PALISADES: NORTH RIVER SUITE VOLUME TWO.

GRAND RIVER SKETCHBOOK.

O.T.W. ON THE WATER: THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER: HIDDEN RIVER SUITE VOLUME ONE

HUDSON HIGHLANDS.NORTH RIVER SUITE VOLUME ONE

Late Light, Sackett’s Harbor. August 27, 2011

Looking at this morning’s reports of Hurricane Hannah battering the Houston area, I am reminded of the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York City in October 2012.
In August of the previous year Hurricane Irene slammed into Puerto Rico and tore up the Outer Banks before reaching the mouth of the Hudson River. Kathie and I decided to get out of town. Impending natural disaster gave use an excuse to take a short vacation prior to the start of the academic year. Deciding where to go was easy; north, away from the storm. The question remained where to go. Maine, Niagara Falls, Lake Champlain and the Saint Lawrence Valley were considered. We finally settled on a destination at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.
Driving north through Binghamton to Oswego, where we visited Fort Ontario. From there we proceeded east and north, following the shoreline until we came to Sackett’s Harbor. The village is focused on its sheltered anchorage and waterfront, which is lined with an assortment of dining establishments and a brewpub. Dividing the Harbor from Black River Bay is a crooked finger of land known as Navy Point. During the war of 1812, Britain and the United States were locked in an arms race. Britain commenced building a powerful fleet in the shipyards at Kingston in Upper Canada. The Americans did the same, forty miles away at Sackett’s Harbor, which twice the British tried to capture without success.

The Battle of Sackett’s Harbor. May 29, 1813. Benson J. Lossing. Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812.

In late May of 1813, seven hundred regulars landed at Horse Island, a mile south of the village. After scattering a force of New york militia the Brits marched northeast along the shoreline to be faced with a solid line of defense, which repeated attempts could not penetrate. Owning to poor coordination, British gunboats failed to support the attack. Had they not withdrawn just before the arrival of a full regiment of U.S. regulars, the attacking force would have been destroyed or captured.
To behold the wooded grove and manicured fields south of the on August 27, 2012, it was difficult to imagine the momentous events of May 29, 1813. News reports were coming in of storm damage along the Jersey Shore, Long Island and the New York metro-area. After barreling over the city, the storm uprooted trees in the Catskills before pressing north to Lake Ontario. We awoke the following morning to a howling gale. Sheets of rain lashed the windows of our hotel-room for most of the day. By evening skies were clearing. Dark clouds raced across the harbor in the failing light.

Looking across Navy Point, Sackett’s Harbor. After the Storm. August 28, 2011.

In the morning we checked the news, only to discover that stretches of the New York State Thruway, I-81, Route 17 and numeorus back roads were impassible at many locations. Exploring the north end of town after breakfast, we found a former army base had been developed into a marina and hotels. Former officers’ quarters seemed to have become private dwellings. In the small national cemetery associated with Madison Barracks we found the grave of explorer Zebulon Pike (1779-1813) whose 1806 expedition to locate the source of the Arkansas River was a thinly veiled attempt to gather intelligence about the disposition of Spanish military deployments in what is now Colorado and New Mexico.

Imaginative depiction of the death of Zebulon Pike.

Following his capture of Fort York (Toronto) on April 27, 1813 Pike was standing on the parade-ground of Fort York (Toronto), interrogating a British sergeant. Unbeknownst to Pike, is men and most of their captives, a slow fuse had been lit inside the fort’s powder-magazine. The explosion launched tons of debris into the heavens, including a large stone block which crushed Pike. What was left of the newly minted general was returned to Sackett’s Harbor for burial. In retaliation for the death of their commander, and for what many on the ground regarded as a cowardly act, the village of York was put to the torch. Sixteen months later the British replied by burning the U.S. Capitol, The White House, and other government buildings in Washington D.C.
Extending our stay another night, we planned to return to the city on the following day. August 30 arrived with many road-closures still in effect. Instead of fighting our way back, we decided to head west to Seneca Falls, drop down along the shores of Lake Cayuga to Ithaca, hoping by then that the highways leading back to New York City would have been cleared. But that is another story.

James McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe

Read prior dispatches from The Sketchbook Traveler by James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020

Coming Soon: Hardcover. $24.95. From Schiffer Publishing. Release date: September 2020.

Massanutten Mountain from Belle Grove Plantation. October 18, 2014

Catching a few more winks before reveille, federal troops camped west of the Valley Turnpike just north of a tributary of the north fork of the Shenandoah River called Cedar Creek. Awakened by the piercing yell of thousands of confederates, slumbering federals were driven out of their bivouac. Rather than follow up on the surprise attack with determined pursuit, confederate soldiers fell to looting. By the time order was restored by their commanders, the confederates faced two army corps deployed along the high ground two miles to the north. As the opposing forces met, a crushing counterattack drove the rebels back across Cedar Creek in disarray. Following his defeat on October 19, 1864 Jubal Early never again commanded troops in battle. His opponent Philip Sheridan was promoted to the rank of major in the regular army. The pretty wife of one of his cavalry commanders delivered captured flags to President Lincoln at the white House. She and her husband Autie Custer became celebrities overnight. The drama played out in the shadow of Massanutten, synclinal limestone ridge rising twenty-three hundred feet above the Shenandoah valley in Northern Virginia.

Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899) had been born in Windsor, New York. After completing his secondary education, he taught briefly in Pennsylvania before opening a school in Augusta County, Virginia. Moonlighting as a mining engineer, he took up topographical drawing as a hobby. When sectional conflict erupted in 1861, Hotchkiss joined the confederate army. His mapmaking skills and intimate knowledge of the rails and byways of the Shenandoah Valley made him an invaluable asset to the process of collecting military intelligence and planning operations. On October 18, 1864 Hotchkiss and confederate commander General Jubal A. Early climbed up to Pilot Knob on Massanutten mountain, to view the deployment of Horatio Wright’s VI Corps atop the bluffs north of Cedar Creek.

Jedediah Hotchkiss. Map of the battlefield of Cedar Creek. October 19, 1864. the northern end of Massanutten Mountain including Pilot Knob is at the bottom center of the map. MY POV was in the center of grid-section 2-3 horizontal x 4-5 vertical, looking southeast.

I first encountered Hotchkiss’s maps when I met paper conservator Susan Filter. A friend of Roy Goodman, curator of collections at the American Philosophical Society, Susan was working on a large project conserving Hotchkiss material in the collection of the Library of Congress. Timing was perfect. I was at that moment preparing to move to Richmond, Virginia to explore the physical memories of the Civil War, in the form of battlefields threatened by development. Part of my process required comparing historical maps with modern roadmaps and USGS topographical sections. Like Hotchkiss, I was an autodidact where mapmaking was concerned.

James L. McElhinney. Map of the 143rd anniversary reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg. Fairfield PA. July 2, 1996

On October 15, 2014 I traveled to Middletown Virginia, to participate in the 150th anniversary observances of the battle of Cedar Creek. My role in the reenactment as quartermaster for the National Regiment included laying out the federal camp according to regulations, into a series of company streets, with a separate row of tents for the headquarters and staff. This required measuring the appropriate distances between each street using a Gunter’s chain, then laying them onto the ground with stakes and surveyor’s tape. In effect, the result was a giant drawing several hundred feet in length. I had done something similar the previous year in laying out the camp for the National Regiment behind the Pennsylvania Monument, for the National Park Service Sesquicentennial of the battle of Gettysburg.

Panoramic view of the federal camp at Gettysburg. July 1-3, 2013

The second step involved directing tenants to their proper place in the camp. More than once someone would set up in the street by lining up the back of their tent with the tape-line. One or two grumbled about having to take everything down and set up again. One feisty individual refused to correct their error, suffering ridicule until he complied. Spraining an ankle before the day was over, I was forced to find quarters in the town. Being hors de combat for the weekend I hobbled around camp for a while, then made my way over to Belle Grove Plantation.

Belle Grove Plantation. Middletown Virginia. October 18, 2014

At the time none of us could have foreseen the events that would follow a three years later, when a suspicious device resembling a pipe-bomb was discovered at the 2017 Cedar Creek reenactment. No one was injured. Following in the wake of neo-confederate and Alt-right protests in Charlottesville a few months prior, anti-fascist activist were blamed for the stunt. Subsequent investigations revealed the culprit was a deeply troubled individual who had been banished from the reenacting unit to which he belonged. The annual reenactment was cancelled in 2018. Attendance the following year suffered from lingering fears stemming from the 2017 bomb-threat. Cedar Creek battlefield is one of the most beautiful and picturesque pieces of rolling rural landscape in Virginia. It and the historic Belle Grove mansion have been preserved by the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation, a private nonprofit organization for which the annual reenactments provided a much-needed source of revenue. Plans are underway to hold another reenactment on October 17-18 of this year. In the midst of a global pandemic, and one of the most chaotic election years in U.S. history, all is uncertain. It may be that by lashing out at monuments, American society is drawing on some fundamental iconoclastic Puritanism. Monuments after all, did not enter the canon of American art in any serious way until the late nineteenth century. The land is a different story. New England village greens, and southern courthouse squares represent common ground, where neighbors meet in peace. Fields and pastures where neighbors met in battle are no less sacred. All is hallowed ground.

“In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

–Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914)

J.L. Chamberlain in the uniform of a brigadier general, ca. 1865

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Peruse previous posts here. Dispatches #1-70. April 1-June 8, 2020.

Coming Soon: Hardcover. $24.95. From Schiffer Publishing. Release date: September 2020.

At the outbreak of COVID-19, Kathie and I retreated to our Manhattan apartment. Sitting down to write every day temporarily replaced the practice of making visual art. Family, friends and colleagues endured similar confinement. These posts were written with them in mind, in solidarity with others sheltering-in-place. Graham White designed a calendar-grid compendium of seventy quotidian dispatches posted between April 1 and June 8. On June 15 these posts moved to a weekly schedule. Open the link. Pick a destination. Enjoy!

