Facing west from Vermont with the Evening Star, the planet Venus, setting into the Adirondack Mountains in New York.

From the 1600s through the early 1800s, Lake Champlain was a link in the strategic water ways connecting Canada in the north with New York City in the south.  Many times Fort Ticonderoga, guarding the portage to Lake George, changed hands in battles among the French, the English, and the Americans during the years of fighting to dominate the New World.

Where the water in Lake George descends into Lake Champlain, Native Americans named the point , Ticonderoga, which means "roaring water".  The spillway which occurs over about half a mile is a larger descent than that at Niagara Falls.

During the 19th Century, the falling water was harnessed to power wool mills in the town of Ticonderoga that processed enormous amounts of fine Merino wool — the finest of garment wool — from the farms in nearby Shoreham on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain.

The variegated twinkling stars in the sky were inspired by the Pilgrim's aria in prison, in the rarely heard opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams,  The Pilgrim's Progress, when the stars start coming out captured by Vaughan Williams by the wondrous chromatic chords.

The snowscape suggests that long past history of wool, as well as a sense of final peace for the many forgotten fallen by the fort.