field sketching

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Roaring Camp’s New No. 14

From my redwood cabin deck I love to hear the steam whistle from the No. 1 Shay “Dixiana” echoing down the San Lorenzo Valley from Roaring Camp and Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad in Felton.

I will be hearing a new whistle coming down the valley in the near (or not so near) future.

On August 9, 2026, Westside Lumber Co. No. 14 was delivered to Felton.

No. 14 is a three tuck Shay built by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio in 1916. Shays are geared locomotives designed to tackle steep grades (up to 9%) on lumber railroads. What they lack in speed they have in power and torque in spades. Between 1880 and 1944, Lima built 2,770 Shays.

No. 14 was originally built for the Sierra Nevada Wood & Lumber Company. In 1937 the company went bankrupt and the Shay made its way to the Westside Lumber Company in 1939. The locomotive was in service there until the mill shut down in 1961.

No. 14 moved around to other museums and railroads before finally making her way to Roaring Camp.

No. 14’s builder’s plate.

On Saturday morning I headed up to Felton to see the 110 year old new kid on the block.

Roaring Camp and Big Trees was founded by Norman Clark in 1962 as a narrow gauge (36 inches) steam tourist railroad.

The railroad has such a historic collection of geared steam logging locomotives that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated three of the railroad’s locomotives as Historic Mechanical Landmark #134 in 1988.

The historic landmark marker on the depot.
Two of Roaring Camp’s Mechanical Landmarks: Shay No. 1 “Dixiana” and Heisler No. 2 “Tuolumne” steamed up and getting ready for the day at the locomotive shed.

I walked around the shops and No. 14 was on a track leading into the locomotive shed. I pulled out my sketchbook and started a continuous-line sketch of the newly acquired three truck Shay (featured sketch).

On the right is the No. 2 Heisler under steam waiting to pull out and connect with her five car consist. On the left, No. 14 can be seen through the shed. The locomotive had arrived just six days before.
The star of the show and the real workhorse of the railroad. The first Shay of Roaring Camp, No. 1 “Dixiana” coupled with her six car consist.
The two railroads in one shot. In the foreground is the steam narrow gauge railroad and in the background is the standard gauge Big Trees & Pacific which runs down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, as well as passing right above my cabin.
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River Muses: Vivid Dancer

On a riverside rock I noticed a black and blue damselfly. I later found out it was a vivid dancer (what a name). The dancer perched horizontally on the rock with wings held parallel to it abdomen, dragonflies hold their wings at a 90 degree angle from their body.

If I thought sparrows (little brown jobs), gulls, and peeps (shorebirds) were hard to identify then putting a species name or even a genus to a dragon or damselfly is supremely daunting!

It felt good to be a novice again.

I started a spread anchored in the bottom left corner by a sketch of the river rocks and the damselfly perched on one of them. The black and blue wonder spent a lot of its time sallying forth and chasing away other damselflies (I assume it was of the same species) like a hummingbird guarding its patch of flowers.

A bit of blue amongst the green.

I traced out the damselfly’s path and its return to the same rock perch.

Through sketching, I learn and on the top of the spread I drew the anatomy of a damselfly.

The eyes of the damselfly are massive in proportion to its body. These aerial hunters have excellent eyesight.

Now if I could only identify the large black and yellow dragonfly cruising above my head. I’m hoping it’s the western river cruiser (Macromia magnifica).

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River Muses: Fluid Poem

Lazy afternoons in August found me sitting in my Crazy Creek chair, feet in the San Lorenzo, sucking on some suds, and reading John D. McDonald’s Cape Fear.

I love being surrounded by nature. It is really a sensory sweater with the sound of the river over rocks just upstream and the rattle of the belted kingfisher. Splashes of color fill my view, the flash of the said kingfisher passing by, inches off the water and the vibrant dragonflies and butterflies patrolling the shore.

And there is a feel of the cool river water running over my feet and the sweeping brush of the crawdad’s antennas followed by an exploratory pinch.

Crayfish investigating my foot. (I’m not dead yet!)

Watching the reflection from f the river play across the far bank inspired me to poetry. I included the poem on the left hand side of the spread.

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Solitario George

One of the stranger sights in the Isla Santa Cruz town of Puerto Ayora is at the Charles Darwin Research Station. It is not one of the many living tortoises living there but a nonliving piece of taxidermy.

There is one tortoise that was a world wide celebrity, his passing was covered around the world. He is an endling, the very last of his subspecies, Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii. His name is Solitario George (Lonesome George).

George was found in 1971 on the small island of Isla Pinta (23 square miles). The island’s vegetation had been decimated by introduced feral goats. He was the last of his subspecies ever found and moved to the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz.

The research station preserves and breeds giants tortoises and works on conservation to protect their habitats around the Galapagos.

A young tortoise breed at the center will one day be released to its home island.

George lived at the center for 40 years, being cared for by Fausto Llerena. Being the last of his kind, he was a popular attraction at the center.

After George was found dead, he was sent to New York to be preserved by the Museum of Natural History.

He was then sent back to Ecuador where there was a fight as to where he would be displayed: Quito or the Galápagos. In the end, the Galápagos won and George is now on Isla Santa Cruz.

George in taxidermy.
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Marine Iguana

“It is a hideous-looking creature, of dirty black colour, stupid and sluggish in its movements”

–Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

While there is much attention and focus on the endemic avian fauna of the Galápagos we should not forget the unique reptiles of the Enchanted Islands.

One of the reptiles that I was really looking forward to seeing was the world’s only aquatic lizard: the marine iguana.

Now this is the iguana that, without fail, features in any nature documentary about the Galápagos.