Click on the image below:

Sample view. Sixteen of seventy thumbnail links to Quaranteam Dispatches. Designed by Graham White.

COMING SOON:

Coming Soon: Hardcover. $24.95. From Schiffer Publishing. Release date: September 2020.

Follow The Sketchbook Traveler on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram.

Peruse previous posts here. Dispatches #1-70. April 1-June 8, 2020.

Thatcher’s Island from Long Beach. Cape Ann. Thursday April 12, 2012

Cape Ann is a headland on the Massachusetts coast located forty miles northeast of Boston. The name has come to designate the island from which it projects into the Atlantic, separated from the mainland by a marshy channel known as the Annisquam River. The island has been a magnet for artists since the nineteenth century.

Nautical map of Cape Ann.

Nathaniel Rogers Lane, better-known as Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) became a celebrated painter of maritime subjects characterized by a refinement and use of light later dubbed Luminism. Winslow Homer spent the summer of 1880 living on Tenpound Island, in the middle of Gloucester harbor. Other seasonal residents of Cape Ann include Anna Hyatt Huntington, Walter Hancock, Paul Manship, Edward Hopper and Jo Nivison; Marsden Hartley, John Marin. Like Provincetown, Gloucester became an art colony, and summer resort. Unlike P-town, Cape Ann’s quarries and blue-collar maritime industries continue to contribute to the local economy year round.

Gloucester Harbor: Tenpound Island from Stage Fort. Wednesday September 4, 2013.

Cloudburst over the Atlantic, from Rockport Massachusetts. Monday April 1, 2013.
I first visited Cape Ann en route to a family vacation on Mount Desert Island. After lunch in Rockport we visited the tourist shops along Bear Skin Neck. Hand-whittled Old Salts, wooden Sperm Whale welcome-plaques, along with views of Motif Number One tempted shoppers with a dizzying array of decorative souvenirs. Even in my teens I knew about Homer. Lane (then “Fitz Hugh”) was a revelation. Sunday painters had set up along the landside bulkhead, focused on the red fishing-shack famed as prime among all dockside motifs. Bernard Chaet (1924-2012) and his family kept a summer cottage a mile north in the village of Pigeon Cove. Driving by Motif Number One he would shout advice at its worshippers.
“More blue!”

Fitz Henry Lane. (1806-1865) Stage Fort Across Gloucester Harbor. 1862. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

My first visit to Bernie on Cape Ann was during the summer of 1976, shortly after my graduation from Yale. Serving as his teaching assistant during my final year in the MFA program, we had developed a friendly rapport. My companion at the time was Randi Danforth, whose family lived in Groton. As she visited friends on the North Shore, I drove up to Cape Ann to call on the Chaets. Bernie had grown up in Boston. He and his friend Alan Fink, the founder of Alpha Gallery purchased seasonal homes near an old quarry in the hamlet of Pigeon Cove. At some point, Bernie had taken to rising in the morning to paint the sunrise from Cathedral Rocks, and other points along the rocky shoreline. It became his motif number one for as long as he was physically capable of negotiating the broken ground along the rocky shore. This discipline, his practice yielded some marvelous improvisations that resonated with his lifelong love of Jazz.

Bernard Chaet. Warm & Yellow. 1990. Watercolor. Courtesy Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA

The painter Dan Gustin graduated from Yale two years before me. He remained in New Haen for several years until he landed a teaching-job in Chicago. I sometimes lent him my student ID so that he and Bernie could play tennis on campus. One day Dan arrived at Chaet’s house on Cold Spring Avenue, ready to hit the court. He rang the doorbell. Nothing.
He rang it again several times. No response. Coming from inside the house Dan heard music. Stepping off the porch he looked through the living-room window. Spinning in the stereo was a jazz album. Not Chet Baker, something wild. Bernie danced around the room in a bacchanalian frenzy. I witnessed something similar one evening when Bernie and I went to listen to his old friend, jazz trumpeter Ruby Braff (1927-2003) at Jimmy Ryan’s on 54th Street in Manhattan. Bernie paid the cover. I bought the first round of drinks. Scotch on the rocks. The venue was intimate. That night is was packed. Looking around the room through a haze of cigarette smoke, there was no sign of Bernie. Seated at a small table was a man possessed. Arms flailing, fingers snapping, both knees bounced up and down. His head shook from side-to-side like a retriever shedding water. I put a drink in front of him. He paused and looked up. It was Bernie.
“This is a real treat” he said. “This guy is GREAT!”
Arriving in Pigeon Cove one Sunday for brunch and a visit, I found Bernie putting the stereo speakers onto the window-sills, facing outward. He switched on the radio and cranked up the volume, so we could sit in the yard while listening to his Sunday morning radio show. Ninon stepped out of the house.
“Bernard. Don’t you think the music is bit loud? We don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”
“Screw ‘em,” he replied with a wicked grin. We had to listen to their Rock & Roll all hours of the night. They can listen to some REAL music!”

