A Zentangle, An Idea & Something To Read

This is what I decided to do with that last panel of my Be Well Zentangle book. I'm not totally pleased with what I did down the center, did not come out exactly as I envisioned it in my head, but I've always like the Holliebaugh tangle which gives that over and under effect and filling the open spaces with small circles always appeals to me. The quotation is one from a book of quotations I started when following the now defunct Box of Crayons that posted what it called Great Works Quotations. It seemed quite appropriate as zentangling is meant to slow you down.

I have more than one purse or tote bag pattern bought over the years but never made - something always on my to-do list. Yet when a picture of this bag from Charlie's Aunt Vintage Inspired Sewing Patterns by Emma Brennan showed up on my Facebook feed, my immediate reaction was that this might be the perfect thing to show off that wildebeest pelt. Options might be to use the pelt where the wool plaid is shown in the picture - front and back - or just use it in that angled insert and a pocket on the back. And gee, that 2 inch wood button I just bought might work perfectly here too.

Finally, you might enjoy a post by Kelly Rae Roberts titled The Gift of Aging As an Artist. It made me feel so much better about about how my artistic life has changed as I've aged. She speaks from the viewpoint of someone who makes a living with her art, which is something I never have, but still, I find myself nodding along as I read through this.

Turns out, aging as an artist is such a gift. I can feel myself letting go of the chase for relevance and instead tuning into resonance. 

What do you think? Are you aging gracefully or still feeling the need to push and be out there?

Now THIS Is Something Different

The gal who cuts my hair is a long time serious hunter and she can't talk about her hunts with all customers. But having been brought up in a hunting family, I actually enjoy hearing her stories, especially since she is an ethical hunter and nothing she kills goes to waste. Her husband is a taxidermist to boot (talk about a marriage made in heaven!) so many of her best he has mounted for her. The highlight of her hunting career was a safari trip to Africa a few years ago. The company she chose for her trip has what I think you would call a reserve; not a fenced in place where they are raising the animals for the hunt but more managing the area wildlife as it comes and goes off their private land. The meat from game taken is given to local villages and they do all the preparations for the "trophy" parts to return with the hunters. One animal she successfully hunted was a blue wildebeest, also known as a gnu, a native to Africa related to antelope, cattle and goats. Hers looked close to the size of a small cow or big elk, and after mounting, there was quite a bit of hide left over which she offered to me, thinking about how "crafty" I am. I've never worked with anything like this but sensing a challenge I couldn't refuse, I accepted. The hide is quite thick as leather goes and the hair surprisingly soft. I may just admire it for awhile while I'm pondering how to use it. Any ideas?

I had a doctor appointment down in the almost big city last week, and there's a Michaels craft store there which I hoped might have the kind of buttons I'd like for that orphan block pillow. I think the lack of the right buttons in my stash is partly responsible for my not getting on with the project. They didn't have a great selection but you don't need a lot of options if what you do see is just what you were looking for. Not sure what these are made of, possibly wood but could also be nut shell (made in Thailand) and struck me as a bit pricey ($5 a card but I had a 20% off coupon), but I decided worth it to be happy with the final look of the pillow. As for the larger single button, well, it was all alone, nothing else like it, and it spoke to me. It might be perfect for a book closure, who know? I just couldn't leave it there. 20% off! 

Lighthearted Musings

Photo by George Sanker

July is nearly over, and I think I will miss this calendar photo of the American Purple Gallinule. Look at those feet! You'd think they'd be an encumbrance but in fact, they are purpose built for walking on floating vegetation and clinging to plant stems. Laugh if you will but their huge clawed feet are their specialty for survival.

If that doesn't make you smile, perhaps this video will. I had saved it thinking it would be much longer than it is but worth watching when I had more time. Who among us has not faced "creative anxiety and procrastination", the theme of author Fredrik Backman's talk? You won't believe what he has to say in such a short amount of time!

And then there's this post from Ellen Anne Eddy: Repetition:The Nervous Person's Friend. Ellen is always so open and honest in her posts and this one is no exception as she muses about the breakdown of the body as we arrive in our seventies (I'm with you on that one, Ellen). But I also agree with what she has to say about this art form we embrace that is so full of doing the same thing over and over. Here's a sample but do check out the entire post.

