TEA LAKE - TOM THOMSON

We’ve been up to Algonquin  many times, and although it’s nice to get away it’s difficult to get jump up and down excited….but it was nice to enjoy the quiet, and to chat face to face with (older) people. Not many children in the park at this time of the year. The weather, at the outset of our visit was very nice, but was interrupted by cold and rain on several days. Bird watching was troublesome. On one of the first days we saw only one wood warbler, and very, very few other birds. On the following days we saw even less. Now, we either missed the migration, or it’s indicative of what’s going on everywhere, songbirds/flycatchers are suffering and their numbers are down. Robins, and other familiar birds such as Chickadees, may be thriving as they’ve learned to adjust to our urbanization of natural spaces, but many of the migratory species may be going the way of the Dodo, and Passenger Pigeon. Sad the price that nature has to pay for our uncontrolled expansion(s).

We went here and there in the park enjoying picnic lunches. I made a small annual pencil sketch at Canisbay, and another at Tea Lake. Now, I’m sitting there sketching and I’m thinking that the scene looks familiar, and then I realize that it’s probably, maybe, the place where Tom Thomson made his sketch, which has been entitled “Black Spruce in Autumn…..

Thomson’s oil sketch was made, I believe in 1915, or 1920, so the landscape has changed/matured with time, but it sort of makes sense as it’s only minutes away from Canoe Lake where Thompson spent his few summers in the park, and not too far away from Tea Lake Dam where Thompson was last seen before, days later, being found dead. Anyway, a bit of spice to add to the memory.

While sitting watching the rain there was time to think, and scratch a poem voicing, in a manner of speaking, my views of Algonkin, as well as many other  once wild places that we are desperately attempting to reconstruct.....

AN ILLUSION

The other day we travelled to a place

not too far away

to the fringe of a,

sort of,

wild place,

a place called Algonkin, but

wild it can no longer be said, 

as much of what once was wild is 

now-dead.

Raven left some time ago, leaving what was left

to legion 

after legion,

of noises crows, crows that

pillage, rob, and steal, and

feast upon what once 

was real.

Sad, perhaps, but

we’re all to blame as,

sometime ago we accepted,

words defective,

believing it our duty to have dominion 

over all creatures large and small, forced now to accept

a reconstruction of our destruction,

an illusion to fool us all.

We struggle to imagine what used to be,

terraforming this and that,

but our efforts…

rushed for time,

fall short of what was fact, 

and so we settle for something less,

continuing to rob, pillage, and plunder,

and accept what now exists 

as norm.

We satisfy our need for solitude 

with timeless memories ,

a time that existed,

long before we were born.

~~~~

            " Algonquin will always be what we want it to be."

Tea Lake - Algonquin.    Pencil Sketch  2021

Canisbay Lake. ALG 2022 Pencil Sketch

Found Lake ALG 2022. Pen and Ink Sketch