April 17th, Kamloops - Town of the Mystifying Signage
I guess you would call this Canada's equivalent to the Scottish Lowlands; a sweeping wind- and rain-eroded hilly landscape of sage brush and tumbleweed. The major crop here seems to be North American ginseng, the cooling opposite (the yin?) to Asian ginseng's hot-blooded yang.
Kamloops is a strange place of industrial units and functional blocks that disguise the odd area of interest. Though I don't recommend their wildlife park, except for the four yellow-eyed wolves. In this town the north and south Thompson rivers meet in a gentle way. Whilst sitting by the river watching the sun go down, Pat commented that the experience is just like sitting on the shore of the Ganges in Varanasi. I hope not.
...and yes, he was being sarcastic.
April 21st, Jasper
Here I am in the Canadian Rockies enjoying the most awesomely brtual mountains I ever saw and - oh! look at this - it's a notice of intended prosectuion from the Wiltshire police, here's me doing over 70mph on the A303 from London to Devon.
**sigh**
April 21st continued, Columbia Icefields
Who'd've thought the purity of the Columbia Icefield could sustain such blackness? This is what I found out there on the Athabasca Glacier:
April 23rd, Banff - Sulphur Mountain
Neither words nor camera can do justice to the experience of Sulphur Mountain's summit on a clear blue day. Before, I'd been thinking how all these monumental snow-topped lumps of rock made me feel like the Tardis - bigger on the inside - and made me ask "how can this litlle body possibly contain everything it feels inside?". Well, a panoramic view of an unending mountainous landscape did the opposite: it made me feel like a minute, temporal speck sitting on top of the world. Pat quoted the old mama from Mike Leigh's High Hopes: "I feel like I'm on top of the world" she says in broad cockney as she peers over the edge of her son's roof garden down onto Kings Cross' disused gasworks. I know what she means.
April 28th, Osoyoos and home
"Looks like it's been raining for a month here. In fact, it looks like it doesn't know how to do anything else but rain."
No comments:
Post a Comment