A Walk to the Lake
Chambers, Thomas. Lake George and the Village of Caldwell. Ca. 1850s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/18354
Trees move in this painting. The trees on the left and the large one in the center noticeably lean left, leaving shadows of dark, wide bands on a bias on the low slope on the left. This slanting, striped pattern gives an illusion that the slope is leaning left as well. On the other hand, the trees on the right and the slope on which they grow lean right. The unpaved road in the middle curves slightly to the left. The striations on the road all curve and meet at the base of the tree in the center, giving the viewer, at their immediate glance at the painting, an unnerving feeling that the road is swerving. The trees’ and the slopes’ direction toward two opposite sides exaggerates the degree to which the road seems to swerve because nothing in the immediate view is centered and straight. Any place of centered calm is past the end of the road, a lake with a surface so even that it looks like glass, looking contained and controlled by the sailboats dotting the lake’s boundaries at predictable intervals.
The jerky movement that the angles of the trees and the terrain incite in the front of the painting absorbs and directs one’s view to the lake in the center. In a sense, it moves the viewer’s eyes for them to where the viewer, who is also the traveler on the road, is going. The beauty of this painting is this feat of moving a mind through a scene with stationary elements—a road, rocks, trees, slopes. One begins and ends a journey in a couple of seconds it takes to perceive the image. The lake and the village don’t seem so far and the walk is not arduous.
There are activities that we do that have the same effect on us. When we engage in an activity that has this kind of effect on us, our minds swivel and move forward but we find ourselves very quickly and effortlessly in the calm, mirror-like place inside us. We are not aware of how time passes or if we notice, it almost always results in us exclaiming, “this time already?” Some people call this experience the flow state but I think it’s closer to a type of mental transportation and a discovery of an untarnished essence of oneself. It’s a self that feels peaceful even though the body or the mind might be busy. The word flow implies that the mental activity is occurring continuously without the mind realizing it. It is constant and for that reason, tiring, even if consciously it may feel effortless. However, if the space at which we arrive is our essence, then we feel that we are at home. We are in a state of being that was created maybe in the womb, maybe before, something alien to and untouched by the world.