In the mountains, there you feel free
Nov. 29th, 2019 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormToday was my first day in a helicopter. They're pretty normal for my line of work, not frequent but normal from time to time. Everyone is surprised I've worked in this field as long as I have without being up in one.
They are such an incredibly intimate tool to learn the landscape. We covered a lot of distance, but part of what we did was to count swans on the river and look at individual pine germinants, couple-centimeter-tall trees, on forests that had been burnt by wildfire.
They allow you to transcend the limitations of space and scale in ways I hadn't imagined.
I love this area. I love the mountains with rocky snowy peaks and whitebark pine; I love the wide generous valleys; I love the hills with cobbled slopes that catch the sun. We spotted about twenty moose and spent five minutes in an area I'd struggled to walk around one small part of for an entire day. I saw forests that used to be meadows: our pilot's family had lived in this area for a couple generations.
There was snow on the ground, not deep but great for contrast. There was a perfectly blue sky with sun. Low clouds and mist lay along the so-many-lakes here: Takla Lake, Tchentlo Lake, Pinchi Lake, Hatdudatehl Lake, Purvis Lake, Stuart Lake. They were all trying to freeze but the water was still warmer than the air so they streamed cloud up to hide themselves.
My connection to this landscape is so private, intimate, and important to my soul. So much of the trip I was thinking, I can't take pictures because this moment is sacred just to me. So many of the pictures would mean nothing to you.
I took some anyhow, to remember.
They are such an incredibly intimate tool to learn the landscape. We covered a lot of distance, but part of what we did was to count swans on the river and look at individual pine germinants, couple-centimeter-tall trees, on forests that had been burnt by wildfire.
They allow you to transcend the limitations of space and scale in ways I hadn't imagined.
I love this area. I love the mountains with rocky snowy peaks and whitebark pine; I love the wide generous valleys; I love the hills with cobbled slopes that catch the sun. We spotted about twenty moose and spent five minutes in an area I'd struggled to walk around one small part of for an entire day. I saw forests that used to be meadows: our pilot's family had lived in this area for a couple generations.
There was snow on the ground, not deep but great for contrast. There was a perfectly blue sky with sun. Low clouds and mist lay along the so-many-lakes here: Takla Lake, Tchentlo Lake, Pinchi Lake, Hatdudatehl Lake, Purvis Lake, Stuart Lake. They were all trying to freeze but the water was still warmer than the air so they streamed cloud up to hide themselves.
My connection to this landscape is so private, intimate, and important to my soul. So much of the trip I was thinking, I can't take pictures because this moment is sacred just to me. So many of the pictures would mean nothing to you.
I took some anyhow, to remember.
