A little bit of provenance...

Two years ago Landon and I took a weekend and went to Wimberly, Texas. There we went through junk shops and prayed we would find a special owl piece. After looking through some shops we slowly walked into the very last shop just minutes before closing time. We looked downstairs and then scowered the upstairs and started to give up on our quest for an owl and then suddenly I looked up and saw this:



(To see some back story on why we were looking for an owl piece click here

We loved it, took it off the wall and left the shop. As we stood on the steps leading to the parking lot Landon felt we should ask the owner if there was a story behind this piece and there was a beautiful story of a boy's fear of owls and a mother's desire to free him from that fear. She also informed us that the story behind any artistic piece is called its "provenance." So, in celebration of the pieces I have for sale to support our adoption I'll be featuring some stories behind the images.

So, let's start with Colorado...The Bells, Reflection and Intimidating






The Maroon Bells are the most photographed mountains of the Colorado Rockies and that is the main reason we found them at all. We basically went on the internet, Googled "Colorado Camping" and there they were - The Maroon Bells - craggy giants of beauty.

I was so excited to see these things that literally when we turned a corner on the street and saw them I ghasped and got a little teary-eyed (can't explain that).

We parked our car, said good bye to modern comfort, got our huge packs and hiked to the first scenic point at the beginning of the park which is where these pictures were taken. A somewhat shallow pond lies just beyond the parking lot and the sky opens up to the mountains. The Aspens were right in the midst of their transition to fall. We took lots of pictures and we asked someone to take a picture of us and luckily the person we asked was a photographer who then changed out my lens for his wide angle lens and we got this shot of us:



It's weird when you are looking at something so big - I felt like people talked more quietly. The stately beauty of the mountains was breathtaking and to see their perfect reflection in the water was just as impressive. It's good sometimes to feel small before such mountains and at that point I felt miniscule.

We hiked all the way to the base of those bells - 7 horizontal miles, 10,000 (yes, ten thousand) verticle miles. I've never been so physically challenged in all my life. I hit a wall and gave up before we even met the halfway point of our original goal but I was proud of myself.




We made a great home in this alpine valley just below that first, intimidating bell and every morning watched pink sunlight ignite those mountain faces and every night watched the shadow cover them.



Beautiful (overwhelmingly beautiful) and intimidating all at the same time. Meeting God will probably be like that, magnified of course but those mountains gave me a taste of the glory of a heavenly kingdom prepared for us.

Enjoy the pictures! Again, available on my website at www.lschottartistry.com, under "Clients" and the password "schottadoption". Thanks everyone!

~L&L