When you sort of crest the trees and you get up into the alpine zone and above treeline, there's just this incredible sense of awe.

What are you gonna be doing up here?

So we don't get blown off?

We're gonna hike out a little ways towards the alpine garden.

Today is Rebecca Fullerton and Jessica Fligg's lucky day.

Mount Washington handed them a gift of clear blue sky.

The two artists are about six miles up the auto road on their way to the Alpine Gardens.

Now, Becky, how do you pronounce the.

Oh, the cairns.

Cairns.

Yes.

But before they begin the hike, Rebecca has a reminder.

So the general protocol up here, since we're in the alpine zone, is to walk only on rocks wherever you're able to, and stay on the trail itself.

So it's.

A lot of these plants are rare.

Very sensitive to foot tread.

That drop right there.

That's incredible.

On the other side of that outcropping, it's it's amazing.

The two New Hampshire artists are on a year long journey.

Every month they go on an outdoor painting trip.

The goal is to capture the four seasons of northern New Hampshire's outdoors.

They'll share the beauty of what they paint at an art exhibit in Bethlehem.

There's a nice big flat rock right here next to that next cairn.

Okay, that might be good.

They find the location.

Sure way to make a good day bad.

Prepare their palettes.

I remembered to bring the world's oldest wide mount.

That's epic.

And get to work side by side.

I mean, you could literally have, like, 20 artists set up in a in the same spot.

And every painting is going to be different.

And because we all glean something different from what we're looking at.

It's interesting to at the end of the day, see that view through another person's eyes.

Jessica began to paint early in life, inspired by her favorite teacher.

I started out really young with my great grandmother.

We used to draw all the time together, and I was probably like 4 or 5 when this all started and my, my parents were visiting with my great grandmother.

I would sit down and try to copy her drawings into my sketchbook.

The next step she made took her outdoors.

Oh my goodness.

I grew up in New Hampshire.

My parents growing up, we spent so much time in the White Mountains camping and hiking.

And just the more outside time as a kid that I could get, the happier I was.

I grew up going outside doing a lot of hiking and camping, mostly with my dad and my brother, and despite lots of horrendously rainy, sad, disappointing trips and hikes and places where, you know, we're tired and hungry and want to go home, both my brother and I are very still very outdoorsy.

I feel very connected to this place.

Because it's it's in my mind all the time.

It's in my sight all the time.

Those years outdoors certainly prepared Rebecca and Jessica for this 12 month project.

Still to capture the four seasons on canvas.

They plowed through snow, fought with black flies, and work in an environment that's always in motion.

It's very, very different painting than in the studio, where it's a really controlled environment.

I feel like I'm my paintings a lot looser.

I mean, you're kind of painting at speed, too, because you're trying to beat the sun, which is changing the light, changing the shadows.

You know, there's these shadows in the crags over here that are in an hour or two could be gone.

Totally.

So you have to work really quickly to kind of lay out your design and get your composition down as fast as you possibly can.

For 12 months.

This is Rebecca and Jessica's studio.

There are times when they share space with folks passing by.

Wow it's gorgeous.

Oh.

Thank you.

It's better than my pictures.

Oh.

Oh, look at that.

When they're on the trail or later at an exhibit, they look forward to making a connection with the people who view their art.

They might say something about, well, I can really feel the the temperature, or I can really feel the wind in this.

Or.

I know I've been to that spot, and I, I can.

This really seems like what it feels like to be in that spot.

And when they can connect with the the feeling of the painting, that's when I, I know that I've really I got it, I captured it, I caught it.

I love it and that's that's the best feeling.

That's absolutely the best feeling.

And that's why they're here.

Brush strokes become shared experiences.

This really sort of tells the story of the seasons and the White Mountains, and our painters view of those seasons.

And yeah, I think it'll be really just beautiful and really bring people into the experience of what we're doing.

It captivates me so much that painting gives me the opportunity to actually take the time to study it and really absorb it, trying to be able to express to another person through paint.

This is what I found when I went outside.

Sparked some memory of an outdoor experience in them.

And I love that feeling, that connect, that just instant connection that they sometimes get when they see a painting.

But yeah, it's it's incredible the feeling that you get out here, you still get that childlike, awe of your surroundings when you get out into the.

And it doesn't have to be a mountain peak to get that.

It can be a wooded trail that just looks magical when you get out there.