Bamf.
I spent most of last week in Banff, a small tourist town for snowbirds at the edge of the Canadian Rockies. This was made possible, even mandatory, because astronomers who have their budgets cut to the point where their projects can only afford to meet as a work-all-weekend add-on to another conference and its airfare costs are good at finding nearby gorgeous places cheap in the off-season to collaborate on their work and go out on the town or into the woods in spare afternoons between.
After eight days straight of meetings (being the conference and the add-on), I snuck out for an afternoon to drive to an even more remote area of Banff national park called Lake Louise, alone, and to walk 3.4km up a snowcapped mountain to the glacial lake near its top and patronise the Lake Agnes Tea House. The tea house is only accessible by foot or horseback, and would be only open for one more day of the autumn season. The reason for that date became clear to me as halfway through my ascent it started snowing.
I almost gave up several times. We'll pretend that a mere 3.4km took me well over two hours because I'm not used to altitude and because I stopped for the sake of photography often. And because of the snow. And maybe I was already falling to the travel lurgy. Even at that short distance it was probably the most ridiculous thing I'd ever done alone, and every time I stopped and thought about not pressing forward I was glad for all the folks back at home I'd told about it, silently holding me to the miserable, breathless adventure so I couldn't slink back down the mountain in silent disappointment with myself.
From the top, having made it, watching the great expanse of nearly-freezing evergreen rolling mountains and snow and lakes coloured emerald green from the rock flour ground down by glaciers, I almost cried. I shared pumpkin bread and tea on the side of a mountain in the snow with complete strangers, huddling close on the less windy side of the tea house porch, while fearless chipmunks ran over my shoes to collect crumbs. We talked like we'd known one another for years, these single-serving friends united by our crazy idea of how to spend an afternoon. Eventually I'll come to terms with the fact that the most ridiculous hike I've ever done in my life is easy and popular enough to sustain a seasonal business at the top, but everyone else I met on that trail was the particular warm Nordic sort of crazy that flocks to these places, or cheated and rented horses up. And I noticed pretty much no one else went it alone.
I learned in those few hours that if I get a similar work-enabled opportunity, I should do my silent lonely nature hiking before the week of work; it is hard to enjoy a quietly contemplative walk while still unwinding from meetings, still sorting out data formatting and network race condition puzzles in one's head.
I learned two more things, after I came down from the mountain and had internet access again. The ice caps around Lake Louise and Lake Agnes are glaciers. Actual glaciers, whose retreat is accelerating so much that it can be witnessed in tourist photos from the last fifty years. I saw one. Climbed up most of the way to it on foot, and watched a waterfall of snow and melt and drank tea in its shadow. I have no idea how much longer it, or its bright green lake, will exist.
The other thing I learned was how most of the great park's infrastructure was built around the trans-Canadian rail line during World War One. Some of it was built by laborers in internment camps, working through the winter. Not native peoples as one sadly expects, not Japanese immigrants as my WW2-focused American brain briefly considered. WW1: these were Hungarian, Ukrainian, and German immigrants who had fled the drums of war in their home countries to travel across the ocean, at exactly the time my own Hungarian family had, to a different intended destination and rounded up as the enemy. I still haven't really come to terms with that enough to find more information. I still want to go back. Not alone, or with my colleagues, but with my family. To travel roads my people had to build, and see a glacier again, while one still can.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/salix_lucida/sets/72157646479367413
After eight days straight of meetings (being the conference and the add-on), I snuck out for an afternoon to drive to an even more remote area of Banff national park called Lake Louise, alone, and to walk 3.4km up a snowcapped mountain to the glacial lake near its top and patronise the Lake Agnes Tea House. The tea house is only accessible by foot or horseback, and would be only open for one more day of the autumn season. The reason for that date became clear to me as halfway through my ascent it started snowing.
I almost gave up several times. We'll pretend that a mere 3.4km took me well over two hours because I'm not used to altitude and because I stopped for the sake of photography often. And because of the snow. And maybe I was already falling to the travel lurgy. Even at that short distance it was probably the most ridiculous thing I'd ever done alone, and every time I stopped and thought about not pressing forward I was glad for all the folks back at home I'd told about it, silently holding me to the miserable, breathless adventure so I couldn't slink back down the mountain in silent disappointment with myself.
From the top, having made it, watching the great expanse of nearly-freezing evergreen rolling mountains and snow and lakes coloured emerald green from the rock flour ground down by glaciers, I almost cried. I shared pumpkin bread and tea on the side of a mountain in the snow with complete strangers, huddling close on the less windy side of the tea house porch, while fearless chipmunks ran over my shoes to collect crumbs. We talked like we'd known one another for years, these single-serving friends united by our crazy idea of how to spend an afternoon. Eventually I'll come to terms with the fact that the most ridiculous hike I've ever done in my life is easy and popular enough to sustain a seasonal business at the top, but everyone else I met on that trail was the particular warm Nordic sort of crazy that flocks to these places, or cheated and rented horses up. And I noticed pretty much no one else went it alone.
I learned in those few hours that if I get a similar work-enabled opportunity, I should do my silent lonely nature hiking before the week of work; it is hard to enjoy a quietly contemplative walk while still unwinding from meetings, still sorting out data formatting and network race condition puzzles in one's head.
I learned two more things, after I came down from the mountain and had internet access again. The ice caps around Lake Louise and Lake Agnes are glaciers. Actual glaciers, whose retreat is accelerating so much that it can be witnessed in tourist photos from the last fifty years. I saw one. Climbed up most of the way to it on foot, and watched a waterfall of snow and melt and drank tea in its shadow. I have no idea how much longer it, or its bright green lake, will exist.
The other thing I learned was how most of the great park's infrastructure was built around the trans-Canadian rail line during World War One. Some of it was built by laborers in internment camps, working through the winter. Not native peoples as one sadly expects, not Japanese immigrants as my WW2-focused American brain briefly considered. WW1: these were Hungarian, Ukrainian, and German immigrants who had fled the drums of war in their home countries to travel across the ocean, at exactly the time my own Hungarian family had, to a different intended destination and rounded up as the enemy. I still haven't really come to terms with that enough to find more information. I still want to go back. Not alone, or with my colleagues, but with my family. To travel roads my people had to build, and see a glacier again, while one still can.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/salix_lucida/sets/72157646479367413