May 24, 1917
It’s 9:30 am. My head is pounding. I can hear the bustle of the guests down below. Looking out the window, it looks to be a beautiful day, but I know differently.
Yesterday, by late evening I was drunk. Dead drunk. I didn’t make it back to my room until early morning. For the better part of the night, I was sprawled out on the verandah in front of Mowat Lodge. I awoke when I heard the rooster crow from across the lake and made it back to my room upstairs just as the day’s new light was rising.
I’ve had this sort of headache before. It’s not the booze, it’s the change in weather and this headache is telling me that today is going to be the perfect storm. When you sketch the weather and landscape, day-by-day, you get the feelings into your bones and you know that’s something going to happen next. It’s not prediction; you just know when something in the present will be no longer and never again.
So it will be tonight. I can’t write more now. I’ve got things to do.
Tom Thomson's Last Spring 