Smoky Sept trip to the mountains.

 

"An amphitheatre that held
Valleys and cliffs and waterfalls,
Gorges hewn like royal halls,
forests flanked by hills at swelled
To mountains, these again to clouds"

fron Titans

by E.J. Pratt

Trip to the mountains pika and it's food pile

"Who sees, the ultimate Recipient
of what happens, the One Who is aware
when, in the administrative wing
a clerk returns from noon-day, through
the ointment of mortality
for one strange hour, in all his lustreless life,
has touched his face."

from The Apex Animal
by Margaret Avison

https://defendabparks.ca

The Mountains

"the shadow of
the mist shall yet
with but the time
this granite fret"

from Sky Spindrift
by James Wreford

https://defendabparks.ca

Trip to the mountains

 

    "Only to life have the cedars learned to attend."

     from Epithalamion in Time and Place

     by Roy Daniels

https://defendabparks.ca/

Mountain Road Trip - Continued

                       "The practical importance of the preservation of our forests
                       is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams. "

                       - John Muir

Road Trip - We found a lovely spot for lunch with friends

 

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

― John Burroughs

Road Trip Photos Continue

 “In every act of looking there is an expectation of meaning.”

—John Berger

Road trip to the mountains - rock

 

 "The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape."

John Burroughs

"But I consider further, and find
A hungry bird has a free mind;
He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow,
Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow;
This moment is his, thy will hath said it,
The next is nothing till thou hast made it.

Thy bird has pain, but has no fear
Which is the worst of any gear;
When cold and hunger and harm betide him,
He does not take them and stuff inside him;
Content with the day's ill he has got,
He waits just, nor haggles with his lot:
Neither jumbles God's will
With driblets from his own still."

                    from Consider The Ravens

               by George MacDonald

A trip to Banff on the weekend, a beautiful shiny black bird and the mountains.

"What is it worth, then, this insane last phase

When everything about you goes downhill?

This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze

And feel its grandeur, even against your will,

As it reminds you, just by being there,

That it is here we live, or else nowhere."

              from Event Horizon

                   by Clive James

"Vast and majestic, mountains embrace your shadow;

broad and deep, rivers harbour your voice."

                T'ao Ch'ien

"I look south to Deer-Gate Mountain. haze

lavish, as if some fragrance remained.

but his old mountain home is lost there:

mist thick and forests all silvered azure."

from Hsiang Travels: Thinking of Meng Hao-jan

by Po Chu-i

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, 

striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through 

space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, 

the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty"

                  from Travels in Alaska

                       by John Muir

" I reached Cold Mountain and all cares stopped

no idle thoughts remained in my head

nothing to do I write poems on rocks

and trust the current like an unmoored boat"

from the Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

These are the last photos from our trip to the mountains.

For Shaun and Wendolene this is the longest car trip they

 have been on with us and they were very well behaved.

I always think of the mountains as the home of large animals

but I was surprised by how many plants had insects on them.
Plant identification is based on Plants of Alberta, Royer &
Dickinson, Lone Pine Publishing.

Feel free to disagree.

Mountain Fireweed

Mountain Goldenrod

Below we see a Hoverfly surrounded

by aphids Some Hoverfly larve feed

on aphids the adults feed on nectar

and pollen. Bugs of Alberta

Common Red Paintbrush

 

Twinflower ~ Linnaea borealis

"I stop in the gravel by the side of the road,

completely ringed by mountains so impressive

they must be fake."

                 Starting Out in the Afternoon

                                           Jill Frayne

Some more shots of our trip to the mountains last weekend.

Having seen the bears the only other

mammals we saw tended to be on the short side.

Columbian ground squirrels

An outgoing Golden-mantled ground squirrel

posing and begging by the lake.

A series of shots of the beautiful lakes we saw,

the lakes were incredible shades of blue.

"I talk the road that bears leaves in the mountains

I grow hard to see then I vanish entirely

On the peaks it is summer"

             The Dream Again

                      W.S. Merwin

Sunday my wife and I went on a picnic with two friends in
Kananaskis Country a series of parks covering the foothills
and front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Since Helen and

I have not had a car in the twenty-five years we have been married
it is a treat to leave the city. More on this later. We also
took Shaun and Wendolene our two dogs. I hope to post a series

of pictures from this trip but I wanted to get these pictures
out first to share with our companions.

We had found a lovely spot for lunch by a small creek with a bridge.
We had just finished and had driven a couple hundred years
when we encountered a mother grizzly and her cub eating
berries. They were heading for the picnic area but whether they
bypassing it on the high ground or entered it I have not heard.
A number of the trails were closed due to bears but as far
as I know no one has been hurt recently.

These picture were taken from the car on the other side
of the highway always the best way to photograph
a grizzly. They are a little fuzzy but not wuzzy so here we go.

 "The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware
It has been eaten by the bear".

          The Grizzly Bear

                         Alfred Edward Housman

 

"Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and
His charity is broad enough for both... We seek to establish a narrow
line between ourselves and the feathery zeros we dare to call angels,
but ask a partition barrier of infinite width to show the rest of
creation its proper place. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we,
and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters.
A bears days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are
overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and
ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from
the same fountain....."

- John Muir