Sometimes  brown manila envelopes bring back some pleasant memories of long-ago events. I’ve been trying to go through some of my overly numerous paper possessions and now and then there are surprises.

Yesterday I opened an envelope to find a number of water-color paintings and a few pencil sketches that I created many years ago. I think most were done during high school years and perhaps a few when I was in community college (called junior college then). And most were on rough, gray paper that has darkened with the passage of time.

A couple of these are not bad but most I will toss. What I remember from this though is that during one of my high school years, perhaps the senior year, my two class advisors let me skip study hall, where I couldn’t get anything done anyway, and go to the empty home economics room to try to paint and draw. It was a wonderful escape time for me. It was a small high school in Dunsmuir, California. The pictures that I did there were mostly copying wildlife paintings by other people, if memory serves me correctly. Most of the wildflower pictures I did at home during high school summers. A few of the better ones may have been as a young adult.

There is a mule deer skull drawing that might have been done during a college zoology class and a pinecone that may have been from a dendrology class.

I haven’t painted or drawn anything for years! I do remember, when I was the mother of very small children, painting illustrations of plants used by Native Americans for the Historical Society Museum in Weaverville, California squirreling in some time after they were all asleep at night.

Brings back appreciation for those two teachers, Mrs. Samuelson (who taught home economics and who sometimes worked at her desk when I was there) and Mr. Wright (who taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry and English).