Rockwall.

There comes a point in every summer where I start to feel a little burnt out. Summers in the Canadian Rockies are so short, and the energy of the locals and tourists alike is palpable—we’re all just trying to soak up every minute of it. This year, summer seemed to start a little early, and I began hiking in earnest in May. I’d find myself on a peak or a trail every weekend. We even went back to Skoki for four days in mid-July. In between the hiking & camping trips, there are evening runs after work, the occasional climb, waterside picnics or backyard barbecues with friends. When you aren’t spending your time outside, you’re spending your time thinking about the next time you’re going to be outside.

So, by the time we got to our mid-August trip to Rockwall (already booked and planned since the start of the year), I didn’t realise how desperately I needed down time until we got there. We woke up at 4:30am on a Tuesday morning to get to the trailhead at dawn, committed to beating the 31ºC heat so that Autumn wouldn’t have to suffer. It would be an 11km trek to our campground at Floe Lake on a trail with no shade, and no water close by. We went at a leisurely pace. It was a steady incline along a valley ravaged by wildfires, many a burn tree standing as bare, eerie sentinels watching over our journey. Dozens of fireweed flowers dotted the landscape, and more often than not, we’d walk past avalanche debris or push past overgrown shrubs and bushes on the narrow trail. It didn’t take long to feel the heat as the sun began rising over the mountains. We’d stop often to give Autumn water and time to rest to ensure she wouldn’t overheat.

After many a switchback, the trail led us to our campground. Floe Lake may just be one of my most favourite campgrounds to date. The turquoise lake glittered in the afternoon sun, a tantalising invitation to jump into its icy waters after a hot day of hiking. We could hear the glacier cracking and moving all the time, noting, with sadness, how little was left of it. So, it was over these next three days at Floe Lake that we were able to regroup; to have idle time to simply be and to enjoy being. There was absolutely no hurry, no deadline, no other place to be, no minute to fill with anything other than each other and the moment in front of us.

We were blessed with beautiful, sunny weather, with the exception of one particularly smoky day during our second morning at camp. The mountain peaks were shrouded in smoke so thick it choked us, stinging our eyes and making our heads feel thick and sluggish. After breakfast, we took shelter in our tent and slept for another couple of hours before eventually being able to go back outside when the worst of it seemed to have passed.

Seeing mountain peaks shrouded in smoke seems to be a eerily dystopian part of our day-to-day reality now. The effects of a warming planet become more and more apparent when you spend so much time in nature. The rapid rate at which the glaciers recede is noticeable with every passing year; the number of smoky versus smoke-free summer days is outnumbered. You gauge how safe it is to go outside based on whether you can breathe (is it “not too bad” or is it so bad you can smell it?), whether you will cause damage to your lungs. You notice if there are more or less berries on the bushes this year; you note that this creekbed is completely dry compared to years previous. Weather events become more and more extreme, and we pay attention, because we’re out there, fostering a deeper connection outside and inside ourselves; because we need to understand nature, its patterns, and what it is telling us, in order for what we do to be safe.

I savour every one of these days outside knowing, with a sombre and alarming clarity, that I don’t know how many good seasons we have left. So we take days off work to walk dozens of kilometres into the wilderness with our 40lb packs and our homes on our backs and we marvel at every squirrel, the mated loons (that’s a bird, for the non-Canadians out there) on the lake, the wild raspberries and even the tiny spider that hitched a ride on my hat; we jump into the bone-chilling glacial lake (a few times) and we sit on the rocks soaking up the sun like lizards. We take a walk at dusk and I get excited about all the different types of “cool rocks” and how they might have been formed.

“Crazy to think that there are so many people who will never, ever see a place like this”, I say softly, hoping that those who come after me will get to spend time in these wild places, too.