Sunrise, Monday, 18 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Southwest Mountains from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Route 20, Stony Point to Barboursville, 9 a.m.

The Southwest Mountains, the low mountains, the Southwest Mountains here more brown than blue without benefit of distance, with the brown-violet woods of winter, the soft rounded summits barely distinguished one from another, a comforting line of friends along my right shoulder, like the song my father used to sing, “There’s a rainbow ’round my shoulder” – the Southwest Mountains, a rainbow ’round my shoulder.