Dream Trip North

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Ah Canada! I learned so much about NWT and even a bit about neighbors like B.C. and Alberta in the process of writing Fly Away Snow Goose. The land, so important in the story, got into my head until I began to have a fantasy about traveling to see it.

The kind of travel I envision, is the kind that, ideally, a 30 year old should undertake, but heck, it doesn't stop me from imagining. So here it goes: my dream of a northern adventure, carried out by some athletic babe ideal of my physical self at 34. (Not that this powerful woman ever existed!) For some reason, the fantasy-prone being who inhabits this body always wants some sort of hardship to accompany her dream travel. In my real crone self, each of these travel destinations would be a tough slog, only available to a stateside person with bucks.


Nevertheless, dream on! How about starting this journey in Alberta with a trip to Jasper National Park Dark-Sky Preserve in the winter as part of a dark skies tour? Where the temperature falls to -22 routinely, it would be a good thing I'm not an astro-photographer, like the adventurers whose story inspired me: folks I read about in an issue of Earth-Sky* who have taken mind blowing starry images.*

Credits:
Image via Jack Fusco for the Chasing Darkness project
https://www.jackfusco.com/
https://chasingdarkness.smugmug.com/What-is-Chasing-Darkness/

https://earthsky.org/human-world/stargazing-destination-alberta-chasing-darkness-video?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=b82e8c58ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-b82e8c58ad-394055697

To see the stars glowing like Tesla-fired blue globes, reflecting upon icy water would be an incredible experience. Even virtually, it's a gift to me, these images of a glorious, nearly pristine world. If I was actually there, I'd feel the searing cold in my lungs (it probably would turn them inside out) and feel frigid air demons gnawing at any bit of exposed skin. I'd hear the crunch of the snow under a pair of massively high-tech winter boots. Maybe, in the distance, perhaps I'd hear wolves howling.

Wood Buffalo Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is also in Alberta. Here, nature proceeds as it once did, before the incursion of strangers from the west. This is a place for summer travel, I'd come prepared for the onslaught of insects and prepared to see plants and animals I've never seen before.

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/256

"Wood Buffalo National Park is the most ecologically complete and largest example of the entire Great Plains-Boreal grassland ecosystem of North America, the only place where the predator-prey relationship between wolves and wood bison has continued, unbroken, over time."

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/nt/woodbuffalo

I’ve always wanted to travel back in time, and this park would offer me a window into the way the land was before Europeans arrived. Wood Buffalo Park is the only breeding ground for the magnificent Whooping Crane, a species on the edge of extinction.  Perhaps I'll imagine myself there in spring, when they arrive, calling to one another with their beautiful whooper voices!

The Wood Buffalo which lives there is another species under extreme pressure, a marvelous relic from the Pleistocene. This buffalo's woodland life style is different from the plains animal with which we down from south are more familiar. 

And then, because this is an imaginary travelogue without budget or schedule, I'd fly to Yellow Knife in the Northwest Territories and see a modern frontier city perched on the edge of the Great Slave Lake. After a few days of people, I'd be ready to begin my voyage into the North Slave, the land of the Tlicho, the tribe from which Sascho and Yaotl come.

Here, in a land of stone, water, and ever-dwindling forests I'd follow the rivers, muscle my way across portages, while following the ancient trails, like Sascho and Yaotl, on their way to Great Bear Lake, to see a body of freshwater even larger than Great Slave, a veritable ocean. Of course, this would take a very long time, a lot of supplies and a lot of willpower--even on a fantasy journey. Perhaps I'll imagine I'm back in time, in another body in another world, making my way north with a family group, working my fanny off as women always do, carrying and cooking and minding kids.

An easier way to reach Great Bear would be to make the whole thing modern, to imagine floating the Mackenzie to Tulita, then, where  the Great Bear River empties, turning east and traveling along that tributary to Deline. Here I could make a pilgrimage to the home place of the famous Sahuto'ine Prophet, Eht'se Ayah.

In March of 2016, Great Bear Lake and the surrounding area became the largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in North America. The people of Deline are now self-governing, their charge to protect the lake and to preserve their ancient mystical connection with it. The old ones believed that beneath Great Bear's surface a massive heart beats. This is a great magic, one which "gives life not only to the surrounding area, but to all the natural world."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/great-bear-lake/

Standing on the edge of this astounding place, for the grand finale, I'll conjure up a display of the aurora borealis, those shimmering spirits of ancestors, who remind us of how astonishing it is to be conscious and to be able to view these incredible wonders of our earth.

Even, in this case, if it's only a Canadian journey of the mind.


~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com/

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/waldron

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Juliet+Waldron?_requestid=8289443

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=Juliet+Waldron&pageNumber=2

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=juliet+Waldron

My Facebook Page 

Abraham Lake

It may look like blue pancakes, trapped under a sheet of ice, but it's not.  Those are methane bubbles and part of what draws photographers and nature overs alike to visit a man-made lake in Alberta.

The Huffington Post, Alberta says that "It may be man-made but it flaunts the same myrtle green in the water and the same mountain peaks around the lake that other natural, liquid wonders that dot the Canadian Rockies landscape provide. [...] In the bluish tinge of the winter's ice, photographs capture puffy pedestals of gas, cotton-like bubbles frozen in time and milky stains that colour the frozen surface.  [...] The features and colour showcased in all their glories in the ice are truly a sight to behold, but they are also to be respected, as they are nothing less than explosive.  What lurks beneath the surface of this bewitching lake is methane gas.  Methane is an effective fuel, burning - and exploding - with ease."

Read the full article ...

Want to know more?  Check out the Smithsonian's article.

The Beauty of Canada by Victoria Chatham

 As a child living in England, Canada to me was that big country across the North Atlantic. My earliest recollections of references to it were of the Rocky Mountains and canoeing on crystal-clear lakes. Later, I learned about the Calgary Stampede, never imagining that I would eventually make Calgary my home.

On my first trip to Canada, the flight followed the northern route over the north pole and, as we flew across Hudson Bay, my very first impression was of the abundance of water. The surface of the Bay shimmered in the morning sunlight, but it was the lakes, rivers, creeks and tributaries which sparkled in diamond-bright links through the land that made me catch my breath in wonder.

From the air, Saskatchewan looked like a patchwork quilt, and the passenger beside me explained that each patch was a section of six hundred and forty acres, give or take. I was pretty good at mental arithmetic, but I

quickly gave up trying to calculate the total number of acres beneath me. I've always liked a window seat so I can see whatever there is to see, but I had no idea that the chain of the Rocky Mountains, many of their peaks still capped with snow even though it was July, would be in full view all the way into Calgary. Since that first trip, I've traveled to many places in Alberta and British Columbia but no further east than Moose Jaw, in Saskatchewan.

That might not sound very exciting, but I loved Moose Jaw for its history. Murals depicting that history decorate the sides of buildings and then there are the stories of the tunnels which were first dug by Chinese immigrants and later became notorious for their connection with prohibition and bootlegging.

I've wandered through farmer's markets in many small towns, appreciating the produce and people, sampling artisan bread and cheese, organic wine, and home cured meats. I've had chocolate tea and wood smoked coffee and only in a market would you hear snippets of conversation about a bear chasing alpacas around the yard or geese stripping the lower branches of hazelnut trees.

Wherever I go, I see new vistas and have new experiences, each one building a new memory for me. It might be a memory of one of those iconic crystal-clear lakes or majestic mountains. It might be the gentle rise and fall of the foothills or the patterns of breeze-blown prairie grass. It can be river courses and deep, scarred canyons cradling dinosaur remains. It can be fantastic cloud formations carrying a rainstorm or winter frost and always above it that big, big sky.

I’ve hiked trails in ancient forests, rode horseback across mountain meadows and heard stories of the land from First Nations people. I've seen killer whales in the Juan de Fuca Straits, buffalo in southern Alberta and finally, after twenty-six years and where I'd least expected to see them, moose.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but Canada's beauty can be found wherever you choose to look.

NOW AVAILABLE

BUY NOW

Brides of Banff Springs

The first book in the Canadian Historical Brides series, the Brides of Banff Springs, is available for pre-order at Amazon.

In the Dirty Thirties jobs were hard to come by. Having lost her father and her home in southern Alberta, Tilly McCormack is thrilled when her application for a position as a chambermaid at the prestigious Banff Springs Hotel, one of Canada’s great railway hotels, is accepted. 

Tilly loves her new life in the Rocky Mountain town and the people she meets there. Local trail guide Ryan Blake, is taken with Tilly’s sparkling blue eyes and mischievous sense of humor, and thinks she is just the girl for him. Ryan’s work with a guiding and outfitting company keeps him busy but he makes time for Tilly at every opportunity and he’s already decided to make her his bride. 

On the night he plans to propose to Tilly another bride-to-be, whose wedding is being held at the Hotel, disappears. Tilly has an idea where she might have gone and together with Ryan sets out to search for her. 

Will they find the missing bride and will Tilly accept Ryan’s proposal?