Good day Hive!
Well, we are back from the mountains and now I can begin to get slowly get back to my online routine as I recover, start answering comments and work on my last Banff museum post before I begin in too many details our latest trip. My legs and feet are sore! We walked approximately 55 km of mountainous snowy terrain in 7 days (I did it all with blisters from day one's hike...ouch). Our biggest day was our first hike at Mount Robson at over 14 km because it would be snowy and gray for the rest of our time here. To be honest the weather is pretty dodgy in the shoulder season, it was gray and dull for most of the trip.
We were able to evade it on a few days as some blue sky could be seen in the distance towards certain locations we like to visit like the beautiful Icefields Parkway. The days are short now, by the time the morning fog clears up (if it does at all) lucky if there is two excellent photography light hours until it deteriorates again so choosing where we want to be during those 2 hours is crucial but the rest of the time is well spent on the trail to get there and from. The temperature itself was mild and we had a thin layer of fresh sticky snow so it was relatively easy to cover good distances even if we were the first ones that had been there in days.
The point of this post isn't too much about the trip but more so an event that really upset me and what led to the ultimate disappointment. I will do my proper travel post in the near future if you are not ok with foul language(there wont be many pictures to enjoy in this post so you will not be missing out), I suggest coming back another day! If you are ok with questionable language... well, carry on and enjoy the tunes, you have been warned, I'm going full tradesmen in this one. Don't get me wrong most of the trip was great but this one detail I really need to get off my chest and throw a few jokes at it to relive some pressure before my head explodes. As I mentioned, the sky was pretty miserable looking for photography for most of the trip until the last day. I was really hoping for a really clear super blue sky on top in the Maligne Lake region to take some pictures of the semi frozen lake and the proper lighting for the mountain range to really pop.
I know that's a tall order but after 7 days, the mountain goddess finally heard my hopes and granted my wish. We had other plans for the day but fuck it, we saw blue over Maligne region so we headed up there ASAP! All is well we get up there, as gorgeous as it can ever look in this off season. Click...click...Boom...WHAT THE HELL.
Sounded like a spring snapping inside the camera and my shutter never returned to it's original seating but the motor is still working. I tried and tried but it was like beating a dead horse...that bitch is dead! The landscape was so beautiful it broke my freaking camera. We were about halfway thru the hike around the lake and the landscape was the most spectacular I had ever seen at Maligne Lake this time of year when it happened. I waited 7 days on this trip but realistically it's been years of trying...Like I said the weather is dodgy here in the off season because it's so high up on the mountain. That's the last picture my Nikon D7000 ever took and now I no longer have a camera.
If you are not a photographer with a pro-ish camera, to put into terms, that's the equivalent of blowing up the transmission on your truck. It's a crucial part of the functioning and it's going to cost about half of what the camera's worth to fix it along with a pain in the ass as it has to get sent away to the manufacturer who wont even touch it without a deposit and it has to be sent by a shop who also charge a fee to send it for you. Cripe it sounds expensive before I even get to find out if it's even fixable.
I looked down at my camera in despair, hoping somehow it would magically come back to life. In my mind it was made of some alien indestructible superman steel and it would be my best bud forever and never break. Deep down I knew it was over but I wasn't ready to accept it at all. I probably had the exact same emotions 
I stood there, probably more pissed off that it broke at the most perfect fucking view that took me a lifetime of coming here to finally get. Here I was hiking around the magical Maligne Lake in the perfect blue sky I always dreamed of with the sun at just the perfect location and my camera decides to shit the bed here early into my hike...go figure. I was even more upset at the fact that I was just telling
When my shutter snapped, something inside my head also did. Most of the time I'm calm, cool like a cucumber,
Whit that being said, there is this natural anger that dwells inside of me, for the most part it's under control and never comes out to play but in times like these I have to release it because it's too much for this tiny body. Something semi-violent things need to happen and there was nothing (like a garbage can or something) to kick around and vent. I also learned to visualize releasing my anger in the way I would like to , a daydream of sorts as a coping mechanism that is probably more socially acceptable! Somehow I feel like I went from feral animal to house trained cat! haha.
