Most of us are happy if we have a hike organized for the weekend. Jonathan Marquis has his next four years of hiking planned out.
A visual artist of Missoula, Marquis plans on hiking up and drawing every glacier in Montana, starting this summer.
“Ever since coming to Montana I’ve been hiking a lot. I was looking for a project and this just seemed like a perfect opportunity for drawing, aesthetics and advocacy,” he said.
There are 60 named glaciers in the state, even though some of them have stopped moving due to warming. Although those that have stopped moving are technically no longer glaciers, Marquis plans on drawing them anyway. His goal is not to prove that climate change is happening – it obviously is according to him – but rather to bear artistic witness to these fragile gems of nature through 18” by 24” drawings, using only two different graphite pencils.
He said he wants future generations to see the beauty of the glaciers in his drawings, even if they can never enjoy the originals in person. But he also hopes that his project will raise awareness.
“Most people don’t even know there are glaciers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, let alone where they are or how to get there,” he said.
He plans on using his drawings as an emotional counterpoint to all the science that has already explained climate change and present an affecting vision of what could be lost in the near future.
To Marquis, being there is key.
“I want to see each of these glaciers with my own eyes, feel their cold with my fingers, experience their presence with my body and breathe the chilled mountain air surrounding them,” he said.
Scientists in Glacier National Park have estimated the park’s remaining glaciers will be gone by 2020.
To reach the more remote glaciers, Marquis often hikes up to a nearby lake, camps the night and makes his way up to the glacier the following day with his Australian shepherd, Mylah. He spends three to four hours in front of the glacier, capturing the different angles and details in a couple of drawings that he then completes when he returns to camp.
He has already hiked up to eight glaciers so far this summer, and although he often has to hike off trail in very remote and steep mountains, he hasn’t had any major incidents.
He has grown intimately familiar with these areas and takes inspiration from the words of author and naturalist Doug Peacock: “Go bear witness in your own backyard, because you know it better than anyone else.”
Although he will spend plenty of time in Glacier National Park, the focal point of the project lies elsewhere, in the lesser-known mountains of the Mission Mountain Wilderness, Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness.
Drawing is the perfect medium for Marquis because it combines the precision of photography with the elasticity of perspective of painting. He also didn’t want to carry an easel up the mountains. He described his drawings as being detailed without being fully realistic, expressionist without being abstract.
Drawing also just feels right, he said.
“Dragging graphite upon paper reminds me of the glaciers making their own marks upon the landscape,” he said.
With 60 glaciers to visit and a short summer season in which he can climb the mountains and see the landforms up close, Marquis expects the project to take four to five years to complete. Once the drawings are finished, he hopes to showcase them in exhibitions both locally and outside Montana. He also wants to make a coffee table book of the project and produce a short documentary of it so that the work is available in as many different media as possible.
Ultimately, Marquis is an artist who wants to make sure his grandkids can appreciate Montana’s glaciers even if they can no longer hike to them.