Now that Spring is finally here, I've been taking coffee breaks in my favorite location, the great outdoors. I grew up in the suburbs not too far from NYC, but I'm a country girl at heart. It's easier on us starving artists here..less temptations for spending money, although now that there's online shopping, I guess that doesn't hold quite so true. Yesterday, I finished my Trader Joe's Dark Sumatra and ran around with a bottle of ink and a sketch book, hoping one of my 2 cats would hold still for a quick line brush painting. They weren't very cooperative. I hope to tune up my gesture drawing skills this summer. I used to be quite good at those in the old days when I was studying at Art Students League. Figure drawing class was on of my favorites..but I digress..As I sipped my coffee I was lucky to spy a pileated woodpecker across the river doing some serious damage to a tree (think Woody Woodpecker, cartoon big, with a dramatic thatch of red on top of the head) It sounded like someone was pounding a nail into wood after drinking 25 cans of Red Bull. I mentally started making a list of some of the sounds, good and bad, which I've experienced in my little hideaway in the woods. Here's what I've come up with so far,...owls maniacally hooting in the dark of night, screeching hawks riding the currents overhead, peeper frogs in the muck across the river, ciciadas in the heat of summer, startled ducks quacking(yeah, they really do),the river ice breaking up in the spring, a hummingbird buzzing in your ear, ATVs and dirt-bikes, chain saws, unidentified animals squealing in the middle of the night, endlessly barking dogs, rifles being sighted, and last but not least, my favorite "sound" of all....silence.