Today members of the Aristides and Kang-O’Higgins Ateliers made their way through penetrating dampness and fog to Carkeek Park for the annual atelier picnic. Most years, the beach on the Puget Sound in September is foolproof with blue bird days and Indian summer. Not this year, but our pencils worked and we did laps to keep warm. We kept ourselves busy with analytical leaf drawings and landscapes and beach scenes.

Lunch time brought a lively discussion of this sonnet by William Wordsworth:

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. –Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

After lunch the sun came out and the mountains emerged from the fog.