TRUMPETERS
A friend introduced me to the joys of steelhead fishing on the waters of the Megin, a lake and river north of Tofino some forty minutes by air. We have spent many hours drifting down that postcard river catching fish and just enjoying the wilderness environment. On such a day, one of my paintings of the Megin was born.
The day was crisp and a west coast fog hung in the trees just above our heads. As we drifted around a corner in the river the vista of our next pool was before us. About three hundred yards ahead of us though was a group of trumpeter swans gathered at the far end of the pool. We quietly stowed our fly rods, lay down as low as we could in the canoe and drifted with the current like a log floating downstream. We didn’t speak; we didn’t need to. The moment was special. The swans paid no attention to us as we came closer and closer. Only when we were within about forty yards did the sentry swan figure out what we were. The signal was given and they took off downstream and around the corner.
We sat up exhilarated by the encounter. We felt that we had received a gift in that chance meeting. It wasn’t over though. As we began to talk and recount the event we had just witnessed, we were again thrust into silence. The swans had returned. This time they were flying. They had taken off downstream, circled, and were now checking us out about twenty feet off the water. As they flew past, they were close enough for us to see their black pearl eyes, we could hear their wings cutting the fog and their heads turned to take a last look as they disappeared upstream. That image stayed with me for three years and as I began an instruction class, I needed an image to paint for demonstration purposes. It was then that I knew how to depict the emotion of that moment on Megin. “Trumpeters” came to life that day again for me and now lives in the form of an original painting and 100 serigraphs. It is one of the paintings I am most proud of and judging by the way the edition sold out, many of you have also felt the intense emotion of that day on the Megin River.