Cathedral Rocks from the Emerson Inn, Rockport Massachusetts. Monday September 3, 2012

Over the years I returned to Gloucester. Kathie’s parents lived in Andover. Visiting them we would often make excursions to Essex and Cape Ann. Attending a conference at the Cape Ann Historical Museum, we stayed at the Emerson Inn near Cathedral Rocks. The years had finally caught up with Bernie, who had lost the nimbleness that once allowed him to scramble over the rocks to the sea at dawn. I visited a few of his motifs, but never saw them in the same way. For Bernie, the scattered boulders, jumbled clouds, rhythmic waves, and dancing light were like players in a jazz-ensemble; their music translated into marks and colors.

Bernard Chaet. Bass Rocks. 2001-2002. Oil on canvas. 18 x 18 inches.Courtesy Lewallen Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Bernard Chaet’s estate in represented by Alpha Gallery in Boston and by Lewallen Gallery in Santa Fe

James McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe

Read prior dispatches from The Sketchbook Traveler by James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020

Coming Soon: Hardcover. $24.95. From Schiffer Publishing. Release date: September 2020.

March 8, 1862 Battlefield of Pea Ridge/Elkhorn Tavern. Arkansas. April 7, 2014.

In February of 2014 Kathie began a residency at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Arkansas. She had never been to that part of the country. I had traveled to the Ozarks once before.

In 1977, Yale School of Art professor Bernard Chaet (1924-2012), and his wife Ninon Lacey enlisted my help in collecting a few pieces of furniture from the home of his wife’s parents in Keene, New Hampshire. Judge Lacey’s house was being put on the market. All of its contents had to be removed. Upon my arrival I was stunned to encounter Guy Harris on a similar errand. We  had known each other since we were toddlers, but had grown apart over the years. He and I both shared a passion for drawing. While Guy remained focused on wildlife subjects, I was drawn more to the figure and landscape.  He had recently married Ninon’s niece Liz Lacey, whom I had never met before. Later that summer I visited Guy and Liz at their home in the Lehigh Valley, only to learn that they were planning to relocate to the Ozarks. Almost fifty years later, the details are vague. Guy and Liz each owned a vehicle, which raised the question who would drive a truckload of household goods from eastern Pennsylvania to northern Arkansas. Being to parsimonious to hire a moving company, I was invited to join the expedition. Once the rented truck was packed, Guy took the wheel, while I drove his heavily laden Japanese-made pickup truck. Liz stayed behind to clear out whatever remained, close the house, and drive to their new home near Mountain View.  A full account of our road-trip will have to wait. Driving through Memphis, I noticed a bumper-sticker that read “THE KING AIN’T DEAD. HE JUST MOVED TO A BETTER TOWN.”

Stone County Courthouse, Mountain View, Arkansas. Like many buildings in town, the courthouse is built of the distinctive yellow local limestone.

Crossing the Big Muddy, Interstate 40 traversed miles of dark soil planted with cotton, blanketed with a pungent cloud of Malathion. Veering off to the north we traveled on blue highways—two-lane blacktop. As with crossing the plains, one ascends in elevation imperceptibly. Our route skirted the White River, which descends through a series of man-made lakes along the Missouri border. They in turn are fed by another series of lakes near Eureka Springs into which flows the headwaters of the White River, the watershed forming what resembles a giant question-mark, looping up toward Missouri before draining into the Mississippi just north of the mouth of the Arkansas River. The Ozarks are unlike the Appalachians or the Rockies in that they are more down than up, created not by geologic upheavals forming high peaks and ridges, but heavily-wooded table-lands riven by declivities hewn by the White River and its tributaries. Much of the town of Mountain View is built of locally-quarried yellow sandstone, similar to the material used for fence-posts found in treeless areas of the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. It took me a while to realize that the language people spoke was English. The house was off a winding mountain road south of town. I was taken aback at my first sight of it. The wooden bungalow had solid bones, but could be described as having been preserved by benign neglect. The yard was completely overgrown. It needed to be cleared, as did the small barn that stood nearby. We each carried a sidearm lest we encounter a copperhead, which we did more than once. Blue-tailed Skinks ran all over the buildings. One of the first things we carried into the house was a large terrarium, which we set up on the porch. Millions of insects chattered and screamed in the enervating heat. Running into town, we collected necessities at the hardware store. A group of men clustered around a new color-television. Recognizing the theme music, I peered over their shoulders. Onscreen were the towers and canyons of Manhattan. Bald cop. Lollipop. Who loves ya, baby?
We were a long way from The Big Apple.
Returning to the house, Guy slammed on the brakes. Reaching under the seat, he handed me a large Mason-jar. Jumping out of the pickup he ran back down the road. Moments later he returned, gingerly holding a struggling tarantula by the waist. Quickly I unscrewed the lid. Planting its feel firmly against the rim, the stubborn arachnid resisted confinement with all its strength. Guy would not be denied. Flipping the spider upside-down he dropped it legs up into the jar. Before the fearsome creature could right itself, I closed the jar. Guy stabbed five or six air-holes in the lid with a large belt-knife. The first chore to be tackled upon our return was releasing our quarry into the terrarium. We discovered at sunrise the cover of the glass box ajar. Our guest had vanished. Due to leave in a day or two, I was nervous about our new roommate. He must have cared little for our company, as we never saw him again.

