works of wanderlust

Category: local adventure

  • panoramic, three: oculus graffiti

    There is this strange place literally walking distance from my house. 

    The graffiti tunnel, more formally known as The Oculus.

    I say “walking distance” though it did take me over an hour to walk there and an hour to walk home—plus I spent time there taking photos, sketching, making a video and then stopping for lunch on my way home. Three and a half hours later I got home from a little suburban adventuring.

    About twenty years ago now they built a stretch of the city-circling ring road that swung round the southwest corner of the city. At about seven o’clock on the circle the road passes over a little feeder creek. Readers of this blog will be slightly familiar with that creek because we run through many of the trails that weave over and around and past that creek—but north of where the Oculus sits.

    Rather than just build another bridge, some industrious city planner seems to have decided that this would be the future site of some connecting trail linking the neighbourhoods on either side of the freeway, so they build a hulking concrete culvert with a beautiful paved footbridge traversing through the middle and atop the creek… and never connected it to anything. Never. Even twenty years later it’s this seemingly abandoned piece of pedestrian pathway that requires a map and some hiking boots to locate. 

    To be fair, they are doing some roadwork about 500m south of this point now and it is a strong possibility that the lack of connection will be formally remedied in the next couple years—or never—but if it’s going to happen it’s going to happen soon. Or, yeah, maybe never.

    Still. In those twenty years much has transpired under the freeway and much paint has been spent on decorating every reachable surface with graffiti. It is a sight. I mean, if they ever connect it, I’m sure they will repaint it as a stark and boring Industrial City White—but for now, it is a destination for adventure and a sight worthy of some stellar photographic efforts.

  • Local Adventures: Hiking Jura Creek

    It’s a long weekend in Canada and so with neither work nor school for anyone on Monday we skipped off to the mountains for some nordic-style fun in the alpine climate.

    We travel out there quite often. To relax. To hike. To just be somewhere beside home.

    And we always try to squeeze in at least one hike, though hiking in the winter is often a bit more challenging than hiking in the summer.

    The week before we left town I hunted down three pairs of crampons, over the shoe ice spikes with steel grips two centimetres deep and enough grip to walk us up any icy path the tourist-grade hiking scene could throw at us.

    So we bundled up, packed some snacks and water, stuffed a couple cameras in my backpack, and drove about fifteen klicks out of Canmore to an off-the-beaten-path trailhead for Jura Creek.

    In the summer, I assume, Jura Creek is a flowing mountain creek washing down the side of a mountain. The creek bed, frozen during out visit, made for a great short day hike in winter. We hiked up through the water channel, climbing up and over a few small rocks and then out into an open vista with views of the mountains around us.

    Jura Creek is apparently named for the false “jurassic” fault line that greets anyone who is able to hike the approximately four klick gradual climb to the first waypoint. As it turns out it is neither a fault line nor appropriately attributable to the jurassic era. Instead, the rock formations which resemble an exposed fault are something else entirely, including a layer of ash from some ancient volcano. It was still pretty, though.

    We made the round trip, grateful as always to be back at our car, and refuelled back in town with some local amber-coloured recovery fluid.

    Check it out if you’re ever in Canmore.

  • adventure dog adventure

    This may seem a bit silly, but I started editing together little one minute videos of my dog and posting them on Youtube.

    We go for a long walk, explore some trails, capture some 4k footage on my phone or go pro camera.

    I have a couple of these that I did with my last dog but I regret not taking more video of her when she was still around.

    The thing is, people seem to like them.

    Most videos I post get a few dozen views from friends or family.

    These have crept into the 1000s.

    Such as, our adventure walk through the snowy local river valley:

    Or, the new one I posted earlier today about a wandering adventure through some local suburban trails:

    I know she’s cute, but the interest has caught me off guard a little bit.

    … in a good way, of course!

    Check them out and tell me what you think. Cute dogs are an easy sell online? Or are people suddenly vibing for some dog-meets-world video fun?

  • hoar frosty

    hOr / frawst – (noun)

    From the old English, hoar frost evokes the hairy, beard-like frost that grows upon trees and other outdoor objects when the combination of temperature and humidity crystalize ice in a white, icy fuzz on all the surfaces of the world.

