Driving into Jasper we took our sweet TIME. We stopped at locations I remember from my childhood and from driving through as a young adult. The biggest difference is that we actually stopped this TIME. I must have driven the Yellowhead Highway into Jasper a thousand TIMES, yet I rarely took the TIME to stop and enjoy the majesty of the Alberta Rocky Mountains. This vacation felt like my first TIME into these mountains.

Our first stop lead us to a view of the river valley, mountains painted the framework of a scene from a classical masterpiece. The second stop will be burned into my mind’s eye forever. We stopped at a road side pull-off to find a beautiful, expanse of lake. We took our shoes off, and proceeded to wade out onto a sand bar. The sand bar stretched entirely across the entire lake. The water was a beautiful 75 degrees, and the lake’s water was barely six inches deep. You can see a photo of our feet in the water within my photos section. The silt on the lake’s bottom felt like satin against my skin. I could have stayed there for hours.

We placed our shoes back on our feet, got back into the car, and retracted the roof of the convertible. The sun was in our face as we drove back into Jasper. My mother, Rena and I sat on the banks of the Miette River, just watching the water rush over the rocks. This is where I sent the first BLOG update.

The morning came, I lit a fire in the cabin’s stone fireplace, and I enjoyed my morning coffee and a Monticristo #2 on the deck of our cabin looking at the mountains. The mornings are crisp and clear. There is a slight haze of smoke over the valley this morning from forest fires burning in eastern British Columbia, but it does little to obscure our view of this magical place.

We packed the car, retracted the convertible top, and drove 45 km to Maligne Lake. What a drive. There is a photo of Rena and my mother on the edge of a cliff, overlooking Medicine Lake. This is the most beautiful place I have EVER seen. That is no exaggeration! The silt and sediment etched deep green canals within the crystal clear water. Check out the photo, but it will not do it justice. We boarded a small boat to tour the lake. Greg, you get a SLAP for the suggestion, not because it was not unbelievable, but because the boat tour costs $41/person! What a tourist trap! DAMN !!! Once I got over the sticker shock, I was able to relax and enjoy the views. Lake Maligne is fed by eternal glaciers. The turquoise water grew more intense as we neared Spirit Island and the water changed color in front of our eyes. We stopped at Spirit Island, with a view of the Hall of the Gods. The photo is like a post card, also viewable under the Maligne Lake and Spirit Island Set.

Our adventure took us from Maligne Lake to Highway 93 South, the Columbia Ice Field’s Highway. What a journey. Here we found the longest stretch of uncut mountain ridges in North America - 24 km long (mountains that have no peaks because the glaciers were unable to break off the mountain ridges). The view is constantly of massive mountains, glacier fed lakes and ice capped peaks with exposed glaciers. We stopped to photograph many of them, and while we were basking in their glory, we were able to enjoy the beautiful glacier water falls. Once past the rock slides and open rock plateaus, we had a direct view of the Columbia Ice Fields. WOW!!! This was my favorite experience on our trip. The ice fields stretched for miles. Huge ridges and deep cutting crevices. The terrain prior to the ice looked like an untouched moonscape. The river catching all of the ice-melt run off was light gray, almost white with sediment. We had a three mile hike that took us to the end of the safety zone. This place made me feel a close connection to God, the legacy of this planet, and made me feel close to nature. Before all of my religious friends chime in, I mean close to God through nature, not close to “our” (Pagan) Mother Earth. Are we all clear? And can I continue?

Anyway, I was standing on ice millions of years old (yes, again I said millions! - I believe in an old earth, and we, as Christians, can debate this later). It was an experience!!! It is hard to believe that I lived this close to this place and had rarely visited.

I had TIME to reflect on this place. The significance of TIME, our life here on this earth and what a “second” means. Seconds melt into minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, and days to years. Suddenly we look into the mirror and we are old. My eyes look closely at my wrinkles, gray hair and age spots. My parents grow older, the friends of my youth are now the parents that held our hands as children. We are here for just a TIME. What will we do with our seconds???

D

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.