I first jotted this down in a notebook this summer. As soon as we got back from our trip we were evicted, and I had to spend a lot of mental energy and time dealing with that. Now we are coming out of that funk and are finally getting back to life.
This is a bit of a Kerouac-inspired ramble from this summer.
The national parks I know are a far cry from those envisioned by Edward Abbey and John Muir.
Signs are co-sponsored by pipeline companies, entrance fees do nothing to keep out the hordes of people who use the quaint mountain towns of my childhood as the city’s backyard, and pipeline construction is visible from the highway. I used to be able to count the animals as I passed through, and driving to Jasper from Hinton would be a stopping and starting affair, letting herds of sheep do their thing. Now I’m lucky if I see a deer.
That being said, there are still pockets of wilderness, solitude and nature.
I rode five km down a road that nobody will see except for by accident, and came across an aqua lake vista that seemed to be set there just for me, though I knew my presence there was an invasion.
Butterflies were out, a cousin of the monarch, by the thousands. They were on some migration pattern, heading thousands of kilometres away, kind of like I was, but for a very different reason. While I was there for recreation and sanity, the butterfly’s reason had a lot more to do with their fundamental nature. Well maybe mine did too.
One of the butterflies landed on my leg, and stayed there for a good 10 minutes.
Down at the end of the road was an old train station from a non-existent town set up in a bygone era, one full of miners who were there not of their own accord, and refugees from a racist war about fifty years ago.
A couple of retirees on vacation were at the end of the road. A bus-length RV had to do a three point turn, and the man had to detach his secondary vehicle that was towed behind. Seizing the opportunity, the woman took their tiny dog out to relieve himself. The man said that he had once worked on that railroad, and wanted to see some of the old stations from back in the day.
I crossed the tracks and followed them for a few kilometres. The sound of static started to rise, filling the air with a coming possibility. I stopped and pulled way to the side, soon the freight that had a day before passed through my hometown came barrelling through, it’s brakes echoing through the canyon like an unearthly scream, something out of a horror movie, but oddly beautiful at the same time. I got dizzy trying to watch the train cars passing by.
After the train I went back the way I came, stopping again at the lake. The mountain wind almost drowned out the highway. It kept the wildfire smoke away, at least. That would come later as we drove back to the coast. The fire burning caused disruption in pipeline construction, which was a grand irony. Months later that same area would flood, landslides pouring down the mountain, burnt twigs that used to be trees no longer able to hold the soil together.