Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, April 6, 1938

By the side of a little brook, I came upon a little group of trees that struck me as being the ideal spot for a family, if they lived there, to use as a picnic spot, or place of retirement and meditation. My imagination leaped forward, too, to the time when the years had scattered the family, some dead & gone, and how poignant with memories the spot would be to the one or two survivors. What morbid thoughts.

From a hilltop, I looked a while to the east, for sheer ecstasy. I heard but did not see a blue-bird, but in looking for it I saw the blue of a slate bank on a hillside; and I remembered then the blue clay I used to gather & play with as a boy. How it all became suddenly vivid—the raw gray days in March, the calls of blue-birds, the dripping water from ice covered banks.

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, April 6, 1938