"October Along the Poudre" hints at a story of apple trees planted long ago on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado’s Roosevelt National Forest. The painting is from my current series, “The Lay of the Land.” The images in this series come from wilderness trails I have hiked in protected parks and preserves of the Rocky Mountain West. What fascinates me about these images is how they reflect the biological, geological and historical features of the Western landscape: Pinecones that tell of a Ponderosa forest above, rounded pebbles that describe the turbulence of a mountain stream, twisted roots that represent a hillside of sagebrush…and apples that recall a pioneer history along a mountain stream.