After lunch, set up my sketching outfit & soon at work painting (a tall gloom-filled hemlock & surrounded trees),—How good it was to be painting again, after more than three months. I felt surrounded by the goodness and kindness of God. All afternoon a jay kept up his scolding—a fine autumnal sound — once a nuthatch.
Finish at late afternoon, when a break occurred in the clouds, and the whole woods was bathed in a rich warm yellow light.
A brief excursion into a ravine, then start for home. On the Trevett Rd, up on the hill, stop by a woods & go in. Deep twilight—the majestic gloom was at once both awe-inspiring & frightening. All at once I felt that I was the most lonely person on earth, and it seemed to me I could not endure the solitude; and yet it was so over-powering I could not leave it. I was, as it were, a prisoner who loved and hated his isolation. A wood-pecker busily concerned about finding his food, tapping on an ancient beech. Beyond the woods a farmer calling his cows, in a strange sing-song high pitched voice, somehow an unpleasant sound, worn of necessity & not love of his life.
Finally I tore myself away and continued homeward. I arrived just as B & A were finishing Supper. B told me Joe Fraser had sent a telegram “Congratulations. Your picture “The Sphynx & Milky Way awarded the Dawson Medal”—B thought my sketch rather special.
Charles E. Burchfield, November 6, 1947