This painting is one of a series by Dave Gordon featuring wilderness landscapes in the tradition of the Canadian “National School” of early twentieth century, in which the artist inserts incongruous portraits of famous personae. The site is Bon Echo Park, where Walt Whitman’s poetry is inscribed on a rock cliff. The owners of the historic Bon Echo Inn, flamboyant suffragist Flora McDonald Denison and her son, writer and broadcaster Merrill Denison, espoused Whitmanesque ideals of individual freedom and spiritual awakening._