There’s a little private campground on Hotel Lake here on the Sunshine Coast called “The Lakeside Campground”. It has a few rustic cabins to rent and areas available for tents, motor homes and trailers. The lake itself is relatively small but the water’s warm and there’s lots of turtles, salamanders, frogs and even fish to catch. In short, it’s a place that has been used by folks young and old for generations to spend some quality family time each summer. When we bring our grandchildren there, it’s the third generation of Hill’s that have experienced the familiar, comfortable warmth that is Hotel Lake in the summer.
We usually just bring our tent and spend a week of relaxing times, visiting friends and sharing good food. I always have my canoe with me at Hotel Lake, and though I don’t fish, I savour my time on that lake each summer. It’s a bit like paddling in a post card picture I suppose.
Always first to wake, it was on a clear sky morning in the lazy summer of 2015 that I got up at my usual 5:00AM. Quietly, I made a coffee for my big mug and slid my canoe onto the mirror surface. With silent strokes, I moved the canoe across the glass smooth lake barely making a ripple as I soaked in the morning stillness. On the far side of the lake I paddled in the cool shadows looking for turtles or anything else stirring as the day awoke. I was alone in a silent, motionless world.
Letting the canoe drift as I sipped my coffee I found a painting in that quiet solitude. The sun lanced its way through the treetops as shards of light glistened in my eye. There on the point, the dock, chairs and umbrella caught the sun’s magic glint. But most striking of all in this perfect morning composition was the tall tree reaching for the cloudless sky. It took just seconds as I quietly drifted before the entire image changed, but in that short time I got the photograph that would become my painting. I paddled on slowly and with no purpose, enjoyed my coffee, soaked up the warm morning sun and I found camp again just as folks were waking and stirring.
Hotel Lake is a magical, special place. But seen in the earliest, stillest and quietest hours of the morning it’s at its very best. I hope you get some sense of that in my painting “SUNRISE – HOTEL LAKE”
