If you have ever found yourself in a northern lakeland setting, in the dark solitude of a chilly autumn night, and witnessed the haunting aura of the Northern Lights, wavering over the pine horizon, you will know the strange feeling of isolation, yet the very gentle, friendly touch of legend upon the soul. Some of us who believe in paranormal as "our everyday normal," would say this kind of natural experience, takes us into the legend as its participants. Not simply as its voyeurs. It is our awakening to the universality of existence, and beyond.
As you watch the sky, and see the pulsating rainbow of spirit-lights, dancing just above the distant hills, you are calmed by the soothing wash of waves upon the sand, and the cool touch of autumn air against exposed skin. You are alive. Invigorated. Inspired. Fascinated by the spectacle of nature, yet interpreting it as a human experience, just as artist Tom Thomson attempted with his many sketches, more than ninety-five years ago, while camped out alone, on this same Algonquin lake, watching and wondering about the enchanting light display
Tom Thomson was fascinated by such occurrences in nature, of wild stormfronts and the Northern Lights. The Canadian landscape artist, used to spend hours upon hours, in the cold Algonquin nights, on some promontory of rock, watching the light display along, and high above the contrasting silhouette of tall pines. He made quite a few sketches of the Northern Lights on different occasions, and was always pleased when someone, viewing the panels at Mowat Lodge, would remark how cold and lonely the scene looked. He wanted to capture that feeling of natural wonder, yet the sensation of other-worldliness, where one might feel the presence of heaven on earth; be nervous but accepting of such angelic light imposing on the harsh, rugged realities of the Algonquin landscape.
I feel this way each time I view one of his depictions of the Northern Lights, as if I am side by side the artist, looking up at the fanning, and fading of colored bands of light, from earth into the universe, feeling physically cold, but emotionally in awe, being a witness to such fantasy as reality. Thomson immersed himself in these situations, and there are those admirers of his work, who feel he knew the legends of the lakeland intimately.....passionately. I am one of those admirers. He wasn't simply in awe of nature. He took up his art supplies, and immersed himself, sitting outside, late into the night this time of the year, to experience nature at its heart; not wanting to miss any of the characteristics of the vibrant environment, and always looked, and questioned beyond what most saw, and interpreted in writing, as "the picturesque," and nothing more. In his work, you see a bold strike forward, to test the texture and sensations of that exposed world, where even the most minute qualities, somehow influenced his quest, and peaked his imagination about the meaning of life.
There are those who would claim this to be "bunk," and pure speculation for speculation's sake! They would claim he was as humbly mortal as the rest of us, and was simply a competent artist, who could paint what he witnessed. Yet just as there are philosophers, poets and dreamers, who refuse to be limited by the compartments of experience, set out by those of limited vision and imagination, Thomson has given every appearance of being a spiritual interpreter of these scenes; based on his knowledge of wild places, that can not be contained, or limited, as one might appreciate, of the unpredictable rage of an autumn gale pounding down over the lakeland; or a snowstorm sculpting these pines and barren hardwoods in the light, shadow and cold of a familiar winterscape. Nature is boundless. Endless. As are the explorations of those attempting to understand what rules the universe. Thomson was a free thinker, in this regard, and it shows in his art.
Thomson wasn't a great bard, or a languishing philosopher, looking for the meaning of life. But he wasn't one to embrace commonplace because it was readily available, and economic in effort. He felt the spirit of nature, and he followed it as far as he could, until it eventually, turned on him, like a two headed serpent, and took him to the bottom of his cherished lake. Thomson allegedly drowned in Canoe Lake, ninety-five years ago, this past July, although many believe he was murdered, and his body dumped, with a weight attached to his leg, into the moonlit lake. I've heard some folks claim, that it was as if he knew the end was coming, explaining that spring's prolific schedule of painting, when Thomson sketched daily, to capture the maturing season coming into the deep greens and humid oppression of July.
