This original ink, watercolor and gouache painting is 10"x12" (15.5"x13.5" total framed dimensions) in a custom wooden frame with mahogany finish.
 
A short vulture’s flight inland from the Pacific Ocean, or a very long and cold swim, there lies a lake. This spiderwebbing body of water sprawls across the low points of the coast range, reaching dozens of acquatic arms into valleys, each tendril of open water trailing off into a dense maze of floating bog islands. Humps and heaps of sphagnum moss drape themselves over the woody rubble of sunken logs, and the occasional stunted, lichen strewn survivor of a tree rises from the fog that drifts between green islands. The moss itself is festooned with a blanket of creeping wild cranberry, the glistening snares of sticky sundews, miniature rhododendrons, and the towering pipes of carnivorous Darlingtonia plants whose bulbous tops take on a stained glass glow in late afternoon light. It is a place of clinging life, poor soil, and utterly unique splendor.
 
All of the above is true. What hasn’t been confirmed for sure is the legend of Bogman the Frogman, a curious fellow of the Northern Red-Legged persuasion who is rumored to tend the most fruitful of the cranberry patches on the islands. An old beaver once claimed to have seen him poling his canoe through the mist just east of her lodge, a heap of fruit the size of grapes in the back of his boat and an odd tune on his lips. An osprey still tells the tale of how she saw him take on a Steller’s Jay with nothing but his pole after the Jay came too close to his precious cranberry patch. But for all the claims of the old timers in the bog, we’ve never seen him ourselves- so perhaps he’s just a story after all.