While the wandering masses are fascinating, it is among the more permanent forms, where nature has laid her restraining hand, that we find the most picturesque material. It is here that the reconstructive processes have begun which impart life to the waste places. At first, among these wastes, one is likely to have a sense of loneliness. The long, undulating lines of ridged sand inspire thoughts of hopeless melancholy. The sparse vegetation, which in its struggle for life pathetically seizes and holds the partially fertile spots among these ever-shifting masses, has the appearance of broken submission. The wildly tangled roots—derelicts of the sands—which have been deserted and left to bleach in the sun by the slow movement of the great hills, emphasize the feeling of isolation. The changing winds may again give them a winding sheet, but as a part of nature’s refuse, they are slowly and steadily being resolved back into her crucible.
“DERELICTS OF THE SANDS”
To the colorist the dunes present ever-changing panoramas of hue and tone. Every cloud that trails its purple, phantom-like shadow across them can call forth the resources of his palette, and he can find inspiration in the high nooks where the pines cling to their perilous anchorage.
The etcher may revel in their wealth of line. The harmonic undulations of the long, serrated crests, with sharp accents of gnarled roots and stunted trees, offer infinite possibilities in composition. To the imaginative enthusiast, seeking poetic forms of line expression, these dwarfed, neglected, crippled, and wasted things become subtle units in artistic arrangement.
As in all landscape, we find much material in these subjects that is entirely useless from an artistic standpoint. The thoughtful translator must be rigidly selective, and his work must go to other minds, to which he appeals, stripped of dross and unencumbered with superfluities. An ugly and ill-arranged mass of light and shade, that may disfigure the foreground, may be eliminated from the composition, but the graceful and slender weed growing near it may be used. A low, dark cloud in the distance may be carried a little farther away, if necessary, or it may be blown entirely away, if another cloud—floating only in the realm of imagination—will furnish the desired note of harmony. Truth need not necessarily be fact, but we must not include in our composition that which is not possible or natural to our subject. Representation of fact is not art, in its pure sense, but effective expression of thought, which fact may inspire, is art—and there is but one art, although there are many mediums.
IN THE WILD PLACES
One must feel the spirit and poetry of the dunes, if he deals with them as an artist who would send their story into the world. The magic of successful artistic translation changes the sense of desolation into an impression of wild, weird beauty and romantic charm. It is the wildness, the mystery, the deep solemnity, and the infinite grandeur of this region which furnish themes of appealing picturesqueness.
Man has changed or destroyed natural scenery wherever he has come into practical contact with it. The fact that these wonderful hills are left to us is simply because he has not yet been able to carry away and use the sand of which they are composed. He has dragged the pines from their storm-scarred tops, and is utilizing their sands for the elevation of city railway tracks. Shrieking, rasping wheels now pass over them, instead of the crow’s shadow, the cry of the tern, or the echo of waves from glistening and untrampled shores.