Art By Tali Landsman

Another restaurant recommendation in the Vail Area. Do not miss the newly opened OKA Sushi in the Vail Cascade complex. It is situated right next to the Vail Cascade Resort and offers some of the best Japanese food in the Valley. They have a Japanese vegetarian set dinner that is an art form. For those of you who are fish and sushi lovers, the rest of the menu looked amazing too. During the summer they offer for the locals 50% off the entire dinner menu (not including drinks) and they will validate your parking ticket. How much better does it gets? I am sure that during ski season, you will find it hard to get a table in this place.

Yesterday we drove to Aspen to listen to a concert that was a part of the world renowned Aspen Music Festival. It was such a delight to dress up and listen to a wonderfully preformed concert. The composer is a young man that combine classical influences with South American, Jewish and Arabic motifs. After the intermission, we were delighted to hear an opera-soprano singer that sang poetry and lullaby to his compositions. Dinner was a bit disappointing. The local vegetarian restaurant located in the Explorer Bookstore had become a mediocre fish place. They still carry some vegan dishes but everything is prepared just below average.

Every day holds great surprises if you keep an open mind and are willing to look around you. Today our phone lines were down. In order to report the service fault, I had to drive down the river to the point in which our local road intersects with the highway which is the only location where our mobile phone get a signal. On my way I saw a backpacker with a large backpack on his back dressed in crispy clothes (as if he just started on his journey). But what took me by surprise was that behind him, two goats were trailing, each harnessed with two panniers filled with supplies. They were walking behind him obediently, unleashed and friendly. Where was he going? Judging from the size of his backpack and the amount of supplies he and the goats were carrying, he had planned a long journey. I wish I had my camera with me.

One of the reason that I love living in the mountains is that I feel that I am surrounded with great spirits. Not just invisible spirits of the ancient American Indians that used to live along the Sweetwater Creek, but also the spirits of the people that currently call this mountain range their home. You can see them in the rivers, sitting in small dagger kayaks, battling gushing waters and impossible rapids. You can spot them cycling the high mountain passes , roping themselves into caves and crevasses, skiing down rocky cliffs, somersaulting in the air. I find myself cheering for the daring ones, for the ones that put aside convention and fear and allow their spirit to be what it was always meant to be- Free! I also find myself stretching up, hoping to free myself from self imposed limitations, wanting to move ever upwards. I know that I have a long way to go, but at least I am trying.

Last week I have photographed the long herd of cattle that was moving along our local road. They were not a quiet bunch, and their bleating voices got me running to the window. Yesterday the heat broke with heavy rains that flooded the roads and the rivers.

If you are living or visiting the Vail- Beaver Creek area, try Zaccaza Italian in Avon. Beside allowing you to make your own pizza (right at your table), they have fresh great salads, a whole fresh charcoal roasted artichoke with aged balsamic and great pasta dishes. We had dinner there accompanied with the Tuscany house wine- delish.

The most exciting things that happened today was that we have finally, successfully completed the sale of one of our NZ houses. The new owners are lovely people and I truly hope that they will enjoy their new place and our lovely beach town. Early in the day, way before anyone in NZ even woke up, I took our inflatable kayak for a solo trip on the Colorado river. It was a thrilling journey. The river was far from calm and I had to navigate high rapids and make my way around protruding boulders. If I was in a larger raft, I may not have felt the rapids as much as I did, sitting in a low kayak. It was a real pleasure to observe wild birds, rows of ducks and horses coming to drink from the cool river. At the bottom of the river, right before the Colorado River merge with the Eagle River, I pulled the kayak out of the water and dialed Jules to pick me up. I cannot wait to do it again sometime next week. It was very exciting to be in the rapids, but selling the house in NZ is a fair match.

This week I will be having my second visit of my acupuncture treatment. I have started this treatment in order to heal an eye twitch that has been bothering me for years. It has made me very self conscious and I decided to take action and finally commit to treating it. It feels funny to lay there with needles pressed into meridian points in the body, but I am a big believer in the body's ability to heal naturally. This week I plan to go on the Colorado River with my raft. I will make it a solo journey, calling Jules to pick me up at the intersection where the Colorado River meets the Eagle River to become a massive body of water that runs through Glenwood Canyon. This will be my first time this year on the river. I have been waiting for it to be calmer and to warm up, as it starts high up in the mountains with the melting snow.

Every summer is different here in Colorado. Last summer was mild and we spent a lot of time outdoors. This summer is so hot that we choose to stay indoors which is not the most comfortable choice as we do not have air conditioning in our mountain house. I am currently working on my last oil painting in my commission series of 12 large landscape paintings, but none of them are dry and it will take a few more moths before I will be able to ship them to my Florida collector. Since I have time and to escape the hot and dry summer, we have booked a short trip to Eastern Europe. We will be leaving in the end of August for nine days. we plan to see Prague, Vienna and Budapest. We wanted to go to Israel, but the cost of the trip was so high, that we settled for a more reasonable option. We just need a short getaway from the heat and the routine, not a major trip and the Israel trip was priced way over our budget. There are great places to stay in Israel, but they are priced higher than the Rit...

Recently on our trip across the Midwest of the USA, I reflected upon how different farm life is in Asia. In all of our traveling across Asia, we noticed that people actually work in the farms. They tend to the crops with their hands, they gather together in the fields, whole families and villages, to harvest or plant. In the USA, as we drove through hundreds of miles of farm fields, we could not spot a single solitary working man or tractor in sight. Everything is done automatically by industrial size machines. This is a photo of the watering system used in all of the farm fields today. You will not see a people on the fields. M point is that the food that we eat, that is so much a part of our lives, is no longer grown in a way that brings people together. It has become a sterile process. I also reflect on the fact that the charm and beauty of the fields that existed for centuries, is no longer there. As a painter, I find the people bending to plant or to harvest in the fields, to be ...

I am spending every available day in the studio painting. I am still working on the series of landscapes that I was commissioned to do back in February. There are 12 paintings in the series, each 36" by 48" in oils. I have the ones that I have completed spread around my studio so I can see them and make sure to make each new one unique and different. It is sunny and hot here in the mountains which is a big change from our 4th of July day in Aspen which turned out to be rainy and some what cold. There was a parade on the main street of Aspen with antique cars and horses decorated with red white and blue. Fireworks, which are not illegal in Colorado, were sold in stalls along the road, along with fresh cherries, peaches and apricots which are in season now.

It is 4Th of July weekend and the sun is shining bright. We plan to drive to Aspen for the day. We will eat lunch at a bistro that hired a new chef from San Francisco and has improved their vegetarian menu. After lunch we plan to walk around town, to explore and to digest our food. later in the afternoon, we will cycle the unpaved part of the Rio Grande trail. We are taking our mountain bikes for this adventure. The path runs along the river and has some amazing vistas, waterfalls and also long stretches of dry dusty road with nothing but the occasional snake scattering away.