Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 2 9 A dozen years ago, Smith bought a cabin in the wilds of Montana to be closer to his subject matter. "It was a log building, just big enough for the family and my studio but when you have a cabin in the Montana mountains, you will have lots of company. I added on once but it still wasn't big enough so now I am going to build a completely separate studio." N ovember of 1940 was exceptionally balmy in the Dakotas and Minnesota and ducking was slow. Local birds had been shot over and out. The great northern flocks tarried in Ontario and Manitoba, loafing in the last of the good weather. When the National Weather Service predicted falling temperatures and snow flurries for the afternoon of the 11th, hundreds of hunters took to the rivers, lakes, and marshes knowing the weather change would bring birds. They were right but the forecast was wrong: Two feet of snow, gusts to 80, windchills to minus 55, and 40 hunters dead from exposure. Minnesotan Michael Sieve catches one struggle to survive in his dramatic Armistice Day Blizzard—three hunters and a dog, trudging into the wind, heavy laden with their kill, decoys, and shotguns, while canvasbacks flare within feet of their heads. The dog sees them but the men are too cold and too tired to even look. It was warmer when those men left home and two of them do not even have gloves and you see a wedding ring and suddenly you are eyeball to eyeball with the power of art. These men are not real, yet you care and you pray they will find shelter. Michael Sieve's path to success is as curiously crooked as those of his peers. From a hardworking farm family, he earned a degree in studio art from a local college, "Totally unheard of around those parts and way off the chart." But then he went to work on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, skinning beef front quarters and cutting loose windpipes. "I worked sixty hours a week, fresh red blood to my armpits, then came home, and painted at night. I did that for awhile but it wore thin. So I said if I am going to work in a slaughterhouse, I will have the easiest job. I took an exam and became a USDA meat inspector." Sieve paints full-time these days—but not quite. He does some serious research away from the easel. "I spend a lot of time in the field. I love to bow-hunt big bucks. You really can't paint animals well unless you spend a lot of time observing them in their natural habitat, right?" Right! S even artists, unlikely suspects all, each with enormous talent, considerable courage, and lifelines hardly linear. But they endured. They followed their hearts and prevailed, and like those ancient artists on the walls of caves, they have kept a lovely and holy tradition alive. ARMISTICE DAY BLIZZARD BY MICHAEL SIEVE COURTESY WILD WINGS, INC.