my picture “August Evening” – and its distressing problems seemed clear and simple to me as I lay there-
     This P.M. the solar eclypse  - .91 total here – make smoked glass for all of us.  The children excited – most beautiful at its greatest coverage – crescent shaped replicas of sun (inverted) quivering and trembling on the house and lawn, cast by the trees – especially beautiful on the house, tremulous and eerie.  Inside the house, very dark, and the scene outside bathed in an ominous tawny light, eerie shadows – the sky a dark leaden color.
                                                                              Sept. 1 – 1932 –
     Walking from the studio to the house tonight, the rank over-powering scent of four-o-clocks –
                                                                              Sept. 2, 1932–
     Southeast of E. Aurorain quest of what I called – the Bearded Hill Country –
     By bus to E. Aurora – hire taxi and go south – after a long ride grow discouraged of finding hills so dismiss taxi about mile north of Chaffee where see some little grass covered mounds.  They prove disappointing so to railroad, with idea of walking to Chaffee and hiring an auto again.
     On the railroad – the sweltering noon heat – comes up in waves from the railroad – cicadas – to the south a beautiful phenomenon – The glistening rails like molten silver, converging into a mass of heat waves which are so dense that  they produce a mirage like illusion, and become like a little pool,  reflecting the sky, and therefore like bluish white smoke, writhing now swelling and shrinking.  Start painting of it – a freight train from the north interrupts me – a long line of cars with one locomotive in front and two in rear – it disappears in the “heat-wave” pool as into a fog - only with this difference – it was reflected in the “pool” as also the smoke so that more than ever it seemed like a smoldering fire – shortly afterward a train comes from the south, appearing out of the heat-waves like a black apparition.
     South along R.R. to Chaffee – after some dickering get young man to drive me south again – after eight miles I sight some beautiful bearded hills and after paying him, thru a narrow swampy tract, in midst of which I come upon a trout brook – clear