Anything but fall

The temperature has dropped ten degrees. The wind spirals my hair upward, tosses it across my face like a veil that smells of earth and rain. Mammoth clouds corrugate the sky, steel grey and woolly, each ripple enceinte with Autumn.

Gorgeous Autumn: my favourite season. Leaves scuttle across pavement in mini blazes, crackle under boots. Air crisp against skin. Body tucked under turtlenecks, wrapped in jackets. Nose prickling with damp. Head full of poems.

30 September 2003, 20:09

Ice cream shadow

On a quick dash into the grocery store, I almost missed seeing the man seated on the sunny sidewalk. Attached to his bicycle was quite possibly every one of his personal possessions tied in about thirty bags. One of his arms cradled a half-empty two-litre carton of chocolate ice-cream; the other hand was digging in the soggy carton, forearm streaked with melt. On his face was a delicious expression of contentment.

When I came out of the store, the bike was still parked, appearing like more a parade float than a method of transportation. But the man was nowhere to be seen. Just a milky brown puddle, warming in the afternoon sun.

26 September 2003, 17:09

6:35 am

For seven minutes I watched the morning sift through the seive of darkness into light: first, a heavy violet, then a rich magenta, and within minutes, a fine and powdery mauve. Along the waterfront, runners, cars, and early planes became chameleons, their surfaces reflecting the weakening purple water and sky. And then, a gossamer lilac. And then nothing. Filter removed. Daylight resumed.

Every day, as we creep a little further toward Autumn, morning keeps me waiting just a little bit longer for its arrival. And just when I begin to feel annoyed with its tardiness, it delivers itself into the sky in a gorgeous haste.

22 September 2003, 20:09

Of alpine meadows and mountain goats

There is something glorious about climbing upward through trees -- lungs filtering forest fire smoke, calves tensing, and heart thudding in anticipation (or trepidation) -- to suddenly arrive in an alpine meadow dotted with mountain goats, cradled by a magnificent basin of rock carved from the side of a mountain by glaciers.

There is something quite spectacular about a cirque.

21 September 2003, 13:09

Fire in the sky

All morning the air had tasted of smoke, noses and eyes burning with the memory of campfires, bonfires, burning pine. Weakened light stretched through the haze and onto the streets of Banff. In the valley, tendrils of smoke wound their way along the river, curling around the mountain bases.

By early afternoon the sky was burning, glowing orange from the smoke of forest fires.

From a hill a few hours later, we watched the smoke slink across the sky, and inch a veil over the sun, until all that was left was a blood red orb.

Day at Banff photo gallery
Read Trevor's account of Banff

15 September 2003, 21:09

Into the blue

What struck me first was the colour of the lake: a beautiful and alien, milky turquoise. Swimming-pool blue. As we drifted away from the dock and I dipped my oar into the water, I half-expected it to re-emerge coated in bluish-green. But the water dripped off in clear rivulets, spreading diamonds across the surface where the oar had splashed. Over the side of the canoe, I watched the bottom of the lake look up at me through my stunned reflection. Clear and cold.

Then we began travelling. Paddles pushing and pulling, moving water with our bare hands. Cleaving water borne from a glacier. And all around us, the quiet majesty of mountains. Ten of them.

Note: in glacier-fed lakes, rock flour suspended in the water filters out all of the colours of the light spectrum except turquoise blue. Famous glacial lakes we visited: Moraine Lake (above) in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, Lake Louise, and Emerald Lake, all in the Canadian Rockies.

Moraine Lake and other Banff and Yoho destinations gallery
Read Trevor's take on the day's events.

14 September 2003, 16:09

A climb

It took three and a half hours to climb. With dust from the parched gravel road settling into our lungs, the steep ascent through the trees began. The pathway carved a well-defined tunnel upward, zig-zagging through the conifers. The ground, springy and soft with earth and fallen pine needles, offered lift to increasingly strenuous steps. Everywhere, a still, close, earthy, needly scent. Everything quiet except for the dull thuds of hiking boots navigating roots and rocks, and intermissions of breathy exhalations.

Upward. After every switchback, with every new view of the trail ahead, I believed that the brighter light filtering down through the green meant that we were reaching the treeline. But there always seemed to be more trees carpeting the climb. Upward.

When I had almost given up, suddenly there was more rock than trees. The pathway had dried from earth into dust, roots replaced by scree. Solid ground was gone and the climb became trecherous. And the almost indistinguishable path became almost vertical; we edged upward, slid backward through almost a kilometre of loose rock and tearing wind. Then a final wind-whipped scramble over rocks to the peak. The 2408m rugged peak of Ha Ling.

My heart was thudding wildly, lungs burning. But it didn't matter; the view was spectacular. Roads were barely visible below, everything shrunk to minature. And everywhere there were mountains. We were completely encircled by stoney peaks and chiselled valleys. Natural beauty almost impossible to describe.

It took less than an hour to descend.

Photo galleries:
The climb up Ha Ling
Mountain views in and around Canmore, Alberta
Grassi Lake Trail

Some Ha Ling history on Trevor's site.

13 September 2003, 14:09