Following the College Art Association meeting in Chicago Kathie headed for Bentonville, while I returned to New York. Crystal Bridges provided scholars with accommodation in “The Farmhouse”—a sprawling home beside the museum campus. She was the only resident at the time, and could walk to the museum by way of a footpath from the backyard through a wooded margin. As resident scholar, she was given an office from which she was expected to conduct most of her activities. The working environment was very corporate, orderly and civil. Once an employee who succumbed to a fit of blue language was sent home to ponder what they had done.

“Eleven” restaurant: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Bentonville, Arkansas

During one of my visits to see her I traveled to Pea Ridge battlefield. As a deluge of ink celebrates the deeds of Lee, Jackson, McClellan and Grant, little attention is paid to Civil War actions fought west of the Mississippi. Apache Pass, Cabin Creek, Honey Springs, Prairie Grove and Wilson’s Creek are eclipsed by Antietam, Chattanooga and Gettysburg.

Battlefield of Pea Ridge.

Established as a military park in 1956, the battlefield of Pea Ridge—also known as Elkhorn Tavern—stretches northward of Route 86 between Avoca and Garfield. On March 7-8, 1862, farm field had yet to be planted. Trees were bare. The mercury hovered near freezing.Confederate forces under Earl van Dorn had been driven out of Missouri, pursued by federals under Samuel R. Curtis. Like a dizzy cotillion, the two-day engagement followed a week-long series of disjointed maneuvers by both armies, each attempting to outflank or envelope the other. Franz Siegel, a firebrand Forty-Eighter whose Germans constituted nearly half of Curtis’s forces, bristled under the authority of his American-born commanding officer. While fellow West Pointer Eugene Asa Carr had no difficulty working within the chain of command, some of Curtis’s officers commanding volunteer units were inclined to exercising their own initiative. Despite the contempt shown militia by the regulars, during the fight a quick-thinking Missourian plugged a gap in Curtis’s line.Confederates also struggled with command and control issues. Earl van Dorn had his hands full coordinating Ben McCullough’s Texans, Sterling Price’s Missourians and a Cherokee Brigade led by Albert Pike (1809-1891).

As a sidebar, a monument in Washington DC honoring Pike’s contribution to Freemasonry was destroyed by protesters on June 19th of this year. A strong advocate of sculptress Lavinia Ellen “Vinnie” Ream (1847-1914), Pike sponsored her membership in the Order of the Eastern Star. Ream had an antebellum romantic relationship with Cherokee leader Elias Boudinot(1835-1890). After the war Vinnie was rumored to have been the secret lover of General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891).

Vinnie Ream. 1847-1914. Celebrated beauty and noted American sculptor whose portrait of Lincoln in the the U.S. Capitol. Lincoln sat for the portrait just prior to his assassination. Mary Lincoln gave Ream the clothes Lincoln wore at Ford’s Theater, so that she could complete the sculpture. Ream’sportrait of Admiral David Farragut stands in the eponymous square in Washington D.C., opposite the Army-Navy Club. In this photograph Vinnie is shown wearing regalia of the Order of the Eastern Star.

When the two armies finally met, it was across farm-fields north of Sugar Creek, fifteen miles northeast of Bentonville. Along the north bank of a feeder-creek to the north is an unpaved trace traversed by the Cherokee and other tribes in 1837-39, bound for Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears.

Telegraph or Wire-Road, near Elkhorn Tavern. This roadway was traversed in 1837-39 by victims of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The various routes followed by Cherokee and other eastern indigenous tribes is known as The Trail of Tears.

Observing federal deployments near Leetown, Texas general Ben McCullough was shot from his horse by a federal marksman. His death was kept secret for reasons of morale, adding to confusion within the confederate command structure. The first day of fighting was bloody, confused and indecisive. Federal soldiers killed by confederate Cherokees were subjected to scalping, and ritual mutilation. When the sun rose on March 8, confederate commander Earl Van Dorn was informed that his supply train had been withdrawn, a logistical blunder that put him on a cautious footing. Curtis presented the confederates with a textbook line-of-battle across the Telegraph Road facing an eminence known as Big Mountain. Sigel’s artillery opened fire on confederates sheltering below the rise, blasting trees into splinters, shattering the cliff-face into bits of rocky shrapnel. The federal left under Osterhaus attacked the battered rebels, followed by the center led by Jefferson C. Davis and the right, under Eugene Carr. Running low on ammunition, despite superior numbers, Van Dorn ordered a withdrawal, leaving much of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas under federal control.

Battle of Leetown (March 7, 1862) and Elkhorn Tavern (March 8) collectively known as the Battle of Pea Ridge.