"Part of it is that repetitious actions put us in a different mode and zone. It’s been called right brain thinking, but I think it needs the reinforcement of physical action, particularly action that doesn’t take a lot of thought...Thank God for repetition. For mindless tasks that eventually build art. They also bring quiet, piece, peace and courage. On the other side, enough blue, purple, orange and yellow is an excellent color therapy. Color really is an antidepressant."

I also came across a couple of John O'Donohue quotations this week which I found surprisingly fitting for the artist in me rather than just the spiritual which is his milieu. They really uplifted me, and if you need uplifting in any way, perhaps they will resonate with you as well.

"May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take."

"May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer but do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more" 

And may you have an astounding and fearless and lighthearted week!

Resolved

Awkward Teenage Stage from February

Down to the last lingering project on my worktable, and irritated with myself that I'd not been able to move past being stuck, I spent some time over the weekend resolving the resolution word journal page. Goodness, high time to get on with it this many months past the beginning of the year. Above you see where I left it, still in an "awkward teenage" stage: ok but lacking. Addition of a few tan strips to balance the brown of the clock along with some hand written text helped but not enough.

Less awkward resolved version

Here it is after a breakthrough moment as I shuffled through my bin of collage materials and stumbled upon some possible solutions to get past the awkward stage. Still a little disjointed (I still struggle with covering up things I've strategically placed and softening edges for a less regimented look). But looking more complete.

Testing stamp & paint on Kraft Tex and gluing translucent bag images

One thing I didn't want to lose was the way the blue and yellow watercolor paint from the first layer gave this a bright positive feel. So I tended to paint around what was still showing through as I tried to blend or hide problem areas with periwinkle Fresco Finish paint. Not much improvement. There was a particularly troublesome area at the center top where the security envelop papers did not meet and I'd left some white showing at the end of one. The paint just sat there looking like it didn't belong. Finding a piece of fabric I'd stamped with a sun-like design I'd carved gave me my aha moment of what I could add to cover that area while adding more yellow to the spread. Then there was the translucent bag I'd saved that had swirls and stars on it. Would the translucent parts of cutouts actually disappear when gel medium held them in place? A test piece said yes!

Once I stamped that sun in the upper middle, I could see the solution to how to treat the narrow border around the outside of the spread. There were a few places where it had a bit of paint over it, and I wanted it to be clean white, so was considering painting over the outside with white paint. But now I could see that using the same yellow paint as the stamped image gave me the extra brightness I desired and cohesion too. The stamped image needed definition to show up on the security envelop paper so I outlined each part with blue micron pen.

Those stars and swirls really were the final touch that brought it all together. Added a few more encouraging words and am calling it good. Just in time to embark on another free collaging workshop with Laly Mille!

Starting on Rails

It's been a really long time since I bought quilting fabric, even longer since I bought any specifically for a project. But here I am, looking for inspiration for a quilt to go to my goddaughter's latest baby, and I find it in two places: An AQS pattern called Rainbow Rails and a new line of Moda fabric with Noah's Ark theme at my local quilt shop. You can spot the two designs I picked from the line peeking out from under the pinks I mentioned a month ago that had me all in a tizzy and confused. But living with them out like that for so long has helped me calm down and see what is going to work. The more muted pinks go better with the raindrops fabric on the left, the blue fabric in the middle has animals and will be the backing. I ended up getting 3 yds each of the new fabric, unsure of which would be backing and which background, and got it washed and ironed, along with the batiks in the last post, over the weekend. Straining my brain to remember how I set my newer washing machine, digging out the Synthropal, reminding myself how to use Retayne on the batiks. It really has been a long time.

EQ layout print out, Original AQS pattern directions, Graph paper cutting guide

So Saturday was National Quilting Day - did you remember? Did you devote any time to quilting? - and getting started on this quilt was how I planned to spend it, but the fabric prep took up so much time I didn't even get any cutting done as I'd hoped. But because I needed to make changes to the Rainbow Rails pattern to turn it from a big quilt to a smaller one, I was on my own in terms of cutting dimensions and number of pieces and blocks. Another thing I haven't done in ages is use my EQ software to help size things and decide on a layout. But I soon got the hang of it and printed out two versions along with its estimates of fabric requirements. In the end, I decided on a reduced size block of 12 inches set 3 x 4. The raindrops fabric that will be background/sashing/borders is directional so I opted to get out graph paper to determine how best to cut the longest strips since some will run parallel to the selvage while others will run selvage to selvage. It just felt like it would be working in the dark if I didn't do this and now I can confidently start cutting. Not sure if I'll mix in another color other than pink like I did in the mock-up but do like how that looks.

