We were traipsing about in the woods of Kananaskis country earlier this week, and I was reminded of a quote from John Muir:
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
It was a real compromise with my prairie boy husband to move to the Okanagan Valley six years ago. Don’t get me wrong… I’m happy with our decision. But if I hadn’t been required to meet in the middle with a flatlander, I would have ended up in the mountains.
I have a theory that your heart is somehow connected to the place you are born. I was born in Kimberly, and my home for the first six months of my life was a flat little plateau at an old airport, wedged between the Rockies and the Purcells. After that, we moved to the big prairie of Fort St. John in Northern BC. But there is still something that resonates with me deeply when I’m driving into the trees and rocks of a mountain range. The glacial lakes, the unforgiving climate and the crispness of the air. Even the moss and alpine flowers than cover the ground have a particular homeyness to me. When I drive into the mountains, even though I have only lived there for 6 months of my life, I feel like I am going home.
Enjoy the pictures of my little girls and I spending time in the mountains. On the way to Calgary, we stayed one night at Lake Louise and wandered with the other thousands of tourists around the lake. Then on the way home a couple of days later, we stepped off the frequented path to a much quieter trail for some geocaching in Kananaskis country.
