Painting the serene places

Overflow, 9x9 acrylic

Here's another way serenity can be deceptive.... imagine the rush of water it's taken to carve out this grotto.  Now, there's a tranquil passage of pools and drops through this narrow space in National Canyon.  In July of 2012 this was a raging torrent of flash flood, taking out the campsites, remodeling the channel, funneling boulders and debris into the Colorado... building a new rapid.  Check out this video,.... this is more like what JW Powell would have experienced, amazing!  He said in his journals that the water was "too thick to drink but too thin to plow."

I loved exploring this canyon.  It seemed raw, not yet settled into itself.... I noticed that the only established vegetation was clinging to the rock well over my head.  Wonder how fast I could climb these sandstone shelves if I needed to in a hurry??