The marine iguana, as the name implies, is at home to the coastal salt waters of the Pacific. They are only found in the Galápagos Islands.

While I have seen a green iguana in Belize swimming across a stream, its distant relative spends much more time in the tides of the Pacific foraging underwater for sea vegetation.

The large marine iguana statue at Floreana.

We had many encounters with marine iguanas on the different islands that we visited. Like the birds of the Galápagos, they show no fear of humans. Our guide told us to be careful and not step on an iguana. They certainly do not move out of the way when approached.

Marine iguanas spent a lot of time out of the water sunning themselves in between foraging for seaweed.
A loose sketch from one of my photos of a group of iguanas warming up.
The marine iguanas cover the lava. They are cold-blooded and foraging in the cold Humboldt Current of the Galápagos means they need to huddle together to warm up.
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Espanola Seal Sketching

On a Friday morning we visited one of the most pristine beaches in all the Galapagos: Bahia Gardner.

As our panga arrived, we were greeted by a seal lion in the surf who was between us and our chosen landing site. Here sealions rule the beach!

We walked up the beach and were greeted by the other ambassadors of Bahia Gardener: the Espanola mockingbird.

These mockingbirds aren’t hard to find because they find you. They readily approach beach visitors, inspecting your shoes or sandals. If you set your pack down it will be surrounded by mockingbirds, pecking at pockets and straps.

A mockingbird about to nutmeg Dave.

There were a fair number of Galapagos sea lions hauled out on the beach. Plenty of relatively stable subjects in repose to sketch.

I walked the beach adding sea lions to my spread (featured sketch).

My line work and nature’s work in the background.

Waved Albatross

There is something mystic about an albatross (think Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and seeing one is always special.

Most of my sightings have been from the deck during a pelagic boat trip. Sometimes the sightings aren’t quality as the bird appears and disappears among the swells. Fleeting and always leaving you wanting more.

On the island of Espanola, I was about to have one of the closest encounters with albatrosses anywhere.

As with the boobies, the albatross were tame and we often had to walk around them as they sat in the trails.

A young albatross sitting in the trail. It was remarkable to see these largely pelagic birds on solid rock.

As we headed to Punta Suarez, an albatross dropped out of the air and made a rough landing. The male greeted his partner with head swerving, skypointing, bill-gapping, and bill fencing. Watching this from such close range made me feel like I was in a BBC documentary. Now all we need was Sir David Attenborough to narrate the behavior.

A mated pair bonding. The male is bill-gapping.
An albatross in flight is a beautiful sight.

At Punta Suarez we paused to take in the sights and I had time to sketch the scene before me.

Boobies of the Galápagos

I had seen the red-footed booby before on the coast of California and brown booby is also an infrequent visitor to the coast of the Golden State. But now I was about to see the red-footed really close as well as two other boobies, which would be lifers.

How do you know it’s a red footed? It’s perched in a tree (and it has red feet). This booby is within touching distance her on Genovesa.

One of these boobies is the poster bird of the Enchanted Islands: the blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii).

You will find this booby on t-shirts, posters, signs, carved figurines, and other tourist detritus in the gifts shops.

After landing at Baltra and transferring to our catamaran, the Nemo III, our first stop was North Seymour Island.

North Seymour has a large population of blue-footed boobies and swallow-tailed gulls.

At our landing site we were greeted by a sleeping Galápagos sealion and a preening swallow-tailed gull.

What is amazing about the Galápagos is that the wildlife seems to have little fear of humans. We experienced this over and over again.

If you’re not careful you can end up stepping on a booby in the Galápagos. In this case a Nazca booby. (Disclaimer: no boobies were stepped on during the making of this post!)

The word booby is derived from the Spanish word “bobo”, meaning stupid. Perhaps because of the bird’s tame behavior made them easy to catch by hungry sailors.

At North Seymour, the blue-footeds were in the middle of the trail in the midst of skypointing and wing displays which are their mating rituals. Watching these boobies made me feel like I was in a BBC nature documentary and Sir David Attenborough would step out from a nearby bush at any moment!

To blue-footeds in mid-trail in mid-courtship.

On the following day we had more booby encounters. This time at the island of Genovesa at the Prince Phillip’s Steps. The most common trailside booby was the Nazca booby (Sula granti), another lifer, with red-footeds also in the trees.

A quick sketch of a Nazca on Genovesa that somehow looks like a muppet of the Fraggle Rock era.

The Nazca is one of the largest boobies of the Galápagos. They are mainly white with a black mask (they were once called masked boobies until they were later split). Out of the three boobies that occurs in the Galápagos, the Nazca flies further out that the blue-footed to forage.

Among the sand and leaf litter, in a circle of non-guano, Nazcas were nesting on the ground. Nazcas always lay two eggs. Usually only one bird survives, the first hatched, which outcompetes its younger sibling.

Nemo III

Our vessel for the Galápagos cruise was the catamaran the Nemo III.

It held all thirteen passenger (about half were birders), two guides, and a crew of six. This is like a cruise ship at a smaller scale.

The boat can accommodate 16 passengers in eight cabins. The small galley produced three hearty meals a day which was much appreciated after a day of birding and island exploring.

This catamaran would be our home away from home for eight wonderful days.

Relaxing on the bow while cruising between the islands of the Galápagos.

Over our ten day cruise visiting nine of the Enchanted Islands I sketched from the Nemo III as well as a few sketches of the catamaran from the shore.

While anchored at Genovesa, I sketched our sister ship, the Nemo II.
A continuous line sketch from the port side. Red-footed boobies were getting a free ride on the front railing.
A sketch of the Nemo III from shore on Floreana.