Sep
16
4 x 6 oil on canvas
16 September 2009
Canada: Ontario: Nipissing District: Ottawa River, 1.0 km SSE Thorne. 31L/11, 46.69137N 79.09649W TIME: 1910-1955. HABITAT: boulder-shore brown-water impounded Ottawa River at old log-float structures. OBSERVER: Aleta Karstad Schueler, Frederick W. Schueler. 2009/243/i, visit painting of scene looking downstream. Aleta thinks in pictures, so it’s very hard to put words down while she’s painting: “Scene looking south across calm river to hills that were sun-topped until just before she started painting. Beaver cruising offshore from lodge on bank just upstream. . . waft of pulp mill odor. . . “
19:10 The big paper mill at Temiscaming, upstream on the Quebec shore, is pluming across the Ottawa River from the boat launch, but I prefer to look downriver at the sky reflection studded with shoreline stones. I do no dark underpainting for this one – just pink and blue. The water is so still and mirrorlike, and there are no boats – only Beavers.
19:30 A Beaver passes, charting a straight line several metres offshore, and after about fifteen minutes, swims back upstream. Fred arrives a little while later, reporting that he’d followed the Beaver 268 metres along the shore, and watched it nibbling an evening meal of Poplar twigs from a tree felled into the river. These big river Beavers travel long distances for their preferred menus. There are very few Poplars on this river bank.
TIME: 2125-2130. Fred set 4 minnowtraps, for Crayfish, 3 around the pier and 1 in deeper water. I return to the river with my camera after supper, to photograph the fuming mill and its reflection in the water – a ghostly Rorshach pattern on black glass, studded with bright yellow lights.
17 September 2009
The mornng is foggy, and I walk down to get washing water from the river. Very few stones show above the surface along the shore, as the level of the river has been raised at least 30 centimetres overnight.
