Banff, Alberta June 13, 1978

My plan, after Calgary, was to head back to Banff, drive up through the Columbia Icefields to Jasper, and then east through Edmonton to Lloydminster.  But I wanted to visit the ‘Badlands’, so I decided to do a day trip there before I went to Banff.  I went directly north from Calgary to Airdrie, an old town that’s now a virtual suburb of Calgary.  It’s where my maternal grandmother and her family were from, and where my mother was born.  I wondered what it might have been like then, during horse and buggy days, the population mostly rough and ready foresters, miners, farmers.  My grandmother had been one of the first women in Canada to attend university – in the east, where her father, John Chapman Weldon, was the founder of Dalhousie Law School.  So here she would have been, an educated lady, settled – or stuck – in a western outpost, where she had the first two of five children.  The family moved to Vancouver when my mother was six.  Her father either left of his own accord or was ‘invited’ to leave by my grandmother, a woman of uncommon intelligence and strength.  She went on to teach school and raise five kids on her own.  Meanwhile her husband homesteaded and became a recluse in the Chilcotins – Alexis Creek – where his only son joined him once he was old enough to leave the protection of his mother.  Anyway Airdrie is small enough, and insignificant enough, that my family history musings were necessarily, and perhaps mercifully, short.

From Airdrie I took a smaller, quieter road east to Drumheller, and into the fantastic landscape of multi-coloured hoodoos and canyons known as the ‘Canadian Badlands.’  To me, they looked like they might have been carved out by water – ancient slow-moving rivers – but I don’t know that that’s so.  And certainly there’s precious little water here now.  The effects of wind, eroding and sculpting the landscape, are evident.  It’s an interesting, unusual and at times oddly beautiful place.  One can easily imagine dinosaurs here, and many bones have been found. 

 

 

 

Note: for more information on and better photos of the Canadian Badlands, go to:                    https://www.albertaparks.ca/albertaparksca/visit-our-parks/road-trips/canadian-badlands/

 

Drumheller was a sleepy little town that proclaims itself to be the ‘Dinosaur Capital of the World’ (possibly true) and the ‘heart’ of the Badlands (it’s actually on the western edge, but hearts do tend to be on the ‘left’, so maybe…).  There were some nice old buildings in the centre of town, and the streets were green with lots of deciduous trees.  This time of year the lilacs were in bloom – white, pink and blue – their heavenly scent permeating even into the centre of town.  Drumheller seemed like a good place for picnic lunch, which I had in a little grassy clearing, surrounded by riotously coloured wildflowers, beside a stately stand of birches on the outskirts of town.

Drove back to Calgary on back roads, through miles of flat farmland punctuated here and there by old barns and farmhouses.  An old windmill, its blades at rest in the still of the afternoon air.  I wonder does it still work?  Drawing water up from a well below?  

I set out again from Calgary yesterday, driving west and north on the old highway, which for the most part follows the lovely, meandering Bow River to Canmore, and then Banff.  It passes through beautiful farm, forest, and mountain landscapes, scattered with little gems of lakes that kept me stopping and stopping – sometimes to snap a photo, sometimes just to gaze.  And once to play my flute in a wild-rose filled field overlooking the Bow River.  The echoes of my flute in the valley were backed up by the happy hum of little insects.  The bees were good, but the little biters persuaded me to end my performance rather sooner than I might have otherwise. 

I cruised into Banff around five and asked around about good campsites.  Johnston’s Canyon, a Provincial Park, was most highly recommended, and just 25 km north of town.  So I set up there, had a quick cold dinner, and went for a cycle.  I was intrigued by the geological formations of these mountains.  I haven’t before seen such clearly exposed multi-coloured layers.  On the coast, at lower elevations, mountains tend to be covered with vegetation, hiding their geology.  Here the rock faces have hundreds of layers, most of which are sharply delineated, one from the next, as though some catastrophic event occurred that caused a major change in climate, vegetation, exposure.  Flood, earthquake, fire, mass extinctions.  I wondered how many civilizations might be buried in these layers…?  We know of some, but do we know them all?  And might we, and our ‘civilization’ become yet another layer in this striped rock record…?  

 

I saw my first mountain goats today and wondered where exactly do they live?  Where do they sleep?  Under trees?  Rock outcrops?  In caves?  Do they, like horses, sleep on their feet?  And what is the black and white long-tailed bird I keep seeing? And these trees?   What are they and why are they here?  I feel somewhat chagrined by how little I know about my 'home' – BC, Canada – and resolve to do some reading.  There is so much to know… .

 

It’s late, almost 11 pm, and I’m now sitting by my campfire, watching darkness fall.  A half-moon is barely visible through the uppermost branches of the tall slender trees.  The stars come out, one at a time, playing hide-and-seek and peek-a-boo from behind the trees.  The air is getting nippy. It’s time to 'bag it'.