#2832 "December Morning at the Heritage Sugar Maple"

#2832 "December Morning at the Heritage Sugar Maple"
10x8 oils on canvas panel.
9:30 am Friday December 15th, 2023

It was a snow-free and mild morning in mid-December and I decided to head out to paint in the forest. 

   The 2024 wild-fire to Canadian forests is unlike 
anything that I studied early in my career.       

This maple was in its last decade or so. The woodpeckers were opening up some holes in search of the bugs that were certainly invading the tree. One very large tree limb was on the ground where it possibly fell due to the 1998 Ice Storm and as I had painted previously. This Singleton Sugar Maple was likely at least a good-sized tree for the War of 1812. Size is not always related to age though. Cedars on the Niagara Escarpment are 2000 years old (measured to be 1890 years old in 2014) and have circumferences that measure just a few inches. Life like art, is not a competition and I am just happy that both old trees are still alive. 

This maple has a circumference of 135 inches (11.25 feet) at 36 inches above the ground. Simple math gives the diameter of this tree of about 43 inches. The Comfort Sugar Maple tree has a 20-foot circumference at the base which is larger than the 11.25 feet circumference of the Singleton Maple. The Comfort Sugar Maple near North Pelham, Niagara Region, was a sprout when Columbus navigated to the New World in 1492. 

I like to relax near this tree and watch nature go by - which explains the chair which I included in this observation. 

If you are wondering why there is no snow, consider that this is the "Century of Fire" (read John Vaillant's "Fire Weather" published in 2023). Weather is integrated over the years to define the climate and both are changing faster than forecast. The dire climate change threshold of "onepointfive- Celsius" will likely be surpassed in 2024. The Petrocene should have been stopped five centuries ago when catastrophic warnings of the man-made future were widely known. But there was still money to be made... 

This Industrial Society is not sustainable...

My 36 years with Environment Canada were for not. Consider that the 2023 Climate Change Performance Index ranks Canada as sixth from the bottom, next to Russia. Happy New Year... 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick