The Highest Mountains

My lifelong travel partner and I have crossed North America for decades in time—pulling a mobile home on wheels, sometimes finding a cabin in the forest or a place on wild shorelines—hiking, observing nature and photographing the world that often surrounds us. Recently, that included a trip to the far west, like others before us; Lewis & Clark, settlers and modern-day adventurers.

From time to time, I’ll be posting photography of our journeys with notes from my stack of leather journals. This photograph was captured in the Northern Rockies. It was on Moraine Lake on a cold, breezy and rain-soaked day. Highly popular, you book a shuttle months ahead climbing a steep, narrow roadway over 8,000 feet to gather packs, hiking sticks and bear spray (never saw one) and hike along the shore into a deep northern pine forest.

The day was cold but beautiful. There are few places on earth where nature forms a blanket around you like this—a voyager style boat posting a Canadian flag crossed the lake’s center. Photographic scenes were at every turn. A wave of mist gathered in with the drizzle and painted settings of classic outdoor paintings as snow-capped mountains hovered on the horizon beyond the tall pines. As the rain came harder, we turned back at a large beaver dam, fallen trees scattering across the quiet, pristine back waters.

I could hear the breeze in the hemlocks, but coming from the south along Gulf shores, I found myself envisioning a hot lunch inside a ski lodge type building sitting near the trailhead where we started—a roaring fire built inside a high rock chimney. But this was a dream not realized. I only found a cafeteria with cold sandwiches and a long line out the door.

Looking out the shuttle window on our return down the mountain to a campsite overlooking high mountains, I sat wrapped in a wet poncho listening to drops of rain pelting on the roof.

I’ll always remember this day. These are the moments that make our lives everything they can be. Times never forgotten; a journey in time that never ends.

The day behind us, we cooked a hot meal of stroganoff on our camper skillet and heated hot coffee into large mugs. An eagle sprouted his wings and soared above us, screaming a sound of what had to be joy for the beauty of this high mountain paradise.