It was in the autumn season, that we most enjoyed our camping adventures to Algonquin. I preferred Tea Lake, and our family made many trips to the Tea Lake Dam, where Thomson used to paint and fly-fish in the rapids. We paddled in the early afternoons into Canoe Lake, and onward to Mowat, as a sort of pilgrimage, to see where Thomson's work became so poignant and compelling to those who knew his work......and those who would come to be his great supporters, and collectors. I sat at lakeside on many nights, thinking how grand it would be, to watch his ghost canoe pass by, against the rock and tree shoreline of Tea Lake. His slow, gentle, deliberate traverse from one universe of existence to the other, in front of our eyes. Many nights out there, with the Northern Lights dazzling across the horizon, I thought I heard the sound of his paddle, the water droplets trickling off the blade, so poetically to the story of a legendary Canadian artist, who left this mortal coil unceremoniously, tragically, violently. Each year, several campers will claim to have come upon Thomson's ghost, at the Gill Lake portage, where it was said he was headed, the day he disappeared, that July day in 1917. Others claim to have seen him traversing Canoe Lake, usually in the early autumn evenings, his canoe silently emerging through the mist hovering over the still water. As quickly as the craft and paddler emerged, they vanish after only a few seconds of profound visibility. Some ask where the canoeist went, who was just paddling in front of the campsite. Many of these haven't heard about Tom Thomson or the sightings of his spirit canoe.
If ever a ghost had a right to haunt the ground where it once dwelled, in mortal form, Thomson's spirit has every right to be part of this Algonquin lakeland. Part of an enduring legend, of which I have felt, for long and long, he was a part, and of which he understood intimately, like no other. I have stood out on one of those bald rock promontories, watching the Algonquin landscape consumed by an autumn storm, and felt a shiver of awe, at how magnificent and powerful, the electrically charged atmosphere became in mere seconds, of those black menacing clouds pushing over the far hills. Much as he would have experienced, trying to last as long as possible, hunkered down with his sketching, against the wind and sudden lightning, striking and sparking down against the rock face, as his mood reflected the intensity of the storm.
Those who knew Thomson, understood this sudden intensity, turning to meet the intruding front, as if he knew something about the prevailing storm, no one else did, or could, and it is how he painted....and made us feel the awe of even the wind, sweeping over the bluffs of exposed Canadian rock…..buffeted by the trillion storms of history. Imprinted by all of the nature, through all of the centuries of existence, and Thomson undertook, to protect, and promote this integrity, he found so spectacular. Even in it most sedate sunrise or sunset, he connected with this energy within, and reason to look closer at his subjects. Thomson's landscapes have a strong invisible current, that if you look long enough, and dreamily at, you can feel tug at your own soul, as if an invitation to traverse where he crossed the Algonquin waterways; where he portaged, fished, and sat around a campfire, contemplating the potential of life, and the enjoyment of its attributes. And how, if it was composed into art, it would appear sketched upon a birch panel.
He saw art, where we might see a sparking cedar log in a fire pit. He found inspiration from a small, largely concealed wildflower, in the midst of fallen limbs, and scruffy growth cluttered in its vicinity, deciding it deserved his attention, and was evidence of beauty in the eye of the beholder. This he shared with us, and we are truly enriched for his actions, and reaction to the nature he discovered by daily life, during the simple, basic pleasures of work, and trundling place to place, in this sprawling natural parkland.
Did Thomson understand native legend? Was he reverent of such things, and mysteries of the universe? Life, death and the afterlife. God? A heavenly reward?
One thing is for sure, and of which his biographers and historians agree. We will never know how he perished, on that July day, ninety-five years ago. Or what he felt before his death. And for some of the paranormalist ilk, if there is any truth to the legend, Thomson's apparition, still traverses Canoe and Tea Lakes on these autumn nights, below the fanning aura of Northern Lights....on these still Algonquin lakes.
Whether he believed in the afterlife, or in legend and lore, or left it all to his imagination to sort out, Tom Thomson gave us a portal into the innermost energy of nature to inspire.....and of this, we accept the illumination he so generously provided, tempting our imagination, to step outside the barriers of perception we have been told, for long and long.....are imposed for our own good.
When I am at a loss for words, I think of Tom Thomson out on that promontory, finding inspiration from what we have all been afforded....but many fail to recognize in this hurried pace of modern living. In the company of his art, I can find a lot to write about. I give you this column as evidence.
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