This is the fourth painting I have made based on photos I took of the Jacques-Cartier River in early spring. I’m surprised that I keep finding inspiration from the photos I took on this trip. Every day was cold and rainy. Most of the trails were closed because they were deep in slushy snow. We should have phoned the park ranger about the weather before we booked our flights to Québec. As experienced back packers we should not have assumed that spring happens at the same time every year. The year before, when we traveled to Québec in early May, for my birthday, we enjoyed beautiful sunny, warm, days when flowers and leaves were just bursting out.

We learned how small the window is, in the Northern forest, for appreciating early spring. Arrive just a week too early or too late and you can miss the magical time when the leaves begin to pop out of their winter buds.

Yellow Birches are serious forest trees. They are the largest of the birches, growing as tall as 100 ft. (30m) with a diameter of 2-3 ft. (18-24 m). The Yellow Birch is the provincial tree of Québec, where it is better adapted to the cold than we were.