Mesa Top Juniper

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

This was painted during a recent trip to the the four corners region of southeast Utah. I was driving around the high desert looking for something to paint when I spotted this tree on a mesa top. After deciding to make a painting of it, I parked in a safe spot off the road, grabbed a 9 x 12 pochade box, and headed up through the sagebrush toward the tree.

The Four Corners Region is full of bits and pieces of ancient civilizations. One can pretty much hike into any canyon and find stone ruins high up on cliff faces. Lithic flakes and pottery shards are also common finds. Lots to look at and wonder about, but don't take!

As I approached the tree, I found two little pieces of ancient broken pottery. Farther on I found more shards. Every few steps revealed more and more pottery fragments, including this spot where it seems someone had gathered different kinds of pot shards into one place:

Likely this much ancient detritus wasn't dropped by someone just passing by. I thought there must have been people living here on this mesa top long ago. Looking around for any signs of past settlement, I found an incongruous pile of rocks and dirt. I think this was once a pueblo, now collapsed and overgrown with sagebrush:

What a great view the ancient residents of this pueblo would have had! From the Abajo Mountains to the north to the spires, buttes and mesas to the south, their view of the landscape would have been wide open!

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As for my own dwelling during this trip, I brought one with me. It's a new tent that's roomy and big enough to stand up in:

And I brought a kitchen, too. Made of pine and baltic birch plywood, it was painted with oil primer that was colored with thalo oil colors I no longer wanted in my paintbox:

My Chuck Box.

I bought this Coleman stove in 1982. It was once my backpacking stove but is now a permanent part of my chuck box gear, as I now have lighter options for backpacking stoves. After 36 years it still works great!

Cooking breakfast on my 36 year old Coleman stove.