Mystical Medicine Lake #1 - Jasper National Park Acrylic Print

This is the famous "Medicine Lake" in Jasper national park, Canada. It got the name from the early native people in the area who believed that it had magical powers. It’s a unique body of water that vanishes and re-appears each year. Like several lakes in this mountain valley it is continuously draining through a network of underground caves.

During the glacier runoff in the spring the water runs into the lake faster than it can drain. The lake remains until the water level starts to drop off as September approaches. By late Fall/Autumn the lake is gone leaving behind a giant mudflat and ribbon of water that flows to the drainage area.

I captured the image on Aug 27, 2016.

Peter Herman was born and raised on a farm in North Dakota. He first became interested in photography during high-school, and after acquiring a Pentax SLR, began taking photos for the school yearbook and developing/printing B&W images in school darkroom. He continued shooting through college, taking portraits, group pictures, weddings, but after beginning his engineering career at Cummins, he let his photography interests go dormant until about 2005 when he acquired his first DSLR and started shooting scenic landscapes from around the US, but concentrating especially on rural areas in ND and WI. Many of his images were encountered while riding motorcycle down random backroads during "golden hour", searching for that magic light...