Years ago I went on a camping/sketching trip to Little Qualicum Falls on Vancouver Island.

For me the star attraction was these three pools, each one different: one in deep sea greens, one ‘black pool’ and the last a ‘shallow pool, clear’ with blue and ochre stones in the bottom. I remember clambering all over the rocks with my sketch book in hand, sketching like mad. I didn’t appear to have taken any photos; too busy sketching maybe? So last year (2017) I went back. Only this time it was all different and I had trouble finding those three pools.
‘Sunlit rocks like crumpled aluminum foil,’ I wrote in my sketch book. Although it was the same time of year the surrounding rocks looked quite different from what I remembered. Maybe it was the light? At any rate my camera has this ‘creative’ button on the dial that churns out five mostly bad images but this highly posterized one actually makes the rocks look like crumpled foil. The date on my sketch was 4:00 on September, 1994 so things have probably changed. This sign perhaps explains the missing pool. There is also an addition of unattractive chainlink fencing so there’s no more clambering all over the rocks sketch pad in hand.

• See more of my paintings inspired by these three pools on my Art Blog.
• More of Tormaline’s One Word Photo Challenge: Pool.