2015: it has been a year of deep valleys and high peaks for me, both literally and figuratively.
It began in the hospital, at the bedside of someone I deeply care for. Here, winter and spring blurred by slowly in a haze of emotion, my life taking on a holding pattern as I entered a full-time support role for those around me. The next thing I knew, it was summer. At this point, the health challenges still had not gone away, but they had changed and those of us intimately…
“West to Waterton and beyond.” This phrase has been written on my fridge in colorful magnetic letters ever since I first visited Waterton Lakes National Park three years ago, and I have returned every year since.
Every time I return to this special piece of land it is spectacular in a different way. Being much more off the beaten path than Canada’s other mountain parks, it has a calmness and wilderness factor that makes for vastly different experiences every …
(continued from Part 1: Prairie)
Approaching the mountains from the prairie is a unique experience. Your map tells you that you’re getting close, but after so many hours of seeing field after field drift by it is a bit hard to believe. Then you begin to see something on the horizon. Of course you question whether your eyes are just playing tricks on you, but there is a seed of hope that it is more than that. Once past the doubt, excitement begins to set in as the wall…