Random picture thread for Friday

THIS WEEK’S MOUNTAIN DISCOVERIES

From my office balcony I have probably one of the best views of the Alaska volcano that has been the subject of recent national news coverage in recent weeks - Mount Spurr. As the active volcano closest to Alaska’s largest city of Anchorage it has become newsworthy as a consequence of recent volcanic activity that has merited the Alaska Volcano Observatory issuing alerts of a likely eruption similar to ones in recent decades that have covered the city of Anchorage with ash.

During these past few weeks I have taken advantage of my vantage point to photograph Mount Spurr including being able able to capture a large plume of steam rising from its Summit Crater.

Separately, during this past week I took the opportunity to visit the Anchorage Museum which houses a number of paintings by Alaska’s most renown Landscape Artist, Sydney Laurence. He came to Alaska in the first decade of the 1900s and lived until 1940. As I viewed his paintings I came across one from1905 that struck me. In that painting I saw painted by Sydney Laurence the very mountain I had been photographing these past weeks - Mount Spurr!

That discovery prompted me to learn more about the history of the painting which was titled”Tyonek,” as well as to learn more about Sydney Laurence’s life in Alaska.

Here is what I learned. Sydney Laurence, although already an accomplished painter, came to Alaska to prospect for gold, not to paint. One of the first places in Alaska he resided was the community of Tyonek, then spelled as Tyoonak. There he met up with a fellow would be prospector Durell Finch who was there in charge of the Alaska Commercial Company. On Finch’s behalf, and on his own behalf, Sydney Laurence filed claims in the Talkeetna area. That friendship resulted in Sydney Laurence painting the painting that became titled Tyonek and then gifting it to Finch.

The painting depicts several buildings near the shore of Cook Inlet with a mountain range in the distance across the inlet’s waters. Presumably one of those buildings housed Tyonek’s Alaska Commercial Company. As I have compared the photos I have taken of Mount Spurr looking across the waters of Cook Inlet from my Anchorage office balcony to the mountain range in Sydney Laurence’s painting it became apparent that we were both focusing on the same Mount Spurr which in the tallest mountain in the range as visible from both Anchorage and Tyonek.

There is one subtle difference though between Mount Spurr as I have photographed it and Mount Spurr as Sydney Laurence painted it. In 1905 the eruption that created Mount Spurr’s Summit Crater had not yet occurred. That eruption took place in 1953, the year that I first arrived in Alaska when five years of age. Ironically when Mount Spurr erupted then I lived in an apartment building located just a few blocks away from where my office is today.

OK, I have titled this piece as “This Week’s Mountain Discoveries” so what was the other mountain discovery? Well it is also connected to Sydney Laurence and it is actually a mountain flower.

By the end of the 1920s Sydney Laurence became a Snowbird. He would spend summers in Alaska and winters in California. On one of those early winter visits he became acquainted with a young lady named Jeanne who was also an artist and even had her own art studio in Las Angeles. They married in 1927 and Jeanne was introduced to Alaska where she became captivated with its wildflowers and soon made them the primary focus of her own paintings. After Sydney died in 1940 she continued to live in Alaska and continued painting her beloved Alaska wildflowers. My own Aunt Clara, who then lived in Alaska, became one of her friends, and in the same way that her husband had gifted the “Tyonek” painting to his friend Durrell Finch, she gifted one of her wildflower paintings to my Aunt Clara. Aunt Clara in turn gifted it to me prior to her passing.

The gifted Alaska Wildflower painting was titled “Mountain Daisy.” Today for the first time I found a copy of Jeanne Laurence’s book titled, “An Album of Alaskan Wildflowers.” In it I discovered a photographed painting of Mountain Daisy.

For the “rest of the story” offered here below are photographs illustrating the above narrative:

Mount Spurr as I have been photographing it:

Mount Spurr as Sydney Laurence painted it:

My painting of Mountain Daisy as Jeanne Laurence painted them for my Aunt:

Jeanne Laurence's painting of Mountain Daisy as included in her book:

@JWP said:

Looks like a bird in a watch tower

Looks like a bird watch.

FROM TODAY -
ALASKA WILDLIFE PANORAMA BELOW SUSPENDED AIRPLANE AS TAYLOR SWIFT SINGS "CRUEL SUMMER:"

Link to Music Video of Wildlife Display as Taylor Swift Sings:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OkrteYI4yq4

Concurrently taken photos:

I was in Lancaster, PA yesterday, so I had to stop by the Strasburg Railroad and the PA, Railroad Museum.
I even took a image of my new ride.

@Tibor said:

@JWP said:

Here in N.E Tennessee we have two separate eagles nests, one in Bluff city and the other in Johnsoncity

Are they easily viewable

A jackelope found in Texas - believe or not

@Conshyboy said:

@Tibor said:

@JWP said:

Here in N.E Tennessee we have two separate eagles nests, one in Bluff city and the other in Johnsoncity

Are they easily viewable

The local university has camera's spying on the nests. Whenever there are eggs ready to hatch the local news media makes time to cover the event.

@WillieBoyd2 said:
If I may ask, is that a snake bite?

Yikes, looks more like a circulatory/vascular problem.