I stood there visualizing myself, stuck in my own mind completely, calmingly removing my lens from my camera, then my memory card along with the battery, secure them in my pocket and launching that piece of shit in my hands as hard and far as I can into that slushy lake ice or whatever I zoned out staring at. Suddenly I hear and see a slushy splash in front of me right in that weird puddle in the middle of the ice and snapped out of it. What in the actual?? Did I just do it for real? I looked down in my hands...No I didn't lol. Thank goodness...I didn't want to be that asshole that littered Maligne Lake but that is literally the only thing that stopped me from launching it into the slush puddle because I really was coming unhinged on the inside. Photography is my walking meditation, my sanity, it's a part of me...an extension of my soul, the grout that holds all the sharp broken pieces that make up the mosaic that I am into something that makes sense.
If not me that what splashed in the slush puddle? Because that part was real, I could still see the outline of the crater and splash back mess left behind I had once imagined to be the guts of my camera. Turns out a bored
Either way, camera or no camera, we were here, it still looked magical and it turned out to be 5 C degrees so I quietly began walking down the trail that continued along the back of the lake, contemplating what just happened and trying to resolve and calm the mixed emotions going thru my mind at hyper speeds at every missed picture I found along the trail, knowing it will never be this perfect for me again. My sweetheart offered me a joint and some consoling words, he knew far to well what I was going thru even if I wasn't saying a word. It didn't really help but he knew it as well, it just had to happen, my day was ruined and I just needed to sulk so I could begin to accept it and think of my next step even tho I chose to continue on the trail...All I could think of, is now what? What is ladybug without a camera? Felt like someone just chopped off part of my arm, I even had a ghost itch where the camera was every time I saw an intriguing view I wanted to photograph...
Deep down I knew trying to fix a decade old camera is like trying to put tastebuds on an asshole, it's a moot point but that sort of equipment is expensive. like $3400 CAD on black friday blowout sale expensive. I have savings but I'm still unemployed until spring as a seasonal worker and work was a pile of shit this year for contractors and labor/wages disputes and all the other political cancel culture nightmarish swamp we are living in. I swear my camera was my sanctuary from all the bullshit I don't have the energy to do the mental gymnastics required to keep up anymore. With my camera it's like I can focus on the pretty little things and now I'm stuck looking at the whole ugly picture, like pretty flowers in the middle of a dump.
It was our delayed anniversary trip , the whole reason why I need to escape to Jasper before they lock us down and weld our doors shut stuck self-isolating in the name of good citizenship and patriotism...Be brave and save your nation by being a video game playing couch potato...every teenager's dream I guess. They are talking about a potential 30 day lockdown coming up, the writing is on the wall. Who knows, I might catch covid in the middle of the forest where I'm laying the first foot tracks in fresh snow where nobody has even been in days. Can't wrap my head around some of this leftist nonsense sometimes.
For the rest of the trip, I kept seeing all the stuff I was hoping to see forever, I like this time of year in Jasper because the reduced tourism and traffic means more elk in the fields by the road, they run in a huge herd and it's amazing to see, only ever seen it the once where there were over 50 of them running alongside the truck! Guess what, with no camera, there it was, the field full of elk I have been waiting to recapture, yes all 50 or more of them. I was getting pretty pissed on the inside, I thought to myself, what's next? A grizzly walking a wolf on a leash on the side of the road just because I don't have a camera anymore. Will I see the elusive Cariboo herd while I'm at it just to throw salt at the wound? Is the universe laughing at me?
As
I'm not sure what comes next really, no camera is hard to imagine. This is all too familiar territory and I still very much dislike it. Feels like when I got my old camera stolen all over again and how I ended up with my last camera for a decade. I had to scramble some shit together out of nowhere to get that one and I found a way. I have faith I will figure this out too. FYI the camera that got stolen, I got a phone call from the police 6 months later exactly on my birthday that they had found my camera in a pawn shop and that the evidence was being released and I could come claim it.
In the end, I'm sad my camera died but now is the beginning of a new chapter, maybe something good will come out of it but at least she went out like a champion in a blaze of glory. She gave me her all.