when i was in bermuda i rented a scooter and on an island that is more or less 21 miles long, i managed to do 1850 miles in a little over a week and i didn’t get to see the whole island. i did manage to get to know some areas really well and came up with some incredible works from this island stuck 700 miles offshore in the atlantic.

southwood road in muskoka, is about  23 miles long, but it is on a snow strip, which brings it feet of the white stuff when areas next to it get mere inches. i have travel its length every chance i get after a fresh snowfall with sunlight the day following parking along the road while snowshoeing into the forest that line both sides of it, sometimes having to do a mad  scramble back to the truck when the snowplows start deep deep honking as they cant get by me. like bermuda, i have explored much of its length and now am wandering into all the sideroads that lead off into adventures of their own.

late last winter,  had to travel down fishhook lane just because of the name and ignored the private road sign until i guess i was spotted on some form of closed circuit camera and visited by the owners, but not before i managed to work out some drawings of the white with red lettering home hardware maple syrup buckets attached to the trees.

i only knew the metal buckets that drip filled every spring. it was interesting to find the world has moved on to plastic buckets from home hardware. it is like the old kids wagons were made of wood, which resembled the woody stationwagons of the same time, and now, gone, replaced by michigan man thickness plastic jobbies which look as appealing as,  oh never mind, the syrup buckets looked great as they stood out for miles if you just looked up above the ground snow at the trees around you.

sugar bush       <   click on image to enlarge  >

16″ x 16″  watercolour / acrylic painted directly on gessod panel