LOG SCULPTURE AT POINT ROBERTS

LOG SCULPTURE AT POINT ROBERTS

Once regal trees,
Now sodden bodies,
Rudderless they sailed
Drifting on placid Pacific tides,
Then propelled by storming seas
To this deposit high on shore
To lie a tangled twist of wood,
Each log a wooden story.
Dry and bleached in view of Baker.
Cradled in sand they watch the sun
As it rises, passes, sets.
Soft to touch, to climb and sit on
They call the child and hiker to their joy,
And sometimes the artist to paint on canvas
Their complexity as a sculpture
A natural work of art.

© Ron Unruh
Back Story: We make annual cross border visits to Point Roberts, a small seaside peninsula. Inviting paintable scenes are everywhere. 16x20” oil

A LASTING WASAGA BEACH LIFE LESSON

This is a public letter for my brother Murray. Other readers may chuckle but only he can truly appreciate the shades of this brief biographical episode. It was a hot Ontario summer Saturday. We were kids. Dad worked in a factory all week. Wasaga Beach was and is a popular attraction, both for the great stretches of white sand and the foody nightspots. It was a 2.5 hour trip from St. Catharines. My dad and mom decided to take Murray and I and my uncle Bill and aunt Ruth for the day. Uncle and Aunt were newly weds. Change rooms were a distance from the car that was parked as they all were on the sand. Murray and I were out of our street clothes and into trunks within seconds. After some adult discussion, a decision was made, and I watched as Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth entered the rear car doors and pinched towels at the top of each window, and changed together. My juvenile mind tried to grasp the notion of them squirming to undress and redress in the back seat of dad’s car. That was a modest lesson in my primer for life. Riding in the back seat of dad’s car was never without that flashback, made more amusing today as I think of my dignified uncle and aunt now in their early eighties.