The park road carries visitors through fields and woodlots that retain in much the same positions they held in 1862. My rental-car passed cyclists pedaling along the edge of the road. Clusters of cannon mark interpretive sites. Elkhorn Tavern has been reconstructed, with a weathered Wapiti skull decorating it s forward gable. The Telegraph Road or “Wire-Road” that existed during the battle shadowed the same foot-trace followed by victims of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, as they approached their destination in Oklahoma—or “Indian Territory,” as it was known at the time. From parking-areas along the winding road at the summit of Big Mountain, trails lead off to different scenic prospects along the rocky escarpment. Choosing a view overlooking the battlefield of March 8, I opened my sketchbook and produced a watercolor painting across one page-spread. Noting the layout of the fields, tree-lines, and a low prominence known as Little Mountain, I was mindful that the fissured ledge at my feet was where so many confederate casualties were suffered by Siegel’s bombardment. Gone is the caravan of refugees. Gone is the din of mortal combat; the moans of the wounded, and the harvest of death. What I beheld was more than historic scenery; a palimpsest of pioneer enterprise, indigenous genocide, and internecine violence that over time has become both educational tool and recreational destination. Similar tales abide in any location, should one make the effort to discover them.

Inscribed across the top of the pages: “View of Pea Ridge Battlefield from the great overlook above Elkhorn Tavern. 4/7/14”

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Peruse previous posts here. Dispatches #1-70. April 1-June 8, 2020.

Little Round Top. May 4, 2017. The hillside has been restored to its July 2, 1863 appearance.

On July 1, 1863 the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Robert E. Lee had engaged elements of the Army of Potomac west of the Pennsylvania college-town of Gettysburg, eighty miles northwest of Washington City. By nightfall the confederates had driven the federals back through the town into defensive positions on a series of hills and ridges stretching southward.
Overnight the federals dug in. By morning the Union line resembled an inverted fishhook. Its eye dangled perilously to the south, around a pair of small hills known as the Round Tops.

Map of the disposition of the Union and Confederate armies at Gettysburg. July 2, 1863

While Lee seemed to concentrate his attacks to the north at Cemetery Ridge and Culp’s Hill, Longstreet’s Division attempted to repeat Jackson’s victorious maneuver at Chancellorsville two months prior, by embarking on a circuitous flank-march concealed by Seminary Ridge. Lee’s tidy left-right punch was distracted by Sickles’s corps advance into a peach orchard half a mile west of the federal lines. Sickles lost a leg. His troops were driven back to their starting-points, but the fighting cost Lee a modicum of momentum. As a former member of the elite Corps of Topographical Engineers, keenly aware that his talented opponent possessed an uncanny sense of terrain, federal commander George Meade dispatched another Topog—G. K. Warren to reconnoitre the ground around Meade’s exposed left flank.

Gouvernor Kemble Warren. (1830-1852)

View from Little Round Top. May 4, 2017

Surveying the fields and tree-lines from the summit of Little Round Top, Warren confirmed its vulnerability. Strong Vincent’s Brigade was rushed south to its defense. Rocks were hastily piled into makeshift breastworks on the slopes and summit. Posted on the far left of Vincent’s line was the Twentieth Maine, commanded by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain who before the war had taught rhetoric at Bowdoin College.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914)

Repulsing furious confederate attacks, running low on ammunition, Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge. The vertiginous slope was wooded and littered with bounders. As the guns fell silent and the smoke cleared, a regiment of Alabamians beheld hundreds of Down-Easters leaping from boulder to bounder, rushing downhill at them with sharp, naked steel. Many broke and ran. Others threw down their weapons. No further attempts were made by confederates to take the position. Many historians credit Chamberlain’s quick thinking with the salvation of the federal army on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg. Eleven months later Chamberlain was seriously wounded in front of Petersburg. During his long convalescence Chamberlain traveled with his wife, back to Little Round Top. Twenty-five years later, veterans gathered to dedicate a monument to the Twentieth Maine. A modest block of Maine granite was unveiled on October 3, 1889, at very spot where the regimental colors had stood on July 2, 1863. During the ceremony Chamberlain rose to address his comrades in arms.

“In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

Kathie at Little Round Top. May 4, 2017

Kathie and I visited Little Round Top on May 4, 2017. Over the past ten years the National Park Service has been restoring the battlefield to the same configuration of fields, tree-lines and woodlots that existed on July 1-3, 1863. The removal of the scrubby tangle of brush, briars and vines that had clung to the hillside for more than a century revealed the haphazard defenses assembled by Vincent’s Brigade just before they were stuck by Longstreet’s relentless flank-attack. These physical memories of bloody conflict; earthworks borne of mortal necessity are far more compelling than stone and bronze memorials.

Breastworks on Little Round Top erected by Vincent’s Brigade. July 2, 1862

Fanciful depiction of the breastworks at Little Round Top from Frank Leslie’s Newspaper.

I have visited Gettysburg National Military Park more times than I can remember. Among hundreds of markers, statues and Beaux-Arts baubles scattered across the battlefield, none possesses greater modesty and dignity than that humble grey block, its capstone like the roof of a fisherman’s hut. The means were on hand, but not the desire to commission a weeping angel, or soldier swinging a musket.
To Yankee fishermen, sawyers, lumberjacks, clerks and professors who had suffered and survived. who had seen friends torn apart by volley-fire, or perishing with fevers, there was no point in glorifying what they achieved. It was enough to say we stood here, fought and bled, and did what needed to be done.

Twentieth Maine Monument, Gettysburg National Battlefield. Dedicated October 3, 1889.

Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria Mori

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Peruse previous posts here. Dispatches #1-70. April 1-June 8, 2020.

The Battenkill by Whipple’s Dam, Greenwich, New York. Saturday August 12, 2017.

One of the more celebrated tributaries of the freshwater section of the Hudson is the Battenkill River. Springing forth in verdant bottomlands northeast of East Dorset, the brook flows through a series of ponds until it becomes a viable creek outside of Manchester, Vermont.
Flowing southward past the foot of Mount Equinox, the Battenkill courses through the village of Arlington, where it bends to the west. Passing a winding gap, it enters the Hudson valley. Known to indigenous tribes as Ondawa, or Dionoondehowee—she who opens the door.
An alternate etymology is that Batten-kill is a variation of Bart’s-kill, named after colonial settler Bartholomew Pietersen van Hogeboom (1640-1702). Kill is the Dutch word for creek.
Yet another explanation claims the river is named after one of its feeder-streams that springs from a den of airborne rodents. The name of the local indigenous Horicon tribe of the Mahican/northern Lenape nation means clear water. It is also one of the Amerindian names for Lake George. Stretches of the river are reserved for fly-fishing.
Nearly forty years ago the author James Howard Kunstler and I drove out to Eagle Bridge, close to the Vermont border. Unfolding my easel along the bank, I laid out my palette and a fresh canvas, as Jimmy pulled on his hip-waders and ventured into the river. The day was warm. A steady breeze brushed the surface of the dark glittering water. Leaf-laden trees lined the banks. Whispering foliage, rushing water, occasional birdsong and a chorus of insects had a hypnotic effect. Jimmy moved from one point to another, in search of a position from which to introduce a feathery barb to a hungry trout. Breaking this reverie was a sudden commotion, as Jimmy loudly berated some poor rustic for dipping a baited hook in the stream. Perhaps it was a spinner. All but flies were verboten on this trophy-run of the fabled Battenkill. Waving his fly-rod like the fiery sword of Jophiel, Jimmy drove the chastened meat-slinger from the Edenic riverbank.
We often painted together. On several occasions, one of my studio-assistants posed nude in the river. The Battenkill turns sharply to the north below Shushan, trapping sediment in the bend to form a small island and sandbar, made to order for us as a model’s-stand. One hot summer day while we worked in this manner, we heard loud voices. A regatta of inner-tubes appeared upstream. Passing our tableau, the raucous teens fell silent. The sight of two painters and a naked athletic woman seemed to befuddle, even intimidate them. Once downstream and out of sight, their noisy banter resumed.

Ruined Mill below Rexleigh Bridge. August 12, 2017

Below Shushan the river flows north beneath the covered-bridge at Rexleigh. Turning westward again it passes East Greenwich, Battenville—notable as one of the childhood homes of women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony. The river had been harnessed for hydropower industries downstream at Center Falls and Greenwich (pronounced green-witch by the locals). The Battenkill finally meets the Hudson above Schuylerville, formerly Saratoga—the site of Burgoyne’s surrender in October 1777.
In 1803 Job Whipple dammed the Battenkill. His cotton mill attracted workers who settled near the mill in Whipple City. In 1809, an independent community named Union City was organized.
Despite the local economy’s dependence on southern cotton, a number of safe houses conducted runaway slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Recent archaeological excavations uncovered evidence of four thousand years of human habitation. In 1867 the village was renamed Greenwich. Many of the mills have shot down. Recent times have seen an influx of artists, writers and musicians to nearby communities like Cambridge and Salem. Greenwich is the model for the fictitious village of Union Grove in Jim Kunstler’s dystopian World Made by Hand novels.
On Saturday August 12, 2017, Kunstler and I set up to paint beside the old Whipple dam.
As in his writings, Jim’s paintings embrace an anti-picturesque esthetic. We had painted before at Clark’s Mill, along the Champlain Canal, the mill-ruins at Rexleigh Bridge and various and sundry rural strip-malls. We chose positions close enough for hallooing comments at one another. Cursing his French easel, Jimmy badgered me about working on such a small scale. I gave him hell about dragging around so much baggage. Everything I needed was carried in the pockets of my travel-vest, with the exception of my walking-stick, tripod camp-stool and M1858 U.S. Army pattern canteen. Teens in various modes of bathing attire walked past en-route to some swimming-hole below the dam. The trunk of a large tree had caught on the edge of the dam, its tanged roots reaching for the bank. Another mill-race was in use across the river, feeding power to a small hydroelectric facility. Fifty feet upstream form the dam, a row of swimming-lane buoys was strung across the river, presumably as a warning to kayakers and canoeists. Racing over the dam, sheets of water churned into foam on the rocky shelf below. Scrubby trees cling to the rocky outcrop that marks the transition between the industrial landscape and flat water downstream. The writings of J.B. Jackson remind us that as relics of human endeavor; ruins attest to the impermanence of all such works. Attempts to preserve or restore these sites shape history according to how society wishes to celebrate it. The opposite is expressed by the present outbreak of iconoclasm; objections to the received wisdom as symbolized by public monuments.

