14 September 2009
Canada: Quebec: Parc d’la Verandrye: Lac de la Vieille at parking area. 31K/16, 46.78417N 76.21377W TIME: 1806-1935. AIR TEMP: ca 15 C, clear, calm. HABITAT: beach of sandy lake with patches of offshore Pontederia cordata. OBSERVER: Aleta Karstad Schueler, Adam Zieleman. 2009/234/g, visit Aleta’s painting site. A serene lake with a small sandy beach, provided by the park with a parking lot and picnic tables. The air is calm and the water is smooth, and the sun is just dipping behind the forest, but turning the crowns of distant hills russet. The water level has recently dropped 40 cm or so. I decide to paint my miniature in watercolour this time because of the hair-fine lines of the lake’s silver sheen against far shores, and the delicacy of tree silouettes.
As I paint and Adam dipnets for clams and crayfish, finding a few small Orconectes immunis, we are visited by two First Nations men who say they were not aware that there are crayfish in this lake. The man who stood watching me paint for a while said that he has a trapping license that he must maintain by trapping a minimum of about 15 mammals annually. He tells me that there is no maximum take, and the government has doubled the number of licenses in this area, so the populations of fur bearers is diminishing. As he left me he said “Paint fast, because it won’t be like that for long!”
19:35 The lake is ruffled into suede as an evening breeze springs up, and in a few minutes a great purple-grey cloud has turned the whole lake surface to match it. Large rain drops begin to patter down around me and I lean over my paper and pack up my watercolours to paint the last strokes from the shelter of the vehicle. The lake has so many moods that it takes as much speed and flexibility to portray as the face of a restless child!
20:45 Lying on my back between keying in measurements that Adam is taking of his sample of Elliptio complanata mussels, which abound in the lake here, my eye catches a meteor glowing for about 20 degrees of sky. The breeze that rippled the lake at dusk is gone, and the smoke from our cooking fire rises straight upward.
