Rose Lake

I'm sitting here at a place about 10 miles from Topley called Rose Lake. Now, this is a place that many might have driven by on numerous occasions and never really thought that much about it. After all, this place is quite plain on the surface. It is a small lake, a large pond really, with a small picnic ground beside it that is all viewable from the highway. A gravel road brings you to its gravel shores. There aren't any mountains with majestic peaks; just humps and mounds covered with trees--some evergreen, some not. There aren't any emerald green waters; there is lake covered in ice that turns to brown water in the summer--typical to most other lakes in this region. Really, there is nothing out of the ordinary about this place. Not the kind of location that you might expect in one of the most important geological and hydrological localities in BC; but here it is. And it is quite important.

Rose Lake is at the headwaters of both the Fraser and Bulkley Rivers. The Bulkley River is one of the main contributaries to the Skeena River, and, of course, the Fraser River goes all the way down to its mouth in Vancouver. The water that comes from this pond, at the fringes of attention, in the center of BC, goes all the way to the ocean at Prince Rupert in the north, and Vancouver in the south, simultaneously.

The thought of what part this unseeming area plays in the hydrological landscape of this area makes me think about, what else, but how it seems that creativity often starts with something that doesn't have anything to do with beauty or ingenuity. Quite often the best idea comes and lands right on your forehead like proverbial guano--it's what you do with it that matters. As the saying goes, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade; if life gives you guano, grow a flower garden.

It is written in the Bible that the Lord "uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise." God uses things, places, and people that seem common to man, as sources of his greatness. God uses the humble; he can't use the proud.

Often, where man sees something great, God sees something lousy; and where man sees something worthless, God sees something most precious. Sometimes the artist needs to see things as God sees them. Sometimes the artist needs to graciously use what he has been given rather than waiting for the perfect time, place, mood or inspiration. Sometimes the seemingly worst circumstances are the "watershed" of true inspiration.

Here is a Google map of Rose Lake:

Check out some sketches of Rose Lake and other subjects here.

Nigel.

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