Stories
The First Leap:
from Neosho to New York
David Rounds
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Rice Peak was so beautiful that I was inspired, for the one time in my life, to paint. I took up a set of watercolors and a book called "The Way of Chinese Painting" and made several large watercolors of the scenery and a book of illustrations of the wildflowers of the mountain which I still have.
Here is the a view of the rocks on the edge of the cliff at the top of Rice Peak, just a few yards west of the lookout building. The old tree was typical of the few that could survive the altitude and the winds, and could have been very old.
And here is one of the 30 or so flowers that I painted. This one is a trout lily. One day, I was so busy painting a flower that I did not notice one of the largest fires of the summer which broke out right under the mountain. Appropriately enough the flower was "fireweed."
Although not an artist myself, I have always loved art museums and my first scrapbook from the voyage that Susan and I took around Europe in 1962 is filled with reproductions of the paintings that I saw in museums there. And I later married an artist, Lindsay, and very much appreciated the paintings and other artworks that she created. Lindsay had a stained glass reproduction made of the trout lily flower above.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme