The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-01

| The plant life is very rich, including va
riety of forms. The fresh mornings up
there are grand. They make you feel as
! though you had been made over and had
started in to live again"
| There is another phase of the redwoods
with which Keith has fallen in love. and
which he proposes to paint. He saw the
! fogs drift in time after time and enwrap
and veil the stately giants, and he became
| quite enthusiastically ambitious to tell
with his brush How the Fog Comes to
| the Redwood Trees"
That is quite an interesting thing for a
| painter to essay. Such a picture would be
peculiarly appropriate, because the ocean
| fogs are the very essence of life to the red
wood forests, and the dismal banks of
vapor are more welcome there than the
sunshine. 1t is mainly the fog belt that
| limits the redwood forests to the narrow
stretch of California coast, running from
| to the upper edge of San Luis Obispo
! County. Just why the belt does not run
on northward along the foggy Oregon
| coast cannot be told, but within the pres
ent range of these trees they are found
only where the kindly fogs can reach them
with their moisture. They onot grow on
the coast mountains above the reach of the
fogs, and they extend toward the interior
from the western slopes only where the
fogs are allowed to pass through by gaps
in the hills. The same fact applies to the
underground of vegetation peculiar 20 the
redwoods.
Keith saw the picturesque side of the fog
phenomena, and many others have seen
it, too. Many who have not seen it might
look and see it also. 1t should be seen as
the banks which gather over the ocean
start landward near the shore. 1t is one
of the sights of Golden Gate Park but it
is naturally oftener fled from than enjoyed.
From Straw berry Hill, however, the on
coming fogs are an interesting study if the
poetry is not chilled out of one. The banks
that slowly grow out OF nothingness over
the sea late in summer afternoon seem
to come en- masse to the line of breakers
checked and changed by scattered hills
drag out from the bank long
masses that are slowly torn into
shreds that are hauled slowly over the
sand dunes in skirmish line. The
dense, vapory but sharply outlined masses
strangely roll and curl. They strike the
low jumpers, pause, and then very softly
curl around them. They start in afresh
in evanescently changing shapes that
seem to invite difficult capture by
the eve, and are whisked this way and that
way by eddying currents. The shreds and
trailing masses come thicker and seem to
revel as they float, tumbling easily down.
WarQ over the Tops VI trees anu DullulngS,
and now glancing upward on a hillside.
The picturesqueness of a fog appears dur
ing this time of invasion by the vanguard
and before the landscape is wrapped in an
all-pervading mist, and it was this way
the fog has coming to land that Keith
studied carefully.
"Some of the fog effects up there were
most beautiful" he said while recounting
what he had found. at drifts in long
trailing masses that. are sometimes like
tresses of hair, and it hangs about the trees
and mountains in the most picturesque
way. Now and then it will hide the trees
at distance, all but the tops, that look
like greenish ghosts, and the effect is quite
enchanting. In the distance everything
will be gray and misty at times, with more
and more local color nearer. Sometimes
patches of bright sunny sky will be seen
through riffs, and sometimes when the
sun is shining against the fog from behind
the scene is beautiful. These effects are
difficult to get, but | am going to try
them"
The several redwood scenes among
which Keith is now diligently dividing
his time as his pleasure guides him would
be in some degree revelations to most
people quite familiar with these noble
forests. They would fulfill their purpose
as interpretations of nature by revealing
things not seen before and which can be
seen by some when they are shown.
l. J. O. DENNY.