A childhood experience, revisited.

    Yesterday I did a second painting at Quarry Pond in Flat Rock Brook Nature Sancturary in Englewood, NJ, taking advangtage of a beautiful fall day, the first in four or five days (I've put the final painting below). The vantage point I wanted was right next to pond - there is a bank there but almost flat. So I put down my plastic lawn chair that I bring along when I paint and began. It was wonderful, even more so by the fact that this beautiful dragon fly (what kind? - I've never seen one like that before!) kept visiting me, landing on my leg or on my painting, just like cats do when you read, wanting you to attend to them instead of the reading!

    I did the ink drawing first, as I always do, and it went pretty well and only stopped to have a chat with a livery driver who was having his lunch there in his car, who also was interested in art. Then I started putting on the color. I had just finished putting in the sky and the trees behind the pond, when the left leg of the chair must have sunk into the soft ground next to the pond. The chair toppled and me with it, half into the pond. I had no time to do anything except break my fall a bit, so that only my rear end, upper legs, feet, and arms go wet. But when I looked up I saw my sketch book floating in the water. Not a good thing to happen when you are working with watercolor. I quickly recovered the sketchbook which was soaked and covered with duckweed. Not much I could do then except go home, change and shower. The painting was washed out after it dried and I had brushed off the duckweed, but the ink is indelible so I could still continue the painting, repainting over the washed out sky and trees.

        Strangely I was not in the slightest upset when all this happened. One of the few benefits of getting old? But later after my shower, I was suddenly emotionally spent and exhausted and all I could do was veg out for a while and finally nap. Later I remembered the last time I had fallen into a pond at about age 9. The "mill pond" in Port Washington, Long Island. I was on bikes with friends going across a boardwalk that went over the 3 foot deep pond. Somehow I went in, and had to go home soaked and mortified. I wonder if it was a subconscious memory that exhausted me?

    I finished the painting today, moving my chair to a level spot a few feet from the pond. Another beautiful day despite weather.com's prediction. And the same dragonfly even visited me again a couple of times.

Here's the painting: