CALGARY

16th – 18th September CALGARY

On Tuesday 16th September we packed up and left Waterton Lakes National Park. It was a final goodbye for now from me to the mountains, which have a way of shaking me down to my very core. I will miss their extraordinary indescribable splendour, no pettiness there, only the grand issues of life and death.
I was very aware that the little town was beginning to close its shutters, the tourists were dwindling, and a lot of the townspeople were making plans to leave for places more comfortable. Only 30 people brave the winter in Waterton. All the sentient beings of the area were in fine tune with the power and processes of nature, and were making arrangements to make it through the long deep cold. We too, needed to make our arrangements and stay ahead of the snow, in order to reach the coziness of Nairn before the towing of a trailer became hazardous.

Our neighbours at the campsite are from Calgary and gave us some tips about where we could stay, before we set off for our next destination. Our route was along the TransCanada Highway, the #1 Highway, which took us through miles and miles of flat prairie ranch land, in sharp contrast to the terrain we were leaving. This was home to thousands of black and brown cows and not quite as many horses, and fields upon fields of neatly rolled and piled up bales of hay.

We bypassed the city itself and checked in at a campground in the dormitory community of Cochane north of Calgary. Calgary has boomed in recent years and is a sprawling city with many examples of mushrooming suburbia perched on the desirable tops of all the surrounding hills. Looking to the west in the far distance, the faint blue of the Rockies can be seen.

Wednesday morning we left early without the trailer in tow, to do the 2-hour drive back to Rocky Mountain House. I wanted to spend just a few last hours with Jean, and to see Sarah and her brother Michael, who was visiting from England, before we headed back to Ontario. On a clear sunny day, it was a lovely drive, once more in fertile farm country.

Thursday was designated as the day to spend in Calgary. Public transit is very good and we took the fast train into the city centre. The downtown core was strikingly busy and something of a shock after the great silences of Waterton. Lunchtime was a crazy cacophony of city sounds. We, at first, attempted to sit out on the restaurant’s patio to watch the smartly dressed passers-by, purposefully moving about on their lunch break. But a concrete mixer nearby, part of a road repair project, was grimly and determinedly rotating its viscous load and spewing it out, creating such an ear-exploding din, that we retreated inside. Once inside, conversation annihilating high volume canned music, and a TV relentlessly and simultaneously droning on, assaulted us. Eric and I, beaten by the onslaught, simply ate our meal and left. As if in consolation, the food was good, not always the case in an unknown city, and the server was a cheery soul.
It was the gods’ idea of black comedy, I suppose, as in the midst of it all Eric and I were gloomily and impossibly attempting to resolve a conflict. Funny really…now!! In the end, the external craziness had the effect of diffusing our tension and left us quiet and weary.
Perhaps Calgary deserves another visit.