Watching the Clouds Roll By

The Boston Herald

BANFF SPRINGS, Alberta - I am watching the clouds roll by. Literally.

Pale pink in some places, bruise blue in others, they are thick, substantial things, far more lethargic than clouds generally are. They have draped themselves across the mountains. They hug the craggy tops and cling to the creviced sides and linger there, as if they, too, are reluctant to leave this place of beauty, which is so high in the sky that it seems an anteroom to heaven or at least an intimation of what's promised there.

I am watching the clouds roll by from the window of my room at the Banff Springs Hotel, a big, sprawling, luxurious, 100-year-old castle in the midst of raw wilderness. I am both Heidi and Cinderella, under a spell, a million miles away from my own real life.

I am watching the clouds mindless of everything else. In the midst of December, in the midst of what is always a frantic, chaotic month, I am suddenly content just to be.

An occasional bus chugs down the snow covered street, which leads to Mount Rundle. Cars with their lights on move even more slowly. People walk in thick boots on sidewalks shoveled and scraped every day.

Everything else is still, like the inside of a snow scene before it is shaken, and so clear that I, who am nearsighted, don't have to wear glasses to see sharp outlines of roofs a mile away.

Even the flags flying outside the hotel seem painted in place.

I am watching the clouds roll by, immersed in their journey, wondering why anyone would choose to do anything else, wondering what possibly could be more important that this? The sun wavers, like a mellifluous voice going up and down a scale. It is soothing always, and spectacular sometimes. Sharp or soft, it brightens the world in a way that a million electric lights never could.

It's a hard land, the Canadian northwest. Vast. Demanding. Frigid. Midnight dark until 8:30 a.m. You have to wear long underwear and wool socks and waterproof boots and a hat and scarf and insulated gloves and a Gore-Tex coat, simply to cross the courtyard.

And yet it's worth it. The air is so cold it makes your teeth hurt and your eyes water. The air is so cold it makes your head feel as if you have eaten ice cream too fast. But it is clean air and you crave it once you taste it.

I am watching the clouds roll by, outside now, with my husband, the two of us on a dog sled, a blanket warming us, cocooned in nature.

I feel like Mrs. Mike, Sgt. Preston, Jack London. This is the way they traveled. This is the way life used to be.

The driver shouts to the dogs and they stop barking and take off over unbroken trail, and the sled lurches and the snow flies and it is sharp like shattered glass and cold like chipped ice, and it stings my face and my eyes hurt so much - I never knew eyes could hurt - that I have to shut them.

I never knew paradise could be white, either. I always believed it was green and warm and lush. But when I open my eyes in this untamed wilderness, I see that I was wrong. This is paradise, and it is white and silent and frozen.

It takes a long time to warm up even though we are on the sled only an hour. We huddle together in a heated truck. We sip hot cocoa. We retreat to our heated room. Luxury in the midst of wilderness. It's a nice combination.

I watch the clouds roll by knowing that this is an insulated experience, knowing that I would never survive here without the amenities, knowing that when I get home, I will be frantic and unfocused again.

But not now.