Thursday 13 June 2024 7:47PM by Bob Este, CACOR member
In my last note of yesterday, I neglected to mention that during our road trip through Banff and Jasper National Parks, and then West on Hwy 16 to visit our disabled grandson in BC, we saw the three bears. No goldilocks, though—although, yes, by the side of the road, we did see a small pile of old picked-over bones, a ragged blonde wig, one torn shoe, and some shredded clothing—all unrecognizable. Bears don’t like imposters, I’m told.
No, no—don’t worry—we didn’t actually see Goldilocks’ remains (or any other remains, real or imaginary) by the road. In all seriousness and in the realm of the actual, we did observe, at three separate locations along the way in Jasper National Park, the three bears—each one very large and very black. This was not surprising, of course—we’ve seen many hundreds through the parks over the years, and even a handful of grizzlies (not that any self-respecting grizzly bear would every sit in anyone’s hand). And just by good ol’ chance, we likely missed seeing other bears that were out there, no doubt wishing us well as we continued on our way. Or keeping out of sight. “Just keep going, please.”
But, one of the three bear sightings caused us to feel quite ill. There is a purpose to telling the story, as you will see in what follows.
We had to come to a stop and then crawl along slowly to navigate through a traffic jam of about 50+ vehicles. These were mostly rentals (you can tell from the plates of course), more than a dozen sizeable campers, and one full-sized tour bus—yes, tour buses (but not all of them, to our knowledge) also stop, seemingly wherever they like, to let out tourists, along with many running children, to head into the great outdoors to scream and yell and take selfies and family portraits with nearby bear and elk cajoled into the pictures, the latter neither of which much like to be cheek to jowl with humans, and can transition from being tolerant to extremely aggressive and deadly in less than one second.
All these jammed-up vehicles, many of which were still moving slowly, even backing up and jostling for “position”, were very awkwardly and roughly “lined up”, bumper to bumper, blocking both lanes in both directions (you may already know that the Icefields Highway is mostly very narrow to begin with, especially along this particular stretch to the NW of Saskatchewan Crossing about which I am commenting—there are no shoulders to speak of).
“Look at the bear! Look at the bear! Look at the bear!” (apologies to those who remember, along with myself, where that particular line comes from). Instead, let’s look at the people who were there in the “prime viewing spot” right beside the road. Almost all of them were wearing very high-quality “outdoor” jackets, brand new hiking boots, and other assorted whatnots—the de rigeur costumes are a bit more uniform in this day and age (if you’ll pardon the terrible pun). Well over 50 individuals holding out mobile phones and DSLRs as well as the aforementioned young humans were elbowing each other to snap photos of the poor distressed bear which was working hard about 12 meters off the road—it was chowing down the lovely fresh greens and grasses, as bears often do at this time of year when the day’s pickings happen to be very good.
In previous years, we have often seen park wardens intervening in such “impromptu parking lot” circumstances, mostly just telling people to move along—after all, it is not legal or even remotely desirable to simply “park” a vehicle anywhere you want, especially on narrow and heavily-travelled roadways, except in designated pull-off or parking areas, or in the case of an unavoidable emergency.
I suspect that pleading with a park ranger you really, honestly and definitely did have an emergency need to photograph a bear just wouldn’t cut it. The park officials who patrol the Icefields Highway, bless their cotton socks, are understanding and quite kind. They’ve seen it all before (personally, I truly wonder where they acquire their endless patience). They are firm but friendly with anyone with whom they have speaks (especially in cases of a “gang pull-off” such as what we observed, which events tend to attract rangers’ attention when they happen to be encounter such things).
From one point of view, even if they know they shouldn’t—all travellers will have been told about the rules (which are not discretionary) when the purchased their park pass—it’s somewhat understandable that someone might still choose to stop to look at and photograph a wild animal. Many of the “park visitors” have never been near anything like, much less immersed in, a true wilderness, are quite rightly astounded, “blown away”, by the stunningly beautiful Rockies and the vast, essentially untouched forests—and most have probably never seen a real, live bear. Some may not even have any idea what such a large, black, furry animal might be.
