In June 2004 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. It didn't work out, mostly because of the weather, but I did have a great ride.

These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

Hey Folks,
    I've just been to one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Below are some  of my notes, more prose poems than anything.

The Ancient Memory

    My mind is blown. I've just seen one of the most incredible places on earth.
    A place where nature rules with a gentle hand. Where the long prairie grasses and seas of wildflowers flutter in the wind. Where big horn sheep and elk roam and goats canter on stone. Where wild horses are seen only by a  few. A place where grizzly hunt and the human mind can be freed of all the small stuff. A place where the natural beauty of this odd lonely globe is  personified.

    On all sides rest the Rockies, with a great red peak at their center, in between which rolling masses of wavering clover, paintbrush and grass, all shared by  an emerald green river fed by many streams, running, never loping.
    Here there was food for big game. Here there was protection from the wind.  Here the clouds parted and held back the snow. Here the people wintered.  I see their villages, their meat smoking fires. I see their dances and the  smoke from their tipis. I hear the hooves of their horses and the laughter  of their children.

Bighorn Falls

    All around tens of thousands of years of pulverized are rock cut to the quick by  cold clear streaming water, foaming as it leaps from the cliffs in this place  called "mountain prairie", where some say the great Chinook was born, the snow does not remain long, and the hunting is always good. The creek, humming over rock. Sunlight lilting on fast green water between  moss covered banks made smooth by centuries of melting snow and ice. Small ferns, wild roses, and berries grow up through the shale as it disintegrates and is covered up by falling needles and decaying grass blown from atop the canyon walls where wildflowers dance.

    Ya Ha Tinda, mountain prairie, where the eye of the great Chinook is focussed in miles of blue unwavering sky, rimmed by Rockies, made fertile by the snow from their peaks.
 

Journal Excerpt July 18

    Finally, I have been there, the "Happy Hunting Grounds"! It is a truly  beautiful place, a prairie of wildflowers fluttering amid the long grass stretched like a warm winter blanket between the peaks. Standing on a bluff overlooking it all, the grass sang, filled as it was with every manner of insect from grasshopper to beetle to ant.

    Words cannot describe the place. It is something that must be seen, walked upon, laid down in, smelled,  breathed.

    Spent a fair bit of time along Bighorn Creek, near a waterfall about the same height as Niagara, with one one hundredth of its flow, but clean as the sky and wind. I wrote there, but it doesn't matter, because even a poet with a real vocabulary could not describe the scene. It is truly magical.

    I found myself transfixed, transported back to a time when people moved around on foot or by horses' hoof. Picturing a large tipi village, I could see the smoking fires and hear the baying of the horses, wild unbridled horses.

    Of all the places I have been in my travels this is the most beautiful. It  beckons to me on some deep personal level to go there, to pass seasons and know it well. It is the sort of place where you can take a friend and they will remain forever in your debt, just for the visual treat. For being in the place and taking time to know it, that gratitude would become undying
loyalty. That's how beautiful the place is, the sort of place where you could take an enemy and, upon seeing it, they would forgive you and become a friend!

    I was a little disturbed we didn't pass more time. What I got was little more than a sneak peak, a glimpse of Nirvana, so to speak. Alas, even with a  mere look, I will always have the place in my mind. It will be the mental space I can go to whenever I need to step away from the world. I would give  a fair bit, likely abandon my adventure, for the chance to go there
again and spend some quality time.

    Unfortunately, the place is the sole domain of hunters and horsemen. They  have made it their own, but have graciously kept it from becoming to overrun. Also fortunate is its location up long corduroyed logging roads, where one can easily get lost and never find the way in. And perhaps it is  best that it remain somewhat secret and hidden. That way it will never be
compromised, because if it ever became easily accessed, it would make Banff a ghost town!

    It's hardly worth writing about the other events of the day, the drive in and out, the camp meals, the time by the river watching white water rafters. No, the only thing worth mentioning in this book today is Ya Ha Tinda itself.

    The words mean "mountain prairie" in the Stoney language, but to my  mind those four syllables will always represent "heaven."

    I'm sad to leave here today, but that sadness is completely tempered by the honour I feel has been bestowed upon me, to visit such a place, even if it was just for a few short hours on a hot summer day. It was what my trip is all about. Even if I go no further, I will be satisfied, because my feet  have walked, my eyes have seen, my ears have heard, my hands have touched, my tongue has tasted, my nose has smelled and my heart has known the beauty  of Ya Ha Tinda. And, even if I live a thousand years and never go back, I  will always remember the orange lilies of Ya Ha Tinda.

    So there it is folks, a little schmaltzy but not the least bit overblown.  Quite simply, there are no words to describe Ya Ha Tinda!

    Onto my next adventure. It appears I'll be pulling out of Calgary in the morning. Not sure which direction I'm going, but I am going.

    Hope you're all well and happy,
Will