Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

According to Burchfield's Painting Index, this work was painted from a hill overlooking Irondale, Ohio. He traveled there on his bicycle and recorded the trip in his journal. 

After a good dinner at Enos Moon’s, I got my wheel and started out for Irondale. This trip was a source of wonder & delight to me, the increasingly high hills being the cause; it was midafternoon; there was a tremendous calm in the air; the tall white sun seemed motionless; Hammondsville was like a look into the colonial days of Ohio, with its old primitive buildings & sleeping inhabitants –

Irondale surpassed all my expectations. Strange squatty buildings and immense brickworks set in among huge bulky bluffs, some bare, others wooded, others with raw yellow gashes, & all of them crowned with stark dead trees.

Planning to sleep out, I pushed on to find a convenient hill. First, I sought water, & found it at a miner’s well, - dear cold water that put new life into me. As I went on, I finally sighted a huge bare “hog-back” which I made my goal; an ambitious one as I later found out. Concealing my wheel in some bushes at its base I took my luggage & set out to climb the “Mountain,” I perhaps never engaged a more difficult task and perhaps if I had known what was in store for me I might have lost my nerve; the Whole lower half of the hill, or as I thought, was covered with vines, briars, & fallen limbs & tree trunks – A brief trial to right & left convinced me it was all alike so I went straight forward; and encumbered as I was with my heavy luggage, I had a sorry time of it stumbling, pulling, pushing aside branches, huffing & gasping & constantly shifting the burden from one hand to another. Occasionally thru the trees I managed to get a glimpse of the sun, reddened by August haze;

Up, up & up I went endlessly; When I had about despaired of reaching the bare portion that had attracted me from the road, I suddenly saw above me a few dead trees, and after a final heart breaking spurt, I reached the “hind-quarters” of the “hog” while I sank on a log to rest; The sun was disappearing in a gray-green bank to the west above a huge blue-green hill. A belated cicada sang, by his very song prolonging the heat of the day from far below the noise of fellows practicing baseball came up to me.

A short climb took me to the summit, where I made my camp, which consisted merely of fixing a mosquito screen & spreading my blanket. Here I had the feeling of lonely evenings of childhood when I feared God – Above the top of the hill here, was a huge hole in the clouded sky, out of which poured a sulphurous yellow light that only affected the tops of hills, the valleys already taking on the gloom of night. From these same valleys now came the songs of katydids, and occasionally the whippoorwill – The moon already up, now commenced to glow, and a cool damp breeze blew out of the southeast. From far below the voices of the ball-players, using jealously the last shreds of daylight, came up to me & proved a welcome sound. The last sounds attending dying day – the goodbyes of disbanding players; - the shout of one neighbor to another, a woman calling her boy – finally died away leaving the night in full power, with its most pulsating song, and screech owl wail.

Now all at once flared up, the yelping of dogs in some valley on a night hunt; their clamor swelled louder and louder till I thought they were on top of me; then they veered off to the east and died away into a murmur. The ensuing silence made me suddenly conscious that a cowbell’s musical tinkling had been going on all the time.

Definite sounds now ceased; the town had fallen asleep, a train had roared thru the valley and died away; Now came the time of imaginary sounds. I wrapped myself in my blanket and lay looking up at a single star overhead. The slightest stirring of the wind became converted into alarming sounds that startled me out of any tendency to sleep:

The night proved endless – The hardness of my bed caused me to awaken every few minutes; ages seemed to pass. A passing train awoke me; a breeze that sent a chill thru me, I thought was the morning breeze, the moon was dying in a cloudbank to the west. I looked at my watch – it was only three o’clock! The cricket chorus was still in full swing, the whip-poor-wills & the owls were still abroad and sounded more weird. The moon gone, it became dark, when I had expected light-

The next time I awoke, a cloud overhead had a pale light on its eastern side. I sat up; I seemed on the edge of a huge precipice, for at my feet land ended in a pure blue white area, that seemed like sky – only at its top were the tips of some hills to the south – a big bank of fog had come up in the valley – Long after the light on the clouds had turned the pink and then to salmon, and a group of huge thundering clouds had flared up & faded away to the north, this solid bank of fog concealed the valley; it was strange to hear the various early morning stirrings from the depths of that white mass. Gradually a few dead trees commenced to appear and then the uncompromising row of red factory houses.

It was hard to tell when the day, so delicate in its beginning, mounted up into the full power of an August mid-day – but here all at once it was – fog gone, cicadas singing, the heat pouring down – 

After a morning shave by a woodland stream, I rode down to the town and procured a sandwich and a glass of milk at an old tumbledown restaurant – From here I rode up to a bridge over Yellow Creek and sat down to enjoy the tremendous landscape. In a few moments I was surrounded by a group of small boys who were very curious about my trip. I amused myself till dinner time listening to their chatter & watching their antics; After a lunch of ham-sandwiches, coffee and strawberry ice-cream – I followed the suggestion of one of the boys and started to ride to Salineville; it was my intention to take a train to Alliance, and having four hours till train time, decided to ride awhile on my wheel.

The trip was both a trial & a delight – the trial consisting of numerous falls from my bike on account of the narrow path – the delight consisting of the power of an August afternoon along a rail road track – the tremendous bulky hills; the heroic beauty of a passing locomotive, in the sulphurous sunshine –

At Salineville, the epic beauty of the adventure commenced to die away and when I reached Alliance, I found a lowery rainy sky, that went well with the dreariness of a flat manufacturing town –

The trip ended in six miles of sundry road and a broken wheel and as I struggled along in the dark pushing my stubborn vehicle swearing profusely, and sweating I thought what a sad ending for such a romantic trip – but there was compensation for getting so tired & thirsty & hungry in the meal I got at home with ice-water, the greetings of my family, the bath & the sleep between cool sheets.

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, Volume 33, Page 48-56, August, 1920