But being excited with the wonder of it all is no excuse. I’ve never seen or heard of park wardens issuing tickets, except in instances of person-to-person confrontations, feeding wild animals, or what we might denote as “environmental abuse”. But stupid humans stopping dangerously on a very limited roadway to get close to wild animals who have no agendas even remotely similar to those of humans, the latter of whom might think they see Bambi or Smokey the Bear, or even some kind of animatronic robot (“Look at that thing, Edna! Sure does look real, doesn’t it? How do they make it look like it’s eating? Amazing what they can do with technology these days …”) …
It’s pretty simple—be good. Remember this is reality, not a reality show. Follow the rules, which are actually simple and very easy to understand. Be kind. Take all your garbage with you when you leave. Observe all things from a healthy distance and don’t touch. Don’t “acquire” any souvenirs, even a rock by the road. Don’t interfere with others who want to look, either. Leave all things the way you found them. Move along folks, there’s nothing more to see here …
Friday 14 June 2024 9:28AM
Coffee time. My third cup, at last. It’s morning as I write this. To be honest, I was surprised to see that it’s already Frida. The visit has been good but very demanding. Everyone is off their schedules. I’ve totally lost track of the days. I feel as though my mind, and I guess my sensibilities, have gone where I know not. They are somewhere around here, but are out doing their own thing, or things, or whatever they do, and don’t seem to be connected to much of anything else at the moment. We are tired.
A violent and very loud T-storm went through at about 6:30 this morning. The brilliant flashes, tearing skies and deep rumbles woke me up—and in that space between the two (or more) consciousnesses, I could not tell if it was actually happening or not. I heard no sirens, so ended up not being much concerned, and returned to a fitful sleep.
A while ago, someone at Mickey D’s or Breakfast Bytes just down the road must have dumped an industrial-sized, 5000 kg load of frozen hash browns into their massive buckets of boiling oil … the revolting, wafting clouds of thick vapour enveloped this entire end of town, and now everything, including this apartment where we are staying, is caked with and smells heavily of unmistakable hot morning potato grease—with thick new stifling layers of something akin to meat-like objects being fried and flipped and fried again with each passing minute. No fresh air can be found anywhere. We are very glad we don’t live here.
Upon reflection, it struck me that, as the climate continues to warm up, basically twisting and turning on itself, and then soon disappears up its own crack of dawn, this is what the last few years of what’s left of Earth’s atmosphere will both increasingly smell like, and how it will undoubtedly perform.
Anything we previously knew as pleasant and clear will be permanently and darkly obscured by roiling, revolting, sticky, smoking clouds of black grease and stinking oil.
Not that the hard-working “git ‘er done” good ol’ boys (and girls) who populate these kinds of places will care much about that, except of course with regard to getting laid and not being laid off, keeping up with their loan payments, watching any game, trying to turn the late evening of every day of the week into a Sudbury Saturday Night, and doing something unspeakable with Mr. Trudeau (if they could ever catch him and hold him down on the barroom table long enough … ) … it seems that on flags flying from pickup truck antennae or on large signs emblazoned on vehicle doors and tailgates, many are very happy to shout out their intent to find him and do just that …
As world heat and CO2 levels continue to rise into our own yellow, Venusian-style stratosphere, and metals such as lead begin to spontaneously melt on the planet’s surface, millions of sweaty, grizzled young males who definitely think they are men in plaid shirts wearing baseball caps threaded on backwards, spitting and snarling at the world and thrusting middle fingers out side windows as their pea-sized testicles continue to shrivel and disappear like dried-up black currants in our completely unnatural, bubbling, chemical murk will continue to pilot unimaginably loud, smoking, raised-up 4x4s over crumbling curbs and what remains of parking barriers as they work so hard to reinforce their huge heaps of littleness and endlessly seek their heavenly visions and magical destinies …
Such an ending, such an ending …