Light and Dark, first impressions and topsy turvy time!

Banff light on Saturday afternoon

Snow on Sunday morn!

It does feel like a different time zone.

In fact my first impressions on arrival yesterday early afternoon were quite different to when I've travelled to Canada before.

The first time it struck me that I'd travelled all this way to the other side of the earth (almost) and yet it felt so much the same - earth, rocks, trees, and in fact a very young landscape (geology, tree lifespan, farmed and built environment) in comparison with Britain. That was eleven years ago.

The second time, last year, was all about journeys, routes, and people. timelines stretched over space. Visits, meetings and wedding lines stretched over the space of human time.

This time, it strikes me how different the planet must be in so many places all at once. It has been the most beautiful, luscious spring I ever remember this year. And commuting between the West Country, Midlands and Yorkshire Dales I have really ravished enjoying every moment of it unfold. Beltaine used to follow when the May blossom (hawthorn) blossomed. And in the South West it is several weeks ahead of the Dales, yet behind the central London area, and of course it varies with height, wind exposure, direction, incline of land....

Here the spring hasn't really arrived. The winter had just about left, though this morning I look out to powder filled skies and snow falling steadily on the ground! And arriving yesterday I had this real sense of people buzzing from place to place on the surface of the earth like bees (overheard snippets of countries visited near and far). And each place on the earth has its season, is bound within it's sunrise and sunset. Each place holds a rhythm of earthly time, in a way by which we no longer do - as we slip from one dimension into the next. The earth feels small and delicate, specific and finely tuned.

The light here is different. Although the land is very brown and trees still bare, the light rings the edges of the clouds and the patterns seem clearly defined.

I didn't expect to feel that sense of boundedness, yet here enclosed in the mountains, even the water in the swimming pool feels different. Very soft, very fine, but to move through it requires much more consolidated effort than before. The air is pure and free but thinner too. Is it altitude I'm feeling or the properties of this place, the effect of jet-lag and a busy lead-up to my trip, or something more about this journey I'm on?

Reflective time, before the program begins tomorrow. A slight apprehension - what is not yet known. How will they be, these people with whom 3 weeks (and more) will pass? And will the snow continue to obscure the light?

Time slips strangely from one hour to the next. Emails, blogs, photos, clocks, tell different stories of time from, in and to different places. And I slept exhausted after my swim. Only to find unexpected waking time when the fire alarm summoned us from our beds for 2 hours of the night. No good to sleep then. Now it's morning so maybe I'll swim again, sleep again, and see what the time says when....

More about the journey here, and plans and preparations and whispers in the wind over the past 6 months since I first heard about and applied for this program, at the 'Parent' warp and woof: jackiecalderwood.blogspot.com