Wanderings through art, film and travel by Hal Weaver.
ZANK is a short animated film that I made a few years ago and features music by my pal Neil Bruce. You can watch it in it's entirety on youtube, or if you want to catch it on the big screen you're in luck if you happen to find yourself near Roanoke, Va tomorrow night (August 26th) as ZANK will be shown at The Grandin Theatre as part of their "Open Projector" night.
I love this time of year. The sunsets are often so amazing they stop me in my tracks and I make sure to carry the camera with me so I don't miss capturing images like this. Reminds me of a Maxfield Parrish painting. It's been a coolish summer here on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and that's good, facilitates the hiking. Extracted 55 miles out of July giving me 344 miles for the year, just 6 miles behind the average.
This piece of art was created by my wife, Janet Shaughnessy and will be one of two pieces of work included in The Bowery Gallery's 16th annual juried competition for 2008. The opening is this Thursday (July 31st) from 5-8, so if you find yourself in NYC in the Chelsea neighborhood that night, pop in and check out the show. Here's some more info from the gallery's web site:
Looks like this blog has become the once-a-month-hiking-report-blog. Yawn. Well for now it's what I got. I know, I started regaling you with tales from "The Box" set and then left you hanging big time, that will be corrected in due time. For now, I toss you this shot of my knee and hip you to my June numbers before July disappears.
Seeing that it's nearly the end of May, I thought it was high time that I made the hiking report for April. Forty-Seven miles added and that brought me to two hundred and two for the year. One of my 2008 goals is to do more hiking out among the trees and in the mountains and I managed to do just that last month with a trek to the top Mt. Rogers, the highest point in Virginia. The photo shows the marker surrounded by the boots of me and my comrades, Jeff and Mike. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm, but not too hot. It felt good to get some righteous trail dust on my boots for a change instead of pounding the all to familiar sand and streets of my regular neighborhood routes. The views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and fresh air really charged the soul. To get to the top of Mt. Rogers, we had to follow the Appalachian Trail for a few miles and encountered lots of other hikers. Some just day hikers like our group, some sectional hikers and a couple of honest-to-goodness through (or is that thru?) hikers who had set foot on the trail a couple of months back down in Georgia. 
We also came across wild ponies, some with foals so new they were wobbly-kneed and wide-eyed at the world and unafraid of humans. On the hike back down to the car, we took a slight detour and did the mad scramble that is the Wilburn Trail, which was more interesting and fun then the gentle slope and tree-covered summit of Rogers. Weary from the hills and thirsty from the trail, we headed into town for a a couple of well-earned beers before retiring to our mountaintop cabin where we watched a storm move in. Yes, yes, an adventure it was.
