Autumn Browsing -- Oil on Canvas Panel, 9x12.

The most lacking aspect of non-temperate climates is the absence of autumn. No, it is not a time of death, when all the leaves turn brown and fall off the trees -- it is a time of intense, blazing, riotously outrageous color: burning golds and vibrant oranges set against a warm blue sky so intense that it pulsates. It's hot in the sun, cool in the shade, and every day the colors subtly shift. The small animals that were so fragile in the spring are older now, and everyone concentrates on eating the harvest of grass, berries, roots, and weeds.

For the artist, autumn offers the opportunity to use every color on the palette, and demands a balancing act between cool and warm, light and dark. Shadows are deeper in autumn, the contrast between them and their light counterparts greater, the depth of one just as intense as the depth of the other.

Original fine art oil painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art.

Two Pines: Oil on Canvas Panel -- 9x12

My family jokes that I frighten away hiking partners. Although I scoff at this, there is admittedly a string of people with whom I have hiked once, and neither one of us has chosen to repeat the experience. Conversely, my son has hiked with me many times and continues to jump at the offer -- there must be some core element about us that is very similar.

I hike like I fish -- I keep moving. Instead of hooking a trout, I shoot reference photos, and in the same way that there is another prime fishing hole just 50 feet to the south, through the bushes and over the rocks, there's always another view 100 yards away or so -- through the bushes and over the rocks, across the stream and up the incline. My son puts in the time that I'm photographing by clambering about on the rocks, pretending to be a mountain goat, and when I'm done snapping we keep moving. You can cover a lot of ground this way, and, for both of us, it is an enjoyable process, one that leaves you pleasantly exhausted at the end of the day.

I like to get on top of the highest point and look down -- surveying the kingdom below, so to speak. Two Pines is the result of one of these hiking trips -- at the top, looking down, the wind whistling through space and the two trees growing there in solitary quietude. When I'm back down in the valley, I think about those pines, still up there, still growing, still very much existing even though I'm not there to see them, with the wind whistling through their needles.

Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art.

Spring Rush: Oil on Canvas -- 24x12. Available at The Gallery at Joseph, LTD, 541-432-3106, Joseph, OR.

Sometimes when I'm hiking around I will stop by a place like this one, where a lot of water is moving by very fast, and just listen to the sound of it. What amazes me as I stand there, for five minutes, for ten, for fifteen (I can be a very patient man) is that all the water going by me is new water, not a repeat of what has already gone by -- and that after I eventually tire of standing around listening to water flow by -- it will continue to flow by. And that's just one small stream, in one geographical area. What a tremendous amount of water we're talking!

Another thing I think about is the old piece of advice that, if you are trying to stay away from or ahead of somebody who is hot on your trail, then it makes sense to not camp by water, as the noise of it covers up all other sounds, and you spend your entire time in a jumpy state thinking that you're hearing things when you're not. My wife likens this to having a newborn baby in the house, when you put the fan on to cover up any noise so that you can sleep -- well you don't sleep, because over or through the sound of the fan, you're always convinced that you hear the baby making a sound.

Random thoughts, but that's what go through my mind as I'm hiking, looking for that next landscape to memorialize on canvas.

Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art. Second Place, 27th Annual Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts.

Autumn Road: Oil on Canvas Panel -- 9x12.

More years ago than I care to remember, a buddy and I bicycled from Alaska down to Ushuaia, the island at the tip of South America. Then we took a boat up to the continent and bicycled north into Argentina. We flew to Florida, then bicycled back to Oregon by way of Maine. It took us two and a half years.

During that time, we stayed at the homes of many kind and generous people. As we described to them our adventures, a familiar look would come into our hosts' eyes (usually the men), and they would dreamily comment, "I wish I could do what you're doing."

"You can," we replied with all the naivete of 20-some-year-old bachelors with no jobs, kids, mortgages, or responsiibilities. "It's just one pedal at a time."

Years later, now that I have a job, kids, house, domestic animals, and numerous responsibilities, I more fully understand where these people were coming from, and while I would no longer blithely advise them to just pack up and go, I still firmly believe that dreams are achieved "one pedal at a time."

This concept is not new -- the ancient storytellers taught their listeners the advantages of operating like a turtle, with its steady, plodding pace, rather than like the stop-and-start hare. I find this myself with hiking companions -- those that rush forth and then abruptly stop for a short rest, then spurt on for a shorter period and stop for a longer rest -- don't travel nearly as far or successfully as those who choose a reasonable pace and stick with it.

Dreams are big things, and they are not achieved overnight. But each day, some small, incremental step can be taken, some necessary task addressed, some question answered. Some days, the steps need to be bigger, the tasks are heftier and more demanding, the questions more difficult and complicated. Other days, you just rest. Over a series of days, after two-and-a-half years in our case many years ago, you find that you have traveled 26,500 miles, all on a bicycle -- in the Darien Jungle, we carried the bicycles; in the high Andes of Chile, we got lost; in the Midwestern United States, we huddled behind a highway bridge and watched a tornado pass close enough that it was exciting to talk about later, but not at all enjoyable at the time. We met people of all types and backgrounds, ate wildly different food, and slept under stars so incredibly bright in an alpine Bolivian countryside so incredibly dark that I compare all night skies to it since.

Nowadays, my bicycling tends to be to the local grocery store on an errand, or up the valley on a jaunt with one of my kids. My goals and dreams shift with time, but I still have them, and I still work toward fulfilling them -- one pedal at a time.

Original Fine Art Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art