All But The Borders

I didn't manage to do something in the studio every day last week - life intervened at the beginning of it - but I did make good progress on adding quilting to Naomi's quilt. There's a real temptation not to put any quilting in the 4 inch borders but that would just be laziness on my part. I'm considering a looping design which I would trace out on strips of the Golden Quilting Paper. I really like the look of the diagonal quilting through the diamond areas, deciding after all not to free motion any design in the light area.

In the end, there wasn't much dithering over which thread colors to choose for the quilting. I think I knew from the beginning that these two - a variegation of light lavenders and the darker one of blues and purples - would be my choice. If nothing else, I could tell they were favorites by how much thread was already used up off these spools.

Once all the walking foot quilting was done, I pinned the papers with the free motion designs in place with flat flower head pins - it worked really well.

The design fills the corner areas nicely.

The center design though doesn't reach out into the outer points. I'm considering either adding a heart in those spaces or quilting in Naomi's name - or both!

Of course, when you quilt through papers, the paper needs to be removed and I saved that task for Monday of this week, when I checked out a local charity quilting group. I've known about it for quite awhile but they meet on the same day as my art group met, the irony being that I'd invited a quilting friend to join my group at about the same time she invited me to join this group! Well, my group isn't meeting right now so no more excuses! Apparently they had a larger than usual turnout and lots of finished or near finished charity quilts to show during show and tell. A little bit of business and then it was nose to the grindstone as machines started humming, cutting began and pressers stood at the ready to iron seams and binding strips. Their quilts go two places, first to cancer patients, and any extras to a homeless transitions organization. It's been a long time since I've done charity quilting, and yes, I've felt a bit guilty about that, and I had a very good feeling about this group. AND I got all my papers removed from my quilt before it was time to go home. I'm sure I'll be back. Here's an article from 2016 that tells a little more about the group and its origins.

Inspiration Can Be Anywhere

I've had this catalog sitting on my desk in front of the computer for several weeks now. I am not a chicken person when it comes to designs on anything, much less my quilting. And yet, something about these chickens fascinate me. Maybe it's the simplicity of the shapes, ones that should be easy for me to draw. And all those different sizes and shapes of the spots on them. Full disclosure, it took me quite awhile to realize that they were actually holes the the metal chickens and the green of the spots was just the grassy background showing through. None the less, it got me thinking of the many ways I could play with these chickens. Here are a few of the ideas I came up with:

1. Do a simple sketch with pen and fill in the spots and background with colored pens or pencils.
2. Use black acrylic paint to fill in the shape and then dab green acrylic paint on top for the spots.
3. Or use a green Maribu Art Crayon to dab the spots on a black background since it is opaque.
4. And finally, cut the chickens out of black fabric and free cut the irregular spots out of fabric with fusible on the back. Or if feeling really ambitious, cut holes in the black chicken shapes which will have fusible on the back and place them on grassy fabric.
5. Can you think of other ways to interpret these chickens?
   

But I did not try any of these because I had a bum week, spending most of it not feeling very good after I had my flu shot. This has never happened before but it would account for the two awful days when I really didn't feel like doing a thing but lying on the couch and the other days when I was not up to speed. Have decided that the reaction could be because my body is already on overload mending from the surgery. It has passed now, and although I did very little of anything last week, I DID spend a lot of time reading a lengthy science fiction novel with an impending due date a week away. If I had felt better, I might have felt guilty about the hours making my way through the end of the book.

So having done nothing creative all last week (Another full disclosure: all three of my motorcycle racing series were racing Saturday and Sunday so watching 12 races and 3 superpoles pretty much took up the weekend). I took a look at the next Zentangle in the recent series today, and decided it would work up pretty fast. I am not a fan of this overall shape (which they admitted looked like a wonky donut), but it did introduce me to the sand swirl tangle which I can see is a useful filler and similar to some freemotion quilting swirl designs. No metallic pens this time but I did use ArtGraf again in lieu of their pastel pencils and got a surprise. I expected this to be bright red, and if I activated it with water, it probably would be. Instead, it's more the color I was going for on the last zentangle to compliment the coral metallic pen when shading. I'm not crazy about the "rays" of color extending beyond the zentangle and especially didn't like the fact that the center was left blank - very unzentangle. So I filled it in with what they call auras, or what we call echoing.