    It is a kind of magical scene, assuming it is not too cold to be outside.

    The dog and I felt compelled to walk for over an hour through this wintery wonderland.

    If you thought it was magic walking through a gentle snowfall in the evening, with the flakes drifting through the air all around you and in every direction like stars descending slowly through the spaces and places, try instead walking through a winter forest the morning after a fog when the hoar frost covers literally every branch with a frozen crystalline twinkle.

    To reach out an touch the delicate ice is to destroy it, either shattering or melting it into nothingness, back to dusty snow or a drop of cold dew on your fingertip.

    And as the sun reaches into the sky, the apricity sublimates it back into the atmosphere, like fairy dust returning to the magical source, suddenly and subtly gone without explanation. The fungal-like growth slinks back into whence it came.

    To walk between and under trees covered in hoar frost is to feel the deep cold of mid-winter with your eyes and to understand the power of nature to decorate itself in such a visualization of the weather.

    Powerful and gentle, peaceful and extreme.

    Crisp.

    White.

    Cold.

    Frosty.

  • Knee-hab (Part 2)

    December 30 of 31 December-ish posts

    For the last couple of days, following a week of bitterly cold temperatures, I took advantage of the milder winter weather and went skiing in the park.

    Nordic skiing or cross country skiing, or whatever you happen to call the skiing that doesn’t involve hills is a perfect sport for our local park. In the summer it’s a suburban field with a perimeter ring of asphalt roughly one kilometer in length. In the winter it’s a snowy wasteland waiting to be trampled and played in by local kids.

    I like to help cut ski trails for neighbourhood skiing enthusiasts.

    Some rough math will tell you that a one kilometer oblong ring makes the diameter of the whole field about 320m. More likely it’s about 400m on the long side and 250 at the lateral cut. No matter how you slice it, this is long enough for some good straightaways, even cutting across the various paths people have already tramped through the otherwise pristine snowfall.

    In the last couple days I’ve spent a good couple hours doing laps through that fresh snow, following a meandering track that I cut and smoothing it out so that other locals (and also future me) could enjoy them.

    It’s been a refreshing change.

    I haven’t spent as much time as I would have liked outside in 2022.

    One word that sums up your theme for 2022.

    Knee-hab.

    Ok. So, it’s not a real word. I made it up.

    But it is what I’ve been calling my now-six-month effort to restore mobility and health in my right knee after a mysterious injury left me with a micro-tear in my MCL, medial collateral ligament, an important bit of tender tissue that helps you balance and move and otherwise enjoy things like walking.

    I haven’t run, not outside of physiotherapy at least, since July.

    This is not a good thing.

    I’ve been in knee-hab: stretching, strengthening, hurting, moving, healing, limping, and hopefully recovering. It’s been a very long six months.

    For anyone who runs you know the frustration of not running. It’s physical. It’s outdoors. It’s a stress valve. It’s a social event. It’s a lifestyle. It balances your mind, body, soul, and beyond. It works your lungs, beats your heart and jiggles your bowels and generally makes you feel better after it’s over. It becomes who you are, even if you’re not fast.

    I miss it.

    Not running has descended a cloud over everything else and I would venture to suggest it has left me with a touch of depression that has been a one-hundred-percent effort to attempt to overcome this past six months.

    Knee-hab seems like a silly theme, but it was my life for the latter half of the year. And as I sit here in the scraps of the year-that-was, flexing my leg at my desk knee still stiff after sleeping, it’s hard not to assume that it will define the first bit of 2023, too.

    The last couple days I spent skiing in the park were brilliant for my therapy, physical and mental. My knee felt fabulous after nearly an hour of work cutting and riding the trails I’d cut. My brain felt lighter. My heart, even in the cold winter air, felt warmer.

    I’ll be back out there again today, when the sun climbs up a bit higher.

    And hopefully the theme of my crumby knee will start to wrap up with some grace and promise for the New Year, even as some new opportunities to be outside (and write about it more in 2023) emerge!

    Now, check out the video I made…