A part of me decided to stay behind in the Rocky Mountains
A chaotic rant about being surrounded by rocks and forest and wildlife in Alberta (and wanting to go back to it all)
I recently went to Alberta for a week and it was the first time I appreciated walking—trails so quiet, all you can hear is the wind in the trees and the sudden silence of the birdsong. Kind of spooky, kind of humbling. What was the most humbling though was getting closer and closer to the base of a mountain and realizing how huge it really is. Towering over me, in some places completely vertical. And somehow trees are able to grow in such dense rock.
It was the hiking and climbing that really got me, that made me certain that I need to return one day. The Grassi Lakes specifically: turquoise lakes at the top of a mountain, a waterfall thundering at the midway point of the trek, trails set on the cliffside, benches carved out of rocks that weigh more than my house. I finally truly understand the whole ‘enjoy the journey’ saying. Because I didn’t want to make it to the top really, I just wanted to climb climb climb. I also wanted to see an owl but I instead caught the giggling song of magpies and an uncanny groan in the distance that sounded like a man but was most likely a mountain lion (or I’d at least like to think it was).
It was kind of scary though, the areas where the birds would just suddenly stop singing. I sometimes felt this dull presence behind me whenever I stopped to take a picture and let my friend walk ahead of me on the walk down. The feeling of being watched but with a hint of impending doom. That was also humbling—knowing how small and meaningless I must have seemed to the life of the mountain. Just a single being amoung all the others that already have a claim to where they live. So tiny I felt on the cliff edge of a literal mountain, and then even smaller when I realized that the end of the trail was not the top of the mountain. Almost an hour to what I thought would be the top.
I think that’s why I need to go back. So I can make it to the top, to go off trail, to climb more. The closer the end of the trip got the more I realized I didn’t want it to end. Leaving after a week felt like a missed opportunity because I hadn’t truly done everything. There are so many trails I don’t even know about, so many birds I didn’t get to see, so many mountains I don’t know the names of.
Leaving felt too soon. I decided I wanted to go back before we even left. And I felt even safer to decide that knowing that my friend was right there beside me and could confirm that this was worth returning to. I’ve talked with my parents, friends, and colleagues about wanting to go to Europe eventually, but after this Alberta trip, I can’t see any justifications for leaving Canada at all knowing that I’d be leaving my potential return to the Grassi Lakes behind. Why go to Portugal when there’s the ocean on the west coast and the Rocky Mountains not too far from that? Why go abroad for sightseeing and hiking when Alberta (and British Columbia) is right there?
It’s like there’s a part of me I left behind there, a part of me that woke up and walked next to me there that decided to stay when I left. A part of me I have to go back for eventually. The whole trip was a wake up call for me as well, reminding me of every other place I’ve ever been that I might never go back to (or that I have to go back to). The places I’ve taken for granted, the places I didn’t take enough photos of, the places I took too many photos of.
I want to live somewhere surrounded by little pieces of all the places I’ve visited—the stars in Muskoka, the whales I didn’t get to see in Vancouver, the magpies in Alberta, the mountains in Canmore, the colour of the water at Moraine Lake, the reappearing cardinal in the locust tree in my backyard, the friends that live less than a bus ride away, the crows in Guelph, the ten minute walk to the forest from home, the hiking trails at Grassi Lakes…
Now I walk outside into my backyard and look up wondering why the mountains didn’t follow me home. I look up searching for more than just the Big Dipper in the night sky, dreading the sound of the highway, missing the walkability of the small town markets, the bird species I didn’t know existed, the wild animals I’ve never thought to fear (and the ones I’ll never fear again).
How does one trip to the Rocky Mountains wake me up in this way? It’s made me consider everything I don’t have permanently, provoked such an intense ache of awe inside of me. So many plant species I didn’t consider, so many beings that might’ve been right behind a tree I passed, so many eyes on me that I didn’t register as eyes.
I don’t even know how to phrase the feeling it all provoked other than as a surge of inspiration to move, to walk, to climb, to create, to appreciate, to explore. I feel like I still don’t have the right words to express whatever woke up in me while in that valley, staring up at rocks that are older than time. Just the whispers in my mind getting louder as the trip went on: I can’t believe this place exists at the same time I do; I’m scared to know how I’m going to feel when I get home to mountainless horizons; I have to come back here. I’ve just never felt such fulfillment from simply walking and looking at what this earth simply is without our intervention—humbling, horrifying, beautiful, awe-inspiring.
A part of me wants to move there but a part of me wishes that I just had mountains here so I wouldn’t have to leave home. Hence the whole wanting-everywhere-I’ve-ever-been-to-be-within-armsreach thing. But if it was closer, it would just be filled with more humans and more hotels and more highways. It being a long flight away makes it more special I guess. Something tucked away that I’ll get to see again if I’m lucky. It makes the memories and photos more important. I’m less likely to take it for granted. And maybe that’s a good thing.
But it’s a goal of mine now—to go back. Something to strive for and to look forward to. Something to remember when things are hard. Hope.
I’ve pondered on it for a long time, especially because of the intense feelings the mountains provoked in me, and now I know for certain: we are not separate from nature; it’s not an other. We were just told to view it that way. We need nature, but it doesn’t need us.
I guess there’s just something about million-year-old mountains allowing me to experience what they hold in the palms of their hands.
I’m rambling now and am tempted to dive into a completely different topic that I’d like to save for a different essay lol. So I’ll stop here for today. Maybe I’ll go into more depth in another essay about the actual wildlife (birds, bobcats, beings) that I did and didn’t encounter in Alberta—and other places I’ve been—because I think there’s a lot I can maybe say on that. But anyway, thanks for reading!