2008•04•16 ~ Emerald Lake, early April...
Emerald Lake, early April, mid-week. It’s warm and white. Some guy has just set fresh tracks across the lake. You haven’t been on skis in three years. You step into the bindings, click your boots into place, and it all comes back. The next day, you go snow-shoeing.
The giant people of the Burgess Shale
Up there, I say. Used to be the bottom of an ocean.
They found fossils of creatures that don’t resemble anything
living today. Five-hundred million years ago those creatures
were alive, swimming at the bottom of the ocean. There was an
explosion of life! They called it the Cambrian Explosion.
I look at my daughter and she is smiling. “And there were giant people
back then too,” she says. “and they were as big as mountains, and…”
She thinks I’m making up a story. She’s playing along. It has to be
a story because it’s just too ridiculous to be true.
No, really, I say. There are creatures up there with five eyes and snouts
like elephants. Amazing creatures. “What about the giant people?” she says.
She stops. “But Daddy, how did the ocean get way up there?”
I want to tell her about plate tectonics and how the continents have shifted
over time, and how these mountains were heaved up, but I look around instead.
There is enough wonder here. No need for lectures on the Burgess Shale.
We have been snowshoeing at Emerald Lake inside the pristine air –
the day is warm and kind. Most of the pines have shunted off their
white overcoats and are stretching in the sunlight. The trees are happy.
We are happy – to be breathing this air, working the legs, to be high up
in the thin places – completely surrounded by mountains.
I look at my daughter, and my wife, with the peaks looming,
and belt out the biggest barbaric Yawp!!! I can muster. It echoes inside
my daughter’s laughter.
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