Jaspar Park – lakes and mountains, Alberta June 19-22, 1978

Note: For reasons unknown, now, I didn’t take any photos on these Jaspar mountain-lake trips.  Thankfully there are some available on Travel Alberta’s website, free to download.

 

Jaspar is situated in a range called the ‘Maligne Mountains’.  Not exactly friendly sounding, but as the weather was good, a mid-June sun warming the skies, and the colours, the mountains didn’t seem so malign to me.  I based myself in Jaspar and visited several of the many lakes in the ear.  First up were Maligne and Medicine Lakes.  I drove in to them listening to Mozart and Tchaikovsky, and back out listening to Copland and Vaugh Williams. The symphonic music dramatized the majestic scenery – it was easy to imagine the trees as stringed instruments, the rivers as woodwinds and the mountains as great booming, crashing drums.  A tremendous, private son-et-lumiere show.  I turned the volume up high, and imagined myself as conductor.

 

At Maligne Lake I rented an an old black mare and went for a quiet, and happily solitary, ride through an aspen­lodgepole pine forest, then thickets of trembling aspen. Aspens are so graceful, so slivery-silvery.  Up to an open, wild-flower rich viewpoint overlooking the deep green-mantled mountain slopes, the many lakes dotted within them, and the town of Jaspar itself.  and its lakes – too many wonderful wildflowers. I picked a few of the flowers, not for a bouquet, but for a book of pressed flowers I’ve started – my ‘Discover Canada’ wildflower book.  I felt somewhat guilty, as this is a park, and thus a protected area.  But then the mare spread her front legs wide and stretched her big head down into a delicious patch of blue, pink, yellow and white wildflowers, and ripped into them with her teeth, tearing them out with one swift shake of her head, as horses do, and munched happily on her colourful snack.  She would have taken more; horses have no qualms about park regulations regarding ‘staying off the grass’ or ‘don’t pick the wildflowers’.  But I nudged her on.  Between us we’d taken more than our share.

 

The next day I visited Patricia and Pyramid Lakes.  Pyramid Lake is spectacular, backed by the massive Pyramid Mountain. All day that mountain had been beckoning me on, making me want to climb it.  How could I not?  How does one say ‘no’ to a mountain? It’s colours remind me of Israel – ochres, beiges, oranges, and some purple hues. I didn’t climb that far, just up to where the snows began, just high enough for a view of the lake.  And decided I preferred the view from below.  So now I sit on the ‘beach’, gazing at Pyramid Mountain, so strongly silent, dominating everything – the lake, the sky-scape, and me.  It is a presence to be reckoned with.

It is so still here, so quiet. The sound of little lake waves, little lake birds, water running some­ where in the distance – a little lake stream – and the sound of my pen scratching blue-black squiggles on a white-white page.

 The following day, braving the snow, I climbed up Edith Cavell mountain.  This time it was the ‘Angel Glacier’ glacier that was calling me.  It was an easy climb, and I was rewarded with a sunny hour up top in the snow blanketed alpine meadows.  As usual, I was the only one there.  This has so far been the case with all of my hikes.  It’s surprising to me, but in a way welcome.  I have these places all to myself.  In the still I listened to the deep rumbling sounds of distant avalanches and cheery chirpy sounds of much nearer birds.  Although there was no danger of avalanche here, even the distant sounds felt menacing, and brought to mind my feckless hike in Banff, where I might well have been in avalanche territory (‘Trail Closed’).  I wondered if these birds, singing so loudly now, would stop their chatter if they sensed an avalanche was imminent?  Or maybe not.  Unlike me, they can fly away.

Note:  Top photo of Angel Glacier is mine.  Bottom photo courtesy of Travel Alberta.

My last day in the Jasper area was grey and rainy.  And cold.  I decided to start heading east, towards Edmonton – out of the towering, impossibly high, rocky mountains and down into the flat, reputedly boring, and endless prairies.  I debated whether or not to stop at Punch Bowl Falls, but was dissuaded by the weather.  Not only would I have gotten wet, and maybe cold, but in the flat grey light I told myself that the falls would be dull and uninspiring. It was really just an excuse, but it did get me thinking more about light. 

 

Light is such a critical factor in what we perceive.  Light changes everything: the vividness, brilliance and hue, or cast, of colours, the presence and depth of shadows, the three-dimensionality of what we see.   Light influences our emotional response to what we see.  Makes us feel warm and happy, or dull and blah, or even depressed.  There is nothing like a brilliant sunny day to lift one’s spirits.  And nothing like a dull, dark, grey day to bring them down.  

 

This reverie gets me thinking about visual memories.  Do we tend to remember things more vividly when the light in which they are viewed is more dramatic?  Is it the general size and shape and character of a thing that we remember, or its particularities of colour, line and form? Or people's faces – do we remember more the general shape of the face, the colour and length of the hair, the constellation of features, glasses or no glasses.  Or do we remember the little things – the lines of life’s worries around the eyes, the lines of life’s smiles around the mouth,   the line where lip meets skin, the earlobes, the eyelashes – the little things so individual, so intimate.  Of course what we see and remember in a person depends on familiarity, intimacy, and love.  On caring enough to observe that closely.  And holding that memory.  But perhaps that’s true of anything and everything we observe – a tree, a flower, a house, a mountain – caring enough and observing it closely enough to really see it.  And maybe forming a stronger, more durable memory.  I wonder....