Visit to Long Lake (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD!

10 May finds us revisiting our old camping spot on the unused loop of highway at Long Lake,  15 km south of Cochrane, Ontario.  Behind the roadside park is a track that goes down to the east end of the lake, and this is where it becomes a path descending to the water.  I like the way the view is framed by the licheny branches of the old White Spruce, so am painting from the driver's seat, just where the track ends and the path begins.  

At first we tried the one on the south east loop of old highway, but the place where it usually flooded was increased and we could go no farther.  Fred found water draining down through a hole in the pavement, with no evidence of its source.  Farther along the narrow old asphalt road ia the hydro right of way, yellow with Carex and boggy with Leatherleaf and Cotton Grass. I used to use it as an approach to the "fairyland forest" of of stunted spruces, mushrooms, and mysterious little bog pools in the Sphagnum.

Now we are back at the Long Lake access, near the RV tracks where we surveyed Wood Frogs between 1972 and 2004.  As I paint the lake framed by the old spruce and Red Squirrels chase each other about, making little growling noises, Fred wanders around, finding no frogs, but an egg mass at one of the three little cattail ponds where the frogs breed.  Most of the eggs have been killed by freezing during the recent cold spell, but the remaining 20% are hatching out.  It is 12C and partly sunny, a relief from the cold weather that greeted our arrival in Cochrane.