The Beauty of the Muskeg

On Sunday afternoon we celebrated a nephew's birthday. Cake and piñata and a walk through the muskeg.

The muskeg swamp is why I love September. It just might be my favourite month for the beauty of autumn. The black flies and mosquitoes that pester are gone, and the air is crisp. Even though cedar doesn't grow here, that is the scent I was reminded of as our feet sank into spongy moss and we drank in the colours of the cranberries, tamarack, birches and spruce trees, arching out of their mossy bed, crisscrossed with trails made by moose and deer. Squirrels scold from the branches, little caches of pine cones discovered beneath the boughs of the evergreens.

The cranberries were pretty sparse this year. But as much as I love cranberry muffins with tiny bog cranberries, I don't really go to the swamp for the berries.

I go for the colours. The smell of the air.

The texture of feathery tamarack trees.

The sunlight on the spruces.

It's a wonderful place. Photo above textured with Kim Klassen's Grunged Up 1 & 2. Linking up to Texture Tuesday.

On Friday the Dawson Creek Art Gallery's 30th Anniversary Exhibit opens. I have one painting in this show, my award winning "Withered." And on Sunday I'll be in Fairview, Alberta with the Peace Watercolour Society for our annual fall show. I have seven paintings in the show, including this one:

If you're in the Peace River region, why don't you come out to one of these great events and enjoy some amazing art?