Remedies for cabin fever

This has been a long hot summer. A few weeks ago, I dealt with a brief spell of cabin fever by sketching the telephone.

The next day, we headed west of town, to where the sky is larger. We encountered a long curving line of vehicles, waiting for a freight train to pass. Again, a quick sketch, and time sped by, at the speed of the train. Watercolor added later.

Railroad Crossing

Right side of the tracks

Coal cars

Every so often, we wait for a train to pass through the grain elevator hamlet of Kileville, and I do a quick sketch. It's fun to imagine what's in the railway cars, where they came from, and where they are going.

I grew up on sad train songs like Wreck of the Old 97 and Hobo Bill's Last Ride. Railway transportation doesn't seem to have changed much since then. Watching the freight cars roll by takes me on a little trip back in time.

Kileville afternoon, in October sun

I used the Cheap Joe's sampler here, but the dots were almost gone. When I got home, I added Caran d'Ache water soluble Neocolors, (which are almost too bright for any month but October). The Pentallic Nature Sketch page curled enough to distort angles a bit.

Kileville in summer

A cluster of homes around a grain elevator, about to be engulfed by a suburb.

Kileville, again

Sometimes you just need to get out to the country and breathe. Looking north over spring fields, across 161, the path Tecumseh blazed and an old Pony Express route. The insulated cable traversing the lower right corner marks the parking spot. (Oops, the horizon line is too near the middle.)

“Setting aside time each day to become absorbed in just being- in the present moment, alone in nature, - will leave you refreshed and refocused. . . . . Nothing spectacular, everything spectacular. The essential magic occurs when pencil meets paper and the eye really sees a tree. The Process of Seeing is what counts, not how good a drawing Is. Being A Witness brings a sense of belonging, of compassion, of responsibility.” -Clare Walker Leslie 

 More reading: Jan Blencowe, Three easy ways to begin keeping a nature journal.

Heritage Cooperative building, March thumbnail

From the east.

Grain Branch Seasonal Announcement:  [February 1, 2016] The last date to deliver grain into these facilities this winter will be Friday, February 26th and they will reopen on Monday, June 27th in time for wheat harvest. They will remain open for fall harvest through January of 2017. At that time they will again be closed until late June when they will again reopen for wheat harvest and fall harvest.

Heritage Cooperative silos and buildings, winter thumbnail

From southwest.

Heritage Cooperative building, December

From the east.

Kileville, Two Views

Train, from the west

Looking north.

Heritage Cooperative Silos and Buildings

From the south.

From the west.