A wool rendering of a scene from my journey along the Colorado Trail last summer, “Twenty Years Later” is my response to the 2018 Chautauqua theme, “Transformations.”

In 1996, this section of the CT, just a couple days’ walk from Denver, was ravaged by a wildfire. When I hiked through it two decades later, I found a healthy meadow ecosystem, with saplings growing beneath charred trees. We often think of landscapes as static; this ecological transformation reminded me that nature is ever-changing.

This felting features the beauty I found when I turned back to look at the area I’d just walked through. In the foreground, a skeletal tree is trailside, its branches tangling into and out of shadows of its own creation. Smooth, weathered boulders and rocks are scattered all around. A green rainbow of vegetation — emerald grasses to gray-green sage — color the hills. A thin ribbon of trail snakes to the horizon, where a stand of trees, silent witnesses to the fire, grow.

“Twenty Years Later” measures 24″x18” and has been professionally framed in a distressed black frame. It is signed, and a sticker on the back provides the felting’s title and year of completion.

Twenty Years Later

24″x18″ needle-felted, 100% wool landscape in a textured frame.

$840.00

Colorado Trail Feltings needle felting