The mountains stand like sentinels.
We are surrounded on all sides. Brooding recalcitrant structures with stone towers for guards. Looking down on this little town. Blocking the way out.
As a child of the sea and the plains it is hard not to feel surrounded. Captured by these vast behemoths.
When I first went to Illinois at age 17, I was suddenly presented with an open plain stretching endlessly to the horizon. In every direction. Nothing had prepared me for this. There were no mountains, hills, or rises, just vastness. Mile after mile of flats all the way to a dead straight horizon. Having grown up by the beach, in a bay, surrounded in hills, it was a sharp realization. The absence of Hawkes Bays rolling hills required an emotional adjustment. And a physical one. I felt one legged. Like I might fall. Like I had leaned my forehead on a clear window but the window was suddenly not there.
After about a week I was fine of course, my life being taken up with teenage things.
Canmore brings contrasting yet similar responses. The massive change from the plains is evident. I am in a town surrounded by high walls of rock and snow. Behind the cheerful business of a little town, in every direction, are mountains rising like sentinels or guards, reminders to behave. Clouds form eyebrows, rising and lowering in judgment.
My eye is seeking valleys in all directions. Making sure I can get out if I need to. My eyes have accustomed themselves to the freedom of the plains.
Here in Canmore we’re ringed in mountains. Ominous all seeing sharp dangerous structures. They reflect the sunrise and block the afternoon sun. I know 99% of the population here loves these mountains. The mountains promise play and exercise and health and work. To me they look like dark barriers. My reaction is interesting. It is almost a claustrophobic feeling. But not quite. I am looking at my response to these mountains from every angle to work it out. It is a curious reaction for a naturally optimistic person. Why do these mountains make me feel hemmed in.
Travel is like this you know. Little shocks. Joy shocks. Thoughtful shocks. Geographical challenges.
I will be interested to see how I feel when I get up into these mountains this weekend.
I think today I will take my art pad and pencils down to the river and while your TKG Take Ten is recording I will draw the scariest mountain. Try to make friends.
Oh, and here is the forecast. FYI.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
24 responses to “Surrounded”
How beautiful! Believe it or not, there are several mountain ranges like that, with snow, in Spain.
I do believe it. And fully intend to see them one day too. Just waiting for someone to drop a heap of cash in my lap!!
🤣
You these images of these Mountains Canmore. Anita
Thank you Anita!
I think great big brooding mountains are both scary and awesome! Must be so different to what you are used to. Fabulous pictures capturing it all. Hope your journey into the mountains goes well, hopefully with your very specialist son!
I don’t ski – never learnt – so they will park me somewhere safe! (hopefully with food and wine).
Our brains are synced up I think. I have been wondering what you make of this new environment- not new I guess, but simply different from the day in and day out that you are used to. Perspective is such a funny thing. Almost everywhere I look daily there are mountains looming- but not in a menacing or sinister way at all. They provide safety and solitude, a reminder perhaps that it is harder for the bad forces to get in? Canmore feels so familiar to me and I have never been there. Being on the plains would be like opening the floodgates to me, a sense that the world could just come rushing in and I would have no power to slow or stop it. Unsafe in the vast openness. Adaptation would happen of course, but there would always be that nagging feeling that something was off…
You have put into words what i was struggling to say. Geography influences our emotions until our brain finds its balance again. I think todayI am finding that balance. My routine does not change too much as I travel around. But the food and the sights change something wild!
Yes! Exactly. While there are no mountains here it is the glacial terrain, rolling dome like hills (drumlins), sandy gravel ridges, (eskers) and pothole lakes/ponds (kettles). I think I, too, would feel so very exposed on the open plains. Here you are hard put to find a good sized flat spot. I have a 50′ diameter horse corral in my front yard, it’s the only big enough semi flat spot and it still slopes a bit.
Many prairie people feel claustrophobic in the mountains. My dad who was born and raised on the prairies and seldom left them, came to visit us on the west coast of BC. We took him out on our boat, wondering how he would feel about being on the ocean. He loved it! He sat on the back of the boat for hours, wearing his cowboy hat and boots, and watched the water. I was amazed that this 75 year old man, who had no experience of being on the water, loved the ocean so much. The I realized, he was not hemmed in. It was similar to the prairie for him.
I look forward to your sketch of the scariest mountain.
Oh – now – that is very interesting to know. I am glad to hear it is not just me! I love the image of your Dad in his cowboy boots and hat relaxed in the boat. What a thing.
I love that image too. It makes me feel good all over. xo
Wow
Stunning mountains. I’ll never forget the feeling of being amongst mountains from my trip to Colorado years ago. Driving toward that massive high wall of rock from the rolling foothills and then suddenly there they were, stretching across the western horizon, blue, tall and calling me to come to them. It was the oddest feeling. As if being summoned by that mass of uplifted rock to become part of them. I didn’t want to leave.
I grew up in, and now once again live in, the Appalachian Mountains. Geologically older than the Rockies, they give me a sense of comfort. When I lived in Indiana (for 20 years), the flatness made me feel as if I were going to fall off the edge of the Earth. LOL
The only environment I’ll never be able to live is anywhere more than a couple of hours to the sea. I’ve lived in rolling farmland, up a mountain, in several cities and near the sea, and the sea wins hands down. I can understand the visual disconnect of mountains when your brain is accustomed to plains. Your eyes yearn for distance…
I’m a four hour drive away from
Jasper. Much taller mountains –
Mount Robson being the tallest. Majestic. Where I live, we have what I would call ‘hills’…but my neighbor used to say she had the best view of Tabor Mountain out off her back deck. I finally asked her to point it out one day – to me, these hills aren’t mountains. I grew up far north of where you are (think almost to the border of the North West Territories. Flat as a pancake up there. Still don’t know which I prefer.
It takes me a while to adjust to the plains/open land; I feel unprotected whereas in my normal mountainous and tree covered environment, I’m in a sort of cocoon of security. It makes little sense and I adapt fairly easily though. I love the different landscapes!
I arrived in Colorado from New England. The sky was overwhelming and the natives talked of seeing storms coming. That’s puzzling to an Easterner that knew if the cows were lying down it might rain and the storm was visible when it was on top of you ! I’ve adjusted and I now see storms from far away and the big sky has become my friend.
Two daughters now live in Colorado. We are a PNW family so visiting there is odd and flat, but I just keep my eyes trained west and think of the front range and the Rockies as my home state Cascade mountains. 🙂
Amazing photos -such beautiful mountains- and interesting discussion about how visual geography affects us. Here on the east coast of Australia our geographical features are somewhat condensed so there’s not much mental dissonance and out west the flatness is fascinating.
Where we’re camping at the moment is an inland lake/man-made dam which presents visually as a curious naturally occurring facsimile of a beach landscape. Pale grasses subbing for sand, a foreshore of gritty mud before the blue of the water which in the distance recedes to treelines and backdrop of hills and mountains that reassuringly resembles the landscape of my rural childhood. I’ll pop a pic up on Insta.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I don’t think I could live away from the mountains. They’re my friends and protectors. We rarely have tornadoes here because of our mountains. And the hiking is top-notch!
I could only imagine going from sea to plains. It would take some getting used to!