
How do you capture the beauty of trees uprooted? The knots and nubs and weathered patina? Emily Carr did with her spiritual Trees in the Sky as did Lawren Harris with his sculptural North Shore, Lake Superior. Me? (Hmm, maybe leading with Canadian master artists is a bit ambitous.) Still, I was taken with the bleached branches and fallen logs in B.C.'s Wells Gray Park. Here, I canoed past a massive cedar rising like a totem out of the vivid-green Azure Lake. And I was drawn to a beached log washed up against the shore of Clearwater Lake. On its sheltered side minnows and waterbugs hurried away at my approach. In the background I could hear the kids playing in the canoes and the crackle of the camp fire. But in front of me was quiet mountains and calm water. Nature's beauty.