Little Joys

Here I am  a  month out from my surgery but still pretty limited in what I can do. However, I have been able to extend how far I can walk outside and am thrilled it is not causing pain like it did before surgery. Thanks for all the encouragement from those of you who have left comments on previous posts. I think of my readers as a wonderful cheerleading squad! Also cheering me on and up is my little deck garden. That picture above may not look like much but I have been trying to get sweet peas to climb up that wire grid for several years now with no luck but third time must be the charm.

When you're hurting and struggling and working to just make it through each day, something as small as a simple bloom can bring ridiculous joy as these sweet pea blooms have. And the tiny zinnia bloom below as well. After the initial beautiful blooms died off, the next tight buds simply dried up before opening. I feared that was going to be it for this plant. But here is a subsequent bud that has opened with a few more sure to come and again, it makes for a deep joy that under other circumstances might not be so strong.

I've been looking through some articles bookmarked for reading "when I have more time" which happens to be now and found this one I know I saved to share on the blog. I hope you'll pop over and read it as it touches on several topics related to creativity that get rehashed endlessly among artists: Nick Cage on Creativity, the Myth of Originality and How To Find Your Voice. Here's one sample that I particularly liked because I've always felt it is what I do:

Ada Lovelace postulated in a letter that creativity is the art of discovering and combining — the work of an alert imagination that “seizes points in common, between subjects having no very apparent connexion, & hence seldom or never brought into juxtaposition.” 

And this about original work:

There is no blank slate upon which works of true originality are composed, no void out of which total novelty is created. Nothing is original because everything is an influence; everything is original because no influence makes its way into our art untransmuted by our imagination. We bring to everything we make everything we have lived and loved and tessellated into the mosaic of our being. To be an artist in the largest sense is to be fully awake to the totality of life as we encounter it, porous to it and absorbent of it, moved by it and moved to translate those inner quickenings into what we make.  

Reading this left me remembering that truly, we just need to get busy, do the work, and stop worrying about where it is coming from.

What's Next

Once that quilt was mended, I thought I'd make another book, having set aside supplies for several different ones. But instead, there was some howling from the closet, a "wait a minute, you've been thinking about something else for awhile and what you need is in here" I couldn't resist. The Peace quilt construction left me with negative pieces of the design with fusible on the back. I couldn't toss them - some very big pieces there - and I couldn't quite bring myself to think in terms of cutting them up for some other sort of applique piece. I wanted to make a second quilt using a piece of fabric I knew lurked in this footlocker in the closet, itself lurking under boxes of my framed artwork. I had no idea what a Pandora's Box I was about to unearth and open.

When I went away to college in the 70's, pretty much everyone had some sort of footlocker in their dorm room and mine was this red, white and blue version. After college I hung on to it, using it mostly (if I remember correctly) to store my needlecraft supplies like yarns and cross-stitch cloth and rug hooking supplies and the like. At some point, I started storing fabric in it, and as I transitioned from garment making to quilting, the fabric was more likely to be long lengths of cotton fabric that I didn't want a lot of creases in. But there was also some garment fabric in there, corduroys and even some silks. Underneath this stack, that dark blue rectangle on the right, is actually some corduroy my mother-in-law passed on to me when she gave up on sewing. I'd forgotten it was in there, and forgotten as well why these particular fabrics are stored away here. Peeking out around the other two corners on the right is major yardage of black fabric bought at that same quilt shop I taught at that left that quilt top smelling like cigarette smoke. As I needed black fabric, I'd get it out and cut off a piece. I haven't had to do that for a long time and now I'm wondering if it too harbors some smoke odors.

Here's another layer - a batik, one of my hand-dyes, and a bold contemporary fabric that I bought a lot of because I was so taken with it and it was on sale. I remember my husband asking what I would do with it, and replying that I didn't know, but if nothing else it could be backing. That was some time in the late 90's, when Susan Stein had a quilt shop in the Minneapolis MN area. I was directed there by someone who said I could find Cherrywood Hand-dyes there, and I was overwhelmed by what Susan was carrying - nothing like the usual dark and woodsy Thimbleberries-like quilt fabric popular at that time. Besides the hand-dyes, she carried such bright and modern contemporary fabrics, maybe the only such shop in that part of the country to do so. I was smitten. (And the hand-dyes were instrumental in my friend Judi and I experimenting and eventually selling our own line of hand-dyes.) Once I moved closer to that area, I visited her shop several times, bringing home this big piece that I've never found a home for yet. Perhaps I put these three pieces aside with the thought they could be used together.

