Everyone has the experience where meaning comes to you not at the last moment, but at the moment after the last moment, when you have turned your attention away, or relaxed, and then you are caught by a thought or an emotion.

The beaver pond is high this year because of the rain, but there is still room to set up my chair and easel. There is insect noise and the occasional frog croaking, but overall there is nothing. Last winter the people down by the lake shot the beaver because of what they called "all the damage" it was doing, and now the dam is abandoned and desolate, but still keeping much of the water back. I want to capture that desolate quality on paper, but it is impossible -- it all looks too familiar, the northern lake with the quivering aspens ringing around, the high spruce, and the bluebrown water. The hours pass. It is hot, but it is late in the season so the mosquitos are bearable. I paint on, easily handling the water and the sky, but as always, the multiple greens of the endless forest baffle. After a long time, the mind becomes part of the scene, as if it was trying to use you to paint itself for a moment. And everything slows, even the failures and successes, the blotches and the fine passages.

Eventually the light begins to go, and I pull away from that slow pulse of things, and pack up my paints. I take a last look at the little lake in the setting sun, and turn to go. And then it hits me.

I turn back around and realize that the lake will go on without me. It will sit there, doing what it does, day in and day out, with or without me. It is so obvious, but it has never struck me so strongly. I don't know whether to be frightened or comforted or simply accepting. I think to be honest, that I am frightened by it. It sits, and cares not: somewhere up in the north country, along with thousands and thousands of other lakes and forests, caring not. The silence is not inviting -- it is implacable. It may be different on another day: but this too is part of the wilderness experience, at least it was this day.