"Cimarron Sunset" Giclee Reproductions Available

"Cimarron Sunset" LandscapeOil, 13"x17" 
©2004 Diana Moses Botkin

SOLD 
(Image available as a giclee on canvas. Sales benefit Camp Cimarron. Please contact me if you'd like one.)

This is a place dear to my heart in Oklahoma and I'm thinking about it especially this week. Today is the anniversary of the big Oklahoma Land Run of 1889.

When I was a kid growing up we would celebrate April 22 ("Pioneer Day") at our grade school by dressing up as pioneers and having a mini land rush at lunch time, complete with sack lunches and our little red wagons brought from home and decked out as Conestoga wagons.

This painting is of the view from beloved Camp Cimarron, a Camp Fire girls camp opened in the 1930s. I spent time during hot Oklahoma summers there, increasing my swimming skills. Being a city kid, it's also where I learned archery, horseback riding, shooting a bb gun, and building a fire. I often think of the camp fire girls' one match fire when I'm making a fire in my living room woodstove.

Our camp director most of the years I was there (1956-1979) as a camper and a counselor, was dear Miss Lucyl, who passed on just a few days ago in Oklahoma City, the day after her 89th birthday. All of us who had the privilege of being at camp the blessed decades she was director have many fond memories of her. May she rest in peace and enjoy her reward for a life well lived.