Painted from life on location in October 1989, about 120 miles east and north of Anchorage, Alaska, just before snow covered everything for the winter. Low rolling hills in the foreground, with pussy willows and scattered spruce trees. The lake is already iced over. A gas station is ahead on the left of the Glenn Highway. The roadhouse lodge is beyond, on the hill on the right. The artist was camped on location in a 1971 Ford Econoline van about a hundred yards off the highway. On the 4th or 5th day he awakened to a noticeably quiet world, a wintertime landscape with five or six inches of new-fallen snow. He drove out with chains on his rear wheels, required to get over a pass beyond Gunsight. Back home in Anchorage, adjustments and some refinements were made to the painting. Alkyd is an oil-modified resin paint made by Windsor-Newton, and dries overnight in normal conditions.