Spednic Lake Boulder

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"Spednic Lake Boulder" (oil on birch panel 6 x 12 in. collection of New Brunswick Museum)

On 19 June, 2018 Fred and I drove to Spednic Lake Provincial Park in one of the BiotaNB trucks, to explore and paint on the bouldery shore of Spednic Lake, the long lake that borders the Spednic Protected Natural Area near McAdam, New Brunswick.

A brisk breeze was pushing low waves in long curving lines to slosh gently against the row of distinctive boulders of all sizes that countless winters of ice had pushed up against the shore. You can see the path through the lake edge grass, made by the gradual movement shorewards of the boulder on the far left of my painting.

Poet in Residence Harry Thurston and I explored a few hundred metres of the shore, careful not to twist our ankles while stepping from rock to rock, and admiring green Dragonflies just emerging from the skins of their final aquatic nymphal stage that were still clinging where they'd crawled out of the water to transform into creatures of the air.



Then I chose a boulder to paint, and sat on a lower one at just the right distance for a nice composition, set up my easel, and stuck the pole of the beach umbrella between rocks and leaning against my shoulder so I could grab it whenever the breeze tried to lift it up or push it over - and painted happily for the rest of the day. Harry collected impressions and inspirations, jotting in his notebook, and Fred ranged the shore, not finding much in the drift - no clams, very few Helisoma snails, and a few more Garter Snakes. On a previous visit, he'd caught one that was packed full of a single species of Earthworm - a significant enough finding to be written up as a publication!

I put the finishing touches on my painting back at the BiotaNB lab in the McAdam Community Centre, and it's now part of the Karstad collection of the New Brunswick Museum.



Comments

  1. Fred SchuelerJuly 9, 2018 at 12:51 AM

    Canada: New Brunswick: York County: Spednic Lake Provincial Park lot. (20m waypoint), 45.60537° N 67.44535° W TIME: 1323-1741. AIR TEMP: 18°C, cloudy, Beaufort moderate breeze. HABITAT: grassy lot in mixed hardwood forest along lake. OBSERVER: Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad Schueler, Harry Thurston, +. 2018/126/c, visit (event). natural history, parked. to Nature NB: Today we went back to Spednic Lake Provincial Park so bioblitz poet Harry Thurston could observe naturalists in action and Aleta could paint the landscape - landscapes are to be the theme of her paintings this year - and she sat on a boulder at the boatlaunch ramp in the wash of the waves looking south along the shore and got started on a painting, grumping that canvas - on which she'd done so many paintings for so many years - was much harder to work on than the birch panels she has started to use (and the Group of Seven also did their out-of-doors painting on wood). The place was fairly bouncing with herps - Green & Leopard Frogs, and Garter Snakes, and a huge female Painted Turtle coming just out of the waves as if to nest. The only drifted remains was a shell of an Orconected limosus Crayfish - not a native species to New Brunswick. Harry and I did one of my 50 m radius Salamander surveys, and came up with 3 Redbacks, one native Philomycus slug, 1 cute-but-alien Arion hortensis slug, one Earthworm, and a couple of severely chewed Boletus mushrooms which showed that we hadn't caught all the local slugs. Then we rushed back to the hall for supper, which is held at just the time a plein air painter should be doing her best work. . .

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