Sunday, October 5, 2008

Alberta Canada in October


Our trip to Alberta, Canada...a treasure from my writing chest. A bugling elk, at dusk. Yes, we were this close! Jerry didn't like the color of this photo but I love it. It's almost sepia tone but it was actually the way the evening melted into night: soft and slow and restful.




The view of Edith Lake, Jaspar National Park, Alberta, Canada. This was our view when we awoke each morning. Spectacular. Our hosts have a family cottage on this lake where we heard elk bugle and watched ducks make perfect v's across the water. The landscape reminded me of Wisconsin and Minnesota but with mountains.






Meet Loris and Gary Webb of Edmonton, Alberta who treated the us to a wonderful time in Canada in October. While things were going awry in the stock market in the states, we visited a small museum in Jasper, the Royal Alberta museum in Edmonton, drove up to Maligne (pronounced ma-lean) Lake and Medicine Lake, names familiar from my research for the Tender Ties series; and walked up close to the Columbia Ice Fields and relished the granduer there. Sadly, all the shots we took at the ice fields became blurs of white: too much sun and too much ice! Oh, that's me on the right looking very grateful I hope for Loris taking the time to write to me some years back after reading A Gathering of Finches. It was her first book of mine but happily, not the last. We've corresponded through the years and when they learned that I would be keynoting a writer's conference in Edmonton, extended an invitation to Jerry and me to spend a few extra days with them. She's generous with her books, giving me a couple to read while we stayed at their cabin on Edith Lake. Gary is a marvelous story-teller and we laughed, ate very well, and relaxed. A perfect time of restoration.