This grouping kind of puzzles me. Again, no real recollection of why these ended up in the footlocker. I'm thinking these were in one of those Keepsake Quilting fabric of the month club offerings which in itself was reason for me to keep them together. Note my tendency to end up with multiple colorways of a print.There is an invoice with them showing I bought more yardage of  at least one of them - a lot more.

And here it is, 2 yards of the crane fabric that went with this oriental collection and that I've been thinking about ever since I set aside these negative leftover pieces for a second Peace quilt. Yes, I think it will do nicely since I think it is safe to say I'll never actually make the kimono-style jacket I originally bought this sateen yardage for. I'd forgotten about that leafy tan border running along the selvages which is giving me ideas for thread colors. Yeah, just a little bit excited about this.

But goodness, as I look at the fabric pulled from that footlocker, and the fabric still lurking in it that hasn't seen the light of day for perhaps years, my overriding thought is that I have too much fabric!

A Challenge Story

Here's a story for you - my quilts all seem to have stories behind them. This is a picture of the couch I said the mystery quilt I just mended goes with. Not a very good photo of the upholstery which really does have more green in it but it's the pattern that's important here. It was the inspiration for a quilt I made for a local quilt show challenge when I was living in Brodhead, WI. The theme of the challenge was Seminole, and I'd pondered ever since we'd gotten this couch about replicating that pattern in a quilt. But how to piece something so intricate? I hadn't been seriously quilting all that long, hadn't built up a large arsenal of techniques, and sat at the kitchen table with paper and pencil trying to work it out, about to give up.

And then my husband walked by, paused to observe, then said as he continued on by, "Naw, you'll never be able to work it out." Well, that was the goading I needed (as he well knew as well as he knew that I COULD figure it out) - challenge on! I used the challenge fabric in that center motif, a packet of gradated green Cherrywood Handdyes, and a few other fabrics from my stash. Not quite sure how I managed the math working out the strips that I did piece using Seminole piecing but I obviously did. It's not an exact replica but captures most of the upholstery design.

Look at those tiny pieces!

But that center motif - I just could see how it could be pieced using a Seminole piecing method. Instead, I used a modified version of Cynthia England's freezer paper template piecing method. There's even one template I missed removing - you can hear it crinkle when you press your finger on that place. I haven't had this quilt hanging in the livingroom for years though I've thought of it often, wanting it sharing space with the couch. I've finally dug it out to hang in the spot where I rotate quilts in and out. So wonderful to still love a piece this old (1996) and marvel at how I did it. I'm losing my patience for such fiddly work!

A Close Look At Leaves

Daniel Sroka's Untitled Leaf #662

I've shared Daniel Sroka's macro-photography in the past, and am all agog at his recent collection of autumn leaves. You can view the curated page here. 

I was also intrigued by his Litterfall Gallery Exhibit which includes short videos panning a photo while he describes what has drawn him to this work. It feels like the ultimate in artist statements to me. Go take a look: Rediscovering our Connection to nature.

It Begins

Our weather has definitely turned fall-ish: nights getting near freezing with frost in some places, days sunny but brisk in the upper 50's. Trees have not been readily responding though. For weeks I've only noticed a few trees turning color. The maple these leaves came off of has looked so drab that it was a slight surprise to get a close look and see the leaves doing this very slow turn.

The birch behind my place has also been doing a slow turn. It never goes all at once or even a section at a time, but a few here, a few there. These are from a quaking aspen which is also doing a slow turn while the cottonwoods they mingle with show no sign of succumbing to fall. They are almost leathery compared to the more fragile maple leaf.

I really do try not to bring more leaves home, as I have so many pressed and filed away as it is. But this is what I came home with the other day. I think the yellow bunch are from cottonwoods, although the stand that I walk by is still very much green while the stand a few blocks away has turned yellow. More of the aspen in the middle, quite a bit of subtle and not so subtle variation. They would be good for monoprinting, if I'd just get that geli plate and some paints out. The ones up in the right corner are off the same tree. Why, I wonder, are some bright red and some dark, almost brown, burgundy? And why do I keep bringing them home?

