Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, June 20, 1915

Up at 9:00 – A cool wind grey sky – feeling of subdued sunshine flooding the earth – oriole sings powerfully – robins and wrens –

Booming white thunderheads at noon – cool wind –

To Post’s sketching – As I came home in the yellow afterglow (black trees swinging in the wind against it) with the pale half-moon above – whistling Wagner’s “Processing of Knights” from [Parsifal] – I realized I had spent a wonderful afternoon – I was overflowing with hope over my work – I had realized beautiful ideas and seen new things –

I remember the wind blowing thru the sun-glittered trees – meadowlarks singing – long black shadows crawling out towards the gold yellow sunlit eastern trees and fields – how the horizon sun boiled in a whirling mass of yellow light big trees bending in the wind – how shadows crawled up over wind-rippled wheat – brilliant orange tree-trunks —

In the afternoon I paused sketching to watch tensely, two small birds (no doubt kingbirds) belaboring a hawk on the wind – over the Dutchman’s Valley –

I returned home at last flushed with my success –

Even as I was sketching the last yellow afterglow, I seemed to hear the last faint echo of a meadowlark and at once a bat came forth, a whip-poor-will, commenced to call, and close by a cow-bell tinked.

Charles E. Burchfield, June 20, 1915