All a glimmer
Photo by my father, Murray Brannon
The maple has dropped perhaps seventy percent of its leaves now. All the upper branches on its south-facing side are bare and the morning light glows through into my studio. The north-facing side is holding its secrets a while longer.
I love that I can see—in the wide gap between the Norway maple and a different neighbor’s Douglas fir—a distant blue smudge of mountains in Washington State.
In a middle-school art class in my hometown of Aurora, Colorado, I once painted a picture of blue mountains beyond a wide green valley speckled with wildflowers. Blue-green foothills, and mountains in deepening shades of blue and violet. We saw the Rockies every time we walked outside, and I painted those mountains the way I saw them in my mind’s eye. But then another student made fun of them. Mountains aren’t blue, he scoffed. And I remember the sudden flood of doubt. Of course he was right. Mountains are brown and green and gray and snow-white. What was I thinking? Mortified, I cut the entire mountain range off the page and threw it away. I tried pasting the meadow to a new sheet of paper and painting properly tinted mountains, but the glue wrinkled the paper and anyway, the new range was hideous. I trashed the entire thing.
And went outside and saw that I’d been right. There was blue in the hills. I’ve been watching for blue mountains all my life. For a few years I lived at the feet of the Blue Ridge and drank in those blues and violets all day long, feeling like I’d found my own personal Innisfree.
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I’ve thought often of that boy in class with a kind of wry gratitude and ruefulness. Of course I had no idea at the time, but that encounter helped shape me: it taught me to trust my own artistic vision. I knew what I knew. My mountains were blue, and they were beautiful. Everywhere I’ve gone, “standing on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,” I’ve seen them in the deep heart’s core.
Elli says:
Ah, nothing quite like the scalding sense of having done something wrong, when criticized for our creative visions!! I can vividly recall how it felt when my English teacher scoffed at my 14-yo self — I’d written a short sci-fi story featuring visitors from afar whose skin tones were reds and oranges, and her tone was biting: “I can’t believe aliens would be such crazy colors!” followed by a hearty *sniff* … after battling back the tears (I would *not* cry in class!), for oh it wounded me, as she was a favorite teacher and I valued her opinion, I vowed (silently!) to keep them the way they were … but I wrote a different story to submit. *sigh*
On November 16, 2023 at 2:05 pm
Kim says:
I’ve been quietly following your blog for a handful of years and I just want to tell you I’m happy to see these new posts this week! They are delightful to read. Looking forward to your new substack venture, too.
On November 16, 2023 at 3:36 pm
Rowan says:
I just wanted to drop a little ‘thank you’ because I have found your blogs to be very inspiring and a nice place to come to for peace of mind.
On December 9, 2023 at 1:49 pm