I was looking for a particular image by my friend Carl Buell so I Googlimaged him, and was slyly happy that his painting of me and my dog was in the first page of results.
And I then realized it’s been almost five years since Carl painted it and some regular readers may therefore not have seen it, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to air it out.
That’s me and Zeke and a Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) in what looks very much like the environs of Death Valley, California about 12,000 years ago. Note the big honking Joshua trees growing among the Pluvial-era Xeric Conifer Woodland, with a freshwater lake* in the background.
Carl’s blog is gone, unfortunately, but an archived version of his post describing the construction of the image is here.
The Shasta ground sloth was the smallest of the ground sloths that lived in Pleistocene North America, running about the size of a cow or bear. (Carl confesses to having inflated this one’s stature by about 25% compared to the average for the species.) It’s in this painting because coprolite evidence from places such as Rampart Cave indicates that the Shasta ground sloth and Joshua trees may well have been intricately involved in each others’ lives. The trees provided big bunches of nutritious fruit atop tall and heavily armored stems, where smaller herbivores couldn’t get at them. The sloths provided a way for seeds in those fruit to disperse.
A few things have changed since Carl painted this. I’m significantly grayer around the muzzle. Zeke is dead. The ground sloth is extinct. (Admittedly that last happened somewhat earlier, and without the sloth the Joshua tree is not particularly effective in dispersing its seeds.) But there’s a certain timeless quality to the image, possibly because we’re all hiking in the friggin’ Pleistocene. Even though this painting does not, so far as I know, exist in physical form, it’s one of my most cherished possessions. And it’s generated a good story or two.
Thanks again, Carl.
*How do I know it’s a freshwater lake? I asked Carl, is how I know. Those of you requiring more than hearsay evidence can feel free to taste the appropriate spot on your monitor.
5 years! Damn! I have to say that the image is one of my favorites too. When you “Googled” me, did you find the illustration you were looking for? All you ever have to do is ask you know. I also should thank you for making me read what I wrote back on “O"George. It wasn’t bad at all and now that I’m finally free of family responsibilities and feeling better, I really should make myself do it again, even if only a couple times a month. Stay in touch my friend.
Wonderful to see this painting again. Also nice to see a note from Carl here. I always enjoyed reading his blog and was sorry to see it become inactive. However, I can well understand the reason, having been through somewhat similar responsibilities over the past two or so years. It would be great if Carl’s blog was resurrected in some form. I so enjoyed seeing his pieces on how he creates his works. As for frequency of posts, I think readers have become accustomed to less frequent posting on a lot of their favorite blogs, so a couple a month would be plenty.
Well, clearly, if we consider the fact that it’s a Pluvial-era Xeric Conifer Woodland, and the apparent erosion patterns of the ...
... Nah, I’m not going to be able to fake my way through this one. Heck, Xeric Conifer looks like the name of a science fiction villain to me. “As the contents of the freshwater lake began to flow into the decommissioned reaction chamber, Pluvia cursed the day she ever trusted Xeric Conifer to honor a bargain. Now it all depended on her trusty ground sloth Shassie, who would be bringing help with painful slowness even if she weren’t extinct.”