quite foggy, I pointed the camera at the only light I could see, moved a few of the camera controls around, and took a picture. For whatever reason the camera would not let me take a second photo, so I called it a day and went back inside to make a cup of java and get ready for work. This was a 15 second exposure (handheld, shhh, don’t tell any of my students), f4, ISO 12500, 24mm lens. So there ya go - for everyone who thought I had retired, well, not quite yet!

Gosh these modern cameras are SO complicated!

My original plan was to hike to a mountain top and take pictures of the sunrise, but I awoke to dense fog and decided to wait around a while since Mr. Sunshine would be late today. As the new year began to creep across the hills and into the hollows, the pups and I headed out for the first lap of the day around our trail. The thick fog dripped so much the forest was very wet, like it had rained all night. Standing in the middle of a silent forest in the fog I just had to stop and breathe in deep and fill my lungs. Oh how I LOVE being in a foggy forest at dawn!

Sunshine finally did arrive just as my lovely bride and I were hitting a different trail - the Round Top Mountain Trail just south of Jasper. We were shocked to find it deserted - no one else was there - and in fact we only saw ONE other person the entire time we were there.

It was a nice hike up to the to of the ridge and over to the southern end of the mountain, where I stopped and dug out my new camera to see if I could get it to take a second photo. The fog had just been chased over the ridge by the sun, which revealed an old split-rail fence and mossy carpets - again, everything was dripping wet from the fog, and BEAUTIFUL!

I did manage to take a few photos and got one I think is OK to post here. We spent the next while hiking around the base of the bluff and seeing all sorts of amazing things before heading back down to the van - just in time to pick up a take-out lunch at the Ozark Cafe - OH MY it was delicious! Here's a snap of my bride examining part of the bluff that appeared to be weeping - no doubt moisture from the heavy fog that had just blown away..

It’s back to dark again tonight and I’m up at the gallery finished up some small canvas prints for customers that are going to pick them up tomorrow morning. One thing I’ve noticed when I do these late-night canvas-stretching events is that I’ll nick a finger here or there on a staple or wire and the result is a little bit of my DNA will end up on the back of the canvas I’m trying to stretch - OOPS! (I have three small band-aids on my fingers tonight already).

I decided to take a photo of this little drop of blood, but then when I completed the canvas stretching and turned the finished canvas print over I discovered - much to my horror - that the blood had somehow seeped through the canvas and was showing on the front of it - OH NOOOOO!

Well we can’t have a bloody canvas print hanging anywhere so I immediately sent a another file to the canvas printer in hopes I’d be able to get it completed by tomorrow morning. Then I started to examine the bright red dot on the front of the canvas and realized it was not blood after all - but rather a bright RED maple leaf! YIPPIE COYOTE! So the print was fine and I was able to get the file transfer cancelled before the big printer started printing and all was well. (As a side note, a drop of moisture really couldn't get through the canvas anyway from behind - there's a thick waterproof layer on top of the canvas below the ink/image layer, so next time I see this I'll try not to panic...)

My dogs are tired tonight so I’m gonna wake up the pups and make our way back down to the cabin - only this trip will be in bright moonlight (almost 3/4 moon) - a perfect end of the beginning of what we hope will be another terrific year!

01/03/23 So here's my second photo of 2023 - Roundtop Mountain - taken this morning from the parking lot of Dollar General in the greater Jasper Metroplex (after two inches of rainfall overnight - yippie!). Kinda funny, I had driven into town early to drop off a package there for FedX pickup - it was my new camera (that I just bought) being returned/exchanged due to an issue I had with it. The only camera I had left was my phone - which is the answer to the nagging question - "What's the best camera to use?" Answer - it's whatever you have with you, even if it's only your phone!

01/04/23 We made a quick trip down south to meet up with my brother and his wife (Terry and Marsha), and two cousins and their wives (Ron and Kathy, Peter and Annette), for an evening and morning of giant conversation, mountains of wonderful food, drink, and laughter! It was the first time this group of eight had been together since the passing of another close cousin many years ago, and otherwise it had been more than 50 years!

I’m just gonna title this photo - the LUCKIEST GUYS ON THE PLANET and leave it at that... (and a snap of my lovely bride with her little Mia...

01/06/23

01/14/23 A very nice sunset this evening...

01/21/23 Nice pop of color to begin the day.

One of the consequences of having the gallery open all day is that the “activity” wheel on my watch doesn’t move much. By the time I’d recovered from a giant salad from dinner and darkness had set in, I realized I was more than three miles short of my daily goal - yikes! But the good part was I rather enjoy hiking in the dark, and this evening was even better due to chilly temps, sleet, snail, and a bit windy - that meant I could bundle up!

