They Dreamed Of Trees

                                            An original acrylics painting, on gesso primed, wood panel
                                            10 X 18", unframed
                                            $300.00, - ( plus $30.00, pack and ship )

                                                               ( click on image to enlarge )
                       

             

     Several of my recent posts on this blog, have discussed some of the issues we are
facing, with the changes in our weather patterns, here in the middle of the country.
These problems are undoubtedly going to intensify, as global warming continues our
glacial meltdown.  The experts have warned us, that the frequency and intensity of
our weather extremes, are only going to increase, and the evidence becomes more
easy for us to see and feel, with every new weather-related disaster.  Our descendants
may have to live on a planet that we would not be able to recognize, if there is still
a planet then, where life is possible for them.

     That thought is a reminder of some of the physical and psychological difficulties
which the early pioneers faced, when they first arrived on the treeless prairies of
the western territories.  Those early settlers had no woodlands to provide lumber
for them to use to build houses, or wood to burn for fuel.  So, they had to build their
shelters from the very earth itself, making sod-houses or even burrowing into hill-sides
to escape the winter's blasts, while burning buffalo chips for their fuel.  And then, in
the blistering days of summer heat-waves, such as the one we are experiencing now,
they were faced with that vast, wide-open panorama of the cloudless sky, without
a tree in sight, to offer them life-giving shade.

     This painting is based on another example of settlers using what they could find
as building materials.  Perched on the rise of that prairie hill, is an old school-house
built of stone.  There is a portion of the tall-grass prairie lands, called the Flint Hills,
which was never plowed because of the stone content of the soil, so the native
prairie survived as ranch-lands, and early ranch-houses were sometimes built of
stone as well.

    The days are long gone, when school boys rode their horses to the old school,
but perhaps the prairie winds still echo with the sound of the old school bell.
.