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Published: July 18th 2012
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5:25 am -- alarm goes off. Oh, what was I thinking! David and I had a hearty breakfast -- bacon & eggs, and headed out to Maligne Lake. The drive out to the the lake was wonderful! There is nothing like the mountains in the early morning! I just sat in the passenger seat with the music playing and felt like I had been transported to the most beautiful place on the planet!!
A few bull elk were feeding by the side of road. They were oblivious to our presence as we stopped and took a few photos.
We arrived at the lake at about 7:00 am and were on the water by 7:30 -- the first canoe in the water for the day! Maligne Lake is a 22.5 km glacier fed lake. With not even a breeze, the lake was completely calm. The air was crisp and cool. David and I were dressed in several layers, anticipating the heat that would come.
About 9:30 am, the calm was occasionally shattered by the boats that cross the lake taking tourists to Spirit Island that sits in the middle of the lake. They
would slow down while going past the canoes so their wake would not swamp them. Having learned to canoe on rivers, I enjoyed the waves. (I've added a couple of "older" photos of our "younger" selves canoeing in much more turbulent waters.)
We paddled for about 5.5 kms before stopping at a quaint canoe picnic site and had a snack. The facilities were truly “outdoor”, and had a kind of “space-age” quality. It was round, plastic, green with an opening and a toilet seat on a platform giving one a totally unobstructive view of nature all around.
About 11:30 am, we stopped for lunch. There was no quaint picnic site, so we had to settle for a bit of shoreline that was the least steep. The moss was so deep, we sunk at least six inches with every step we took. We had travelled about 8.5 kms as the bird flies -- not sure what that would be as the “canoe meanders”. This is where my shoulders decided it was time to start our return trip.
The weather (thankfully) had been perfect until about the last hour when the temperature started
to rise. As we neared our starting place, we passed a number of canoes heading out, and I was thankful that we had started our day so early. We arrived around 2:30 pm to find a “traffic jam” at the dock. We pulled our canoe up, took out our cool little wheels, and rolled it up the launch and around the crowd.
Canoeing seems like such a simple activity. And, yet it is profoundly satisfying. There is a meditative quality as the paddles dip in and out of the water, the fish jump, the wind caresses the tree tops and the rocks stand in silence as your boat glides effortless by.
“If one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness." Dhalai Lama
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Doug Brockway
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Homesick.
Michele, what a lovely article and amazing pics. You have made me both nostalgic and hungry for my old stomping grounds. I hope that I might some day be able to make it back to Jasper. It's been decades. Thanks for a lovely re-vist.