libertango | The Hills Are Alive...

Back about a year ago, we were driving up in the vicinity of Mt. Rainier. We tend to take drives around the region on the weekends, as there's still so much beautiful country around here we've never seen, being newcomers.

As we headed up Hwy 706, just beyond the small town of Elbe, we passed... well, I'm not quite sure what it looked like out of the corner of our eyes. Not quite a tourist trap, but something. Something eye catching enough that when we were looking for a driveway to do a U-turn in, the first one we hit was posted, "No U-Turns Here."

It was a sculpture garden, by Dan Klennert. Klennert takes found materials -- wood, stone, metal -- and makes them into shapes that almost but not quite fill of the volume of what he's portraying. The garden is quite large -- I'm not sure how many acres, but more than a few.

As we were wandering around, I noticed a large barn. It looked quite a bit like something from Midland -- corrugated steel roof, gables, big open door. Dan uses it as his studio, and it needs to be big, given the size of some of his works.

Out of the door, the music of the angels sounded forth.

Well, no, not really, but very close. It was an a cappella piece by Lais, off their album Dorothea. I know this because I got to talking with Dan, about living in the shadow of Rainier, and his sculpture, and the music... Ulrika caught up with us as we talked. I asked Dan about the music, and he showed me the album, and I asked, "Where did you get this?" It was from Virgin Records, but their Belgian subsidiary. Dan shrugged and said, "Friend of mine. I have no idea where he got it."

Uh-oh.

So, as I say, it's been about a year. A few weeks ago, I finally ordered the album, off of http://www.gemm.com/ GEMM is something like ABEBooks, that is, it's a listing service for a consortium of dealers around the world. The folks I ordered from were in Delft, in the Netherlands... Better known as the home of Vermeer, but hey. When the CD arrived, it turned out it had come by way of Switzerland. I have no idea why it took that path, but the customs stickers are fun to read.

Silly old world, eh?

But I mention all this because I've been listening to Dorothea a lot since it arrived. I know

athenais likes it a lot, too. The main thing is, of course, that hardly anyone in the US knows about them.

But now you do.

An amusing side note about the trip by Mr. Klennert's. Along the way, we'd stopped by McDonald's (I think in Graham, he said, peeking at a map). In the middle of the greenery at McD's, there was this 20 ft. high Tyrannosaurus, all made out of junk metal -- forks, railroad spikes, hubcaps. Turns out Dan made that, as we found out going through his displays at his gallery. So we'd met the advance guard on the road to Dan's castle, we just hadn't known it.