A strange October, none of the turned trees very bright (we've been in drought so that is probably why), many still having very green leaves while mingling with those trees starting to turn, and some standing totally devoid of leaves. Hoping we don't get an early snow before all have a chance to drop. In contrast, I've gotten out some very richly-colored quilts with an autumn theme - one to drape over the chest in the livingroom and one to hang on the wall.

Still Just Too Nice

I looked at the weather forecast, smoke forecast, and my schedule for last week and spotted a small window of opportunity to finally go explore a new trail. I had every intention of getting over to the new Pine Street Woods public hiking/biking/cross country skiing area last summer but was thwarted by pretty much the same issues that have kept me off the trails this year. It's a short 15-20 minute drive across town and up a one lane dirt road with one switchback and several blind corners requiring one to keep to the 15 mph speed limit. But once up to trailheads and visitor center there's a large parking lot and this informative sign.

I'd printed out a map last year to scope out the trails, happy to note that most were around a mile - I don't have the stamina for long hikes like I used to. Was also happy to see that several of them include viewpoints and I am all about the view when I hike. The other interesting thing about these trails is that some link up with older trails outside of the Woods proper. So really, there seems to be something for everyone here. I'd been dithering over taking the Meadow Trail or the Crooked Tree Trail but since this day was around 80 degrees, it was a no brainer to choose the trail heading up into the trees. Since many trails start from generally the same area, I looked around for my Crooked Tree Trail marker to see that pictograms would be my guide.

My trail was a gentle but steady uphill climb along a lovely smooth and relatively wide path that soon ducked into the woods. I was keeping my eye out for crooked trees along the way.

Couldn't help envisioning a Disney cartoon or two looking at this tree with a hip or backside stuck out.

And over here, two trees deciding to be joined at the hip before soaring up into the air.

The quilter in me couldn't help but notice something we do all the time with striped fabric or parallel quilting lines - setting them at right angles to each other. Here it's the bark on one tree running up and down while the bark of the birch next to it shows horizontal lines.

Look how straight and true and very tall they rise as if in competition to see which can grow higher. Looks pretty even to me. No crooked trees here.

When not being intrigued by trees, I get intrigued by the occasional large boulder carried from elsewhere and set down as area's ice age glaciers and floods moved across northern Idaho.

This second one along the trail showed more wear and tear rather than the usual smooth surfaces. The last photo shows a large piece along the back that has cleaved away from the main boulder.

Starting to huff and puff a bit, I finally reached the top of the trail and to my pleasant surprise, the reward of the trail's namesake, the crooked tree!

The small sign in front of it did not tell me any history of the tree or what it is overlooking as I thought it would, but instead this plea to be respectful of it.

They're not kidding about this tree having to work hard to live on this spot. Just look at the exposed roots on either side.

Click for a larger view and spot the sliver of lake in the background

In fact, this is pretty much one big rock outcropping. Just to the left of the tree is an expanse of smooth unbroken rock yards wide.

Just in front of it are smaller but still big rocks as the ground slopes away.

But the trees refuse to be deterred from making a home on this outcropping - hard to see how the roots find purchase.

 

And what about the view? Mountains higher than where I stand, a bit of haze but nothing to worry about.

I zoomed in on the bit of water I could see far off and think it is where the lake starts to become the river outlet. Always houses along the water . . .

. . . and up every narrow canyon. This may be part of a farm as there once was quite a bit of ranching in the area.

Time to head back down the trail. I'd noted on the map and while I was hiking that trails often run next to and cross each other. Here you can see one of the trails that are used by mountain bikes, their tire treads in the dirt, where it crosses my trail. I didn't see any bikes this day.

But not far from the top I was very surprised to see this abandoned car, complete with bullet holes! Well, this WAS once private property but even if it were not, it's not that unusual to run across abandoned cars and trucks like this in northern Idaho. I'm guessing that for now, it's probably more trouble and cost to try to remove it than the Trust can afford.

Local joke - a very large plywood rendition of Big Foot

I do like a loop trail so you see something different coming back to the trail head. And I look forward to returning to the Woods to check out other trails. In the meantime, Big Foot is happy to see you go.