Sometimes I can glimpse the skeletons of the world around me: how the world might look with all the power turned off and Mother Nature allowed to reclaim what has been stolen from her. The ruins of a city long bereft of any human influence. The image is sometimes so clear: a dark grey place, rubble in the streets because that man sweeping is no longer here; there is no more repair, no way to keep what man has made from crumbling. I suppose it's not entirely of my own imagination; I've seen some great renditions of this "futuristic city in ruins," the one that comes to mind most readily is from the beginning of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I wondered briefly if I just took the images from that movie, someone else's images masquerading as my own, but I think instead it’s that the world conjured by my imagination so closely resembles what the artists at Square had created. It was as though they read my mind and then put it on widescreen for everyone to see. This could be part of the reason I enjoyed the movie (or at least parts of it) so much!
Of course, this storyteller in me tries to come up with some explanation that would allow nature to run her course, while all the people have abandoned the cities. Perhaps the abandonment is only illusory and there are really people still living in the remnants of structures from ages past. Maybe this place had been attacked – by nature herself, by us humans on ourselves, by some alien race… The possibilities fascinate me; I come up with a new story for every new scene I envision. Will they ever become fruitful, developing into a story I can write, or tell?
Now that my holidays are over, I find there's more opportunity for me to write. How is this possible? Mostly it's the structure that a 9-5 job provides. I'm limited in the things I can do, and so I find it much easier to channel that creativity into my writing. While on holidays, I could go for a walk, rollerblade, golf, read... the possibilities were limited only by my imagination. But here in the office, I can only do a few things during coffee and lunch breaks.
One of the things I managed to do last week was take a trip to Jasper, a kind of a goodbye to the mountains. I'm glad it worked out -- it was a totally spontaneous trip so full of activity that it ended up seeming much longer than the day and a half we were gone.
The spontaneous trip brought us into Jasper townsite around dinner time, and the first item on the agenda was finding a place to stay the night. We checked the main hostel, but found that they were booked up, so at their suggestion, we travelled up the road (and the mountian) to check Edith Cavell hostel. It looked promising as we pulled into a half vacant parking lot and we were lucky enough to have no problems staying. It was very inexpensive too: $15/person for a night. The cabins had nothing but bunks and a wood stove, the bonfire was already soaring when we pulled up, and the kitchen/common cabin housed people telling stories in all kinds of accents. It was a quaint place high in the mountains, only 2km up the road from the Mount Edith Cavell meadows hiking trail. We grabbed some food from the townsite and returned late (after having missed the turn and driven about 30km too far...) to a full parking lot and a party around the fire. Sadly, exhaustion nagged us both so we wound up going right to bed.
We got an early start the next morning, waking just before 7 to a splendid view of red Rocky Mountains out the window. The clear morning air was crisp and quiet. The city was long forgotten as we walked down the road to the nearby lake. A thin slippery layer of white frost coated the bridge, and the water sent up wisps of fog into the brightening day. Only the sun and the moon broke the perfect blue of the morning sky. (THIS is the view we saw, but my pictures didn't quite capture the sun on the water – we were too early!) We walked along the lake until it seemed time to go back and make breakfast. The kitchen was so convenient, and the gas stove was a pleasure to cook with! There was no running water to speak of, but the stream had a hose rigged up so that water jugs could be filled and filtered for drinking. We warmed ourselves with steamed milk and Baileys before packing up and heading out to tackle a mountain trail.
What a hike we did! Apparently, Mount Edith Cavell is a popular destination; by the time we started walking at 9:30am, we were already sharing the trail with a few dozen people – we even passed a couple families heading back down! It was early enough that there was still a layer of ice on the glacial lake, and the icebergs floating off in the distance seemed almost surreal. Unfortunately the sun hid behind a cloud so I didn't get any clear pictures of the colour of the water up close. The hike up to the meadows brought us about 400m higher in about 3.5km of distance, so you can imagine the workout. My leg was still pretty tender from a rollerblading incident I had the previous Friday, so I climbed pretty much with one leg dominating. A very exhausting way to climb. The breathtaking view and a friendly squirrel/chipmunk at the 3rd viewpoint where we stopped for a snack helped rejuvenate us for the trek back. It was a lot more exhausting going back down than I imagined, but somehow we made it to the car. Despite the busy trails, we encountered two more animals that I'd never up close and live before: a porcupine and a marmot. This was where my camera battery died, so I missed all the pictures of other wild life we saw in the next half-day: white-tailed deer, mule deer, mountain goats, elk, elk and more elk, and even a little black bear.
Well, was I ever ready for sleep after our little journey! We drove out to the Millete Hot Springs, but I missed all the scenery snoozing in the front seat. The hot springs were, well, hot. And wet. And busy, so we soaked, enjoyed the view, ate some food and left. We tried too late to find another place to stay one more night, but everything seemed to be booked up. We drove out to Maligne Lake for the view, but the moment we stepped out of the car, we were attacked viciously by mosquitoes and swarms of other carnivorous insects! Ten minutes later we were back in the car, on our way back to Edmonton.
While rollerblading past the hospital today I saw these words written on the sidewalk in yellow chalk:
Believe Live Love
Having just wiped out, I was on my way home to clean up in what can only be described as a sour mood. I scoffed at the first word, Believe, but caught myself laughing cynically at someone who would bother writing on such a public sidewalk. By the second word, I was able to smile and the third gave me a warm feeling so that I could send a little happy thank-you out into the world for whatever lovely person had left this little not for me to see.
I've been on holidays for a week now, and I've finally managed to spend some time on the computer. The result is an update to my photo gallery, with additions of pictures from Montreal as the highlight.
The day is slipping away, and I was hoping to get out of the house today. The weather man says it's a balmy (but windy, from the looks of it) 25 degrees today, and I have places to rollerblade before the clouds cover everything.
I've been a fan of Garbage since I first heard them back in high school a decade ago (a freakin' decade? HOLY CRAP!). It's been more and more difficult to keep that enthusiasm I had for their first album as the sound they created moved toward a more pop style. The new album is a return to their original sound, the stuff I could really dig. I don't profess to know much about music here, but I knew within before the end of the first minute that I would enjoy it.
The new album is called "Bleed Like Me," and you can listen to clips here.
I've heard a lot of good things about Montreal: it's a beautiful city, it's a sexy city, it never sleeps, the people are annoying... and though I haven't been here long enough to really get to know the city, I'm ready to share some observations.
What I love about it is, as much as I hate it sometimes, is the fact that it's a city with people, lots of people everywhere, all the time. I love that the French is everywhere, creating a feeling of someplace exotic.
But something is missing, something that made previous travel experiences absolutely wonderful, and I can identify it almost immediately... I have no guide to show me the neat little places that might otherwise be overlooked, no local to point out the best places for noodles, or beer, or karaoke, or whatever we feel like doing. Although I can wander around enough to feel like I'm not in a strange place, I realise that I don't know where to find anything, let alone the best places to meet whatever mood I wish to create.