Our giant fluffy ball, Wilson, recently took a running leap and landed wrong and has been nursing a bum front leg all week. He’s still all puppy inside (but approaching old age) and doesn’t let that bother him too much, but the more he runs and jumps in the woods the worse his leg gets. So we’ve been keeping him mostly inside and on a leash when outdoors (always on a leash when in public, but not on our 60-acre fenced in forest).

Two issues with Wilson being on leash. One, I have to keep him in low gear to protect himself from himself. That means I’m in low gear too - not something I prefer, especially when I’m trying to burn off miles and calories. Be we got along just fine and ambled through the woods for a mile, stopping to sniff a twig, rock, or bush few times (Wilson also peed on them, I was just looking for interesting detail).

Meanwhile Mia romped on all over the place as usual, but since it was dark she was usually out of sight. It was mostly cloudy, but yet enough starlight filtering down into the forest that I didn’t need a light - especially when traveling at Wilson speed.

Once in a while - almost always when we would stop to just soak it all up and listen, something would come crashing through the woods right at is from behind! ‘Twas Mia - most likely she knew full well what she was doing and just wanted to see how high we would jump.

After the first lap I dropped the pups off at the cabin and continued on at normal/full speed. One thing I learned was that there were a lot more limbs and trees in the way when going at full speed vs. Wilson speed! I got slapped in the face a lot. After what seemed like way too many laps without my watch progress dial moving much, I abandoned the trail and got up to maximum speed on our driveway - round tripping from the cabin to mailbox a few times. Then I realized that the watch was not keeping up with my pace and it suddenly spun far ahead of my daily goal.

Normally I’d be happy with that, but since I was pointed away from the cabin I decided to just continue on and do another lap - I just LOVE hiking in the dark!

Total for the day - 7 customers visited the gallery, and 8 miles on the trail. I was a happy camper and ready for slumber!

FYI, Today was the 16th Saturday I've had the gallery open since we returned from Nova Scotia (and the last 13 in a row) - average about 9 visitors per day. Oddly, even though much of the time there is no one here but me, I seldom ever get ANY work done! And when folks do show up I end up talking almost non-stop, sometimes for hours.

01/28/23 Today we lost a mountain of a man. Terry R. Keefe was killed while on an early morning hike with his beloved wife Kathy. After charging up yet another hill (he always LOVED hills!), he was attempting to cross a road near their home south of Little Rock and was stuck by an oncoming car. He was 79.

Terry was known for and will be so fondly remembered because of the pace and the depth that he embraced life - especially the outdoor life - and for enriching the lives of so many people (and other critters) he encountered along the way. My last connection with Terry was just yesterday afternoon, when he so kindly spent nearly an hour on the phone trying to locate a new waterfall find of his on a topo map - I was using the latest digital version, and he was using his much-more-refined and accurate memory to recall minute details of the trek to the waterfall he’d discovered many moons ago.

Terry is the Grandfather of the sport of waterfall hunting in Arkansas (just one of MANY things he was great at - really tough to keep up with him!). One of the most beautiful waterfalls in the state was named after him more than 20 years ago - TERRY KEEFE FALLS (below). He no doubt visited many thousands of waterfalls in Arkansas and around the globe, and I hope that you will give a nod to the heavens in his honor the next time you are splashed by one.

Rest In Peace my friend - you deserve it! And THANKS for all that you did for the world...

01/30/23 Yesterday, right after pulling our pizzas out of the wood-fired outside oven on the deck, a winter weather WARNING was issued. I needed to be in Fayetteville by 8am this morning, so I decided to try and make it there Sunday night before the weather hit. I got there just fine and ended up spending the night at a Wal-Mart parking lot - not in our large camper van with a giant bed and HEATER, but rather in my little cargo van. The temp outside was supposed to reach down to about 20 by this morning, and oh brither did it ever - and without any heat in the van it was 22 degrees when I woke up at 3:30am (needed to pee - to much coffee during my drive over). YIKES it was COLD inside and out! By the time I reached my 8am appointment the ground was covered with a thin coat of ICE, and I barely made it into the parking lot of the auto-fix-it shop. (I use Shuler's Auto for maintenance on both of our vans - GREAT PEOPLE and excellent work!

Another winter warning hit as I was driving home this afternoon, but somehow managed to scamper back to the cabin before the heavy stuff hit (my little van is rear-wheel drive and not very good on ice, snow, mud, or even loose gravel). Soon as I got home the weather made good on its promise and started to produce ice, sleet, snow, and whatever else it could produce. Having escaped with one trip to town during a winter event, I decided to cancel my second appointment at the same shop tomorrow at 8am (for our much-larger camper van). That was a good move - our roads are impassable here tonight, and it's pretty tough even hiking to and from work - I'm using yaktracks ice crampons fulltime tonight!