Some months ago i dreamt of blue and purple and green. Nothing else, just color, but the dream was so vivid, I woke up thinking I wanted to do something similiar in color to Louisiana Spring, only to paint the south end of Conesus Lake again.
There's been a lot of environmental change in the lake during my lifetime (and I'm not THAT old.) There used to be tons of perch, then only large perch, then none. The dreaded zebra mussels came, the crayfish (crawdads as I say now) disappeared for a while, and now the weeds grow like crazy. Waterskiiers have sadly been largely replaced by ski-bobs and jetskis. Part of the swamp at the end of the lake was filled in by a development project that never went to completion and disturbed fish breeding crowds. There's almost no beach left for fourth of July bonfires, which I think may be illegal in NYS now anyway. (just like everything else.) "The world is on the brink of environmental collapse and nothing is as good as it was when we are kids and young people are ruining everything blah blah blah"
Gee, I do sound like an old fogey.
But- the crayfish are coming back. The zebras cleared the water for a while. My niece and nephew are learning how to waterski and my kids think I'm a hero when they watch me. Bald eagles were almost extinct because of DDT use when I was a kid, and there a dozens of nest in this very swamp. There are foxes near the lake. My family gathers at the lake every 4th like we have for generations, with an ever growing number of little kids, play some of the old games, make up some new ones, do all sorts of fun things that NYS may or may not allow anyway.
So- As my earth science teacher Erwin Marks frequently reminded us in high school, "nothing is constant but change itself." You can either think of change as catastrophe, or progress, or both.
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