First impressions of my new country: everything in the Canadian Rockies is bigger and craggier than anything south of the border. Everyone is so dang friendly. The air smells clean and I like it. We spent several nights in a lodge in Yoho National Park. Half these photos were taken around Emerald Lake, and the other half at Lake Louise. Sometimes the smaller trees have curly tops. Sometimes you are driving along, and suddenly you see a tree that looks like it has a gigantic marshmallow on top, but it turns out to be a hunk of snow. Watch out for chutes and avalanches! We saw so many pretty winter birds: a Three-Toed Woodpecker, some Nutcrackers, and our old friends the Snow Buntings. AND. We finally heard the American Dipper sing his most sweet and amazing song!! Is there anything like rounding a corner and finding a tiny, rotund bird with his feet planted in a freezing cold stream, singing away with all the joy in the world? It is entirely different from swinging your headlights into a parking lot at night and spotting a herd of lady elk hunkered in the snow drifts, which is instead a scene of awesome quietude. I am happy to accept either experience in the course of a day, thank you world.
We have journeyed, slowly, up the coast from San Diego to Vancouver and then east to Montreal. Several years ago, I drove the opposite direction from Vermont to St. Louis and then eventually Portland, OR. I thought I knew what to expect, but somehow I was still startled seeing the topography in reverse. And mentally, there is a really curious thing I am finding about seeing what is here in Canada, instead of the Unites States… its like I never really imagined Canada to be anything but a hat of land sitting on top of the country I grew up in. But Canada! Gee whiz. I had no idea, not one single clue. And I have been here before… it just feels totally different now that I can stop anywhere I want and just live there if I like it. Some farm town in Saskatchewan. Some forest in Manitoba where the Great Grey Owls hang out. Some French paper mill town in Northern Ontario. Wherever!
We're stopped here in Montreal for the time being. We'll get ourselves signed up for some free French classes and see how that goes.
Look who else we saw:
Also, this is a rabbit print in the snow:
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