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No earthly thing in my small, little world provides me with the peaceful serenity that Mercer Lake does, and staying in cabin #1 is extra special.

Here, not even seven consecutive days of rain cannot dampen my spirits. A bad mood is barely able to linger a couple of minutes before it’s swept away. Anxiety is not welcome on that deck. The view is too inviting, too soothing, too much of a good friend to allow anything but joy to take place in its presence.

The shifting personality of the lake keeps me watching to see what will show up next. The deep, aged timber that line the lake’s waters and stretch into the endless blue of the sky force me to pause and examine its complexity. And the soft blanket of clouds that dance above the lake and those trees wraps me up in a myriad of warm memories.

At 15, Scott suffered a spinal cord injury while playing ice hockey, a sport he’d played since he was five. This left him “medically defined” as a c4 quadriplegic. Scott admits he can be a bit bull-headed at times. He refused to paint following his accident, because he didn’t want to hold the brushes using his mouth. To him, painting without using his hands would be as if he’d given in to being a quadriplegic. He didn’t want that! Unless he could paint like “normal” people, he didn’t want to paint at all. And so he didn’t. Finally, in 2003, after much prodding from family and friends, he decided to swallow his pride and try painting. Of course, he first tried holding the brush with his hands. But it didn’t work; the brush...