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My life is a project. It always has been. On Wednesday, April 1, 2020. Kathie and I were already twenty-four days into self-imposed quarantine. New York City was seeing a sharp rise in new cases, hospitalizations and fatalities. This would continue for several weeks before infection rate showed signs of ebbing. Unable to get to my studio in Haverstraw, New York I kept busy writing, transforming my journals from 1990 to 1992 when I visited and painted Civil War battlefields under threat from development. At the time it seemed like a piquant metaphor for how the American landscape is a quarrel about what it is. In a divided nation thirty years later, it seems timely again. My intention had always been to write a book on the subject. Suddenly I had time to devote to the task.
Pouring over pairings of words and texts, like in my recent exhibition curated by Laura Vookles at Hudson River Museum, it occurred to me to start a quotidian blog that celebrates travel, making art and keeping journals. In other words, the art of paying attention. Perhaps I thought it might provide some with relief from cabin-fever, or soothe the anxiety of those gripped by fear. After more than two months, posting seventy quotidian dispatches helped me get through the siege. I hope they might bring comfort to others.

April 1. North Gate, Hudson Highlands

April 2. Thursday. North-South Lake, Haines Falls, New York

April 3. Friday. Ellis Island, New York Harbor.

April 4. Saturday. Rio Grande near Embudo Station

April 5. Sunday. Sunset, Columbia Railroad Bridge. Schuylkill River

April 6. Monday. The Rio Grande Below Pilar, New Mexico

April 7. Tuesday. Fort Wool, Rip-Raps Island, Hampton Roads, Virginia

April 8. Passover. Twin Bridges at the Mouth of the Sacandaga

April 9. Maundy Thursday. Twin Stone Bridges, Schuylkill River

April 10. Good Friday. Roadside Vista. Rio Grande Gorge

April 11. Saturday. Summit Springs Battleground. Sterling, Colorado

April 12. Easter Sunday. Western Highlands from Boscobel

April 13. Monday. Confluent Des Creuses

April 14. Tuesday. Looking South from Three Angels

April 15. Wednesday. Confluence of Rio Grande and Rio Pueblo de Taos

April 16. Thursday. South Gate. Hudson Highlands

April 17. Friday. Crows’ Nest Mountain. Hudson Highlands

April 18. Saturday. Dragon boat dock, Schuylkill River

April 19. Sunday. From the Rim of Rio Grande Gorge.

April 20. Monday. Below the Railway Connecting Bridge, Schuylkill River

April 21. Tuesday. Poets’ Walk. Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

April 21. Tuesday (part two). Bonus Dispatch: Field Gear

April 22. Earth Day. Picturesque Effluence in the Schuylkill River

April 23. Thursday. The Summit of Eyjafjallajoküll

April 24. Friday. Under the Volcano (Eyjafjallajoküll)

April 25. Saturday. The View from Olana

April 26. Sunday. Outriggers on the Schuylkill

April 27. Monday. Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan

April 28. Tuesday. Revolutionary War Battery, Fort Lee, New Jersey

April 29. Wednesday. Tracking Eliza: An Art-Historical Detective Story

April 30. Thursday. John Burroughs Grave-site, Roxbury, New York

May 1: Sleepy Hollow Sleepy Hollow Sleepy Hollow

May 2: White Rock Canyon

May 3: Yonkers Overlook

May 4: Lloyd hall

May 5: Heather Garden

May 6: Coachella Valley

May 7: Manhattan

May 8: Rondout Creek

May 9: Ghost Cornfield

May 10: Piermont

May 11: Columba Double

May 12: Macchu Picchu

May 13: Hook Mountain

May 14: Cochiti Dam

May 15: The Palisades

May 16: Lone Oarsman

May 17: Stony Point

May 18: Sunset Rock

May 19: Poets’ Walk

May 20: Strawberry Mansion

May 21: Santa Monica Sunset

May 22: Lower Kaaterskill

May 23: Kealakekua Bay

May 24: Hamakua Coast

May 25: Memorial Day

May 26: Mendenhall Ferry

May 27: Butter Hill

May 28: Lake Minnewaska

May 29: Mohonk Preserve

May 30: Bonticou Crag

May 31: Long Path

June 1: GWB

June 2: Tse-Bil’-Ngzigaii

June 3: Mount Greylock

June 4

June 5: Fort Miller

June 6: Lake George

June 7: Humbug Luminism

June 8: Niagara