Travel books, magazines, brochures, and the like, are always depicting the best places one should visit. The latest I saw was called “Ten Places to Visit before you Die.” I haven’t taken a look at it yet. One visit I’m glad that I made was to Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. It is located in Banff National Park which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a glacial lake.with an altitude of 5052 ft.
I took this image of Lake Louise about fourteen years ago. To make this a true collage, I put a duck in the lake, some flowers, and the grand and beautiful Chateau Lake Louise where we had a lovely breakfast one morning. The image of the Chateau is my own. I photographed lots of ducks at Centre Island, Toronto, and the duck in this collage is one of those. The flowers were photographed in my neighbour’s garden several years ago. She was in Switzerland that year and I photographed her garden and e-mailed the photos to her so that she could have an idea of how her garden looked. She is an avid gardener.
Lake Louise is worth a visit. It almost seems too good to be true when visiting a place that is naturally beautiful. The mountains stand majestically against the backdrop of the sky, then there’s the lake, with its exquisite turquoise colour – and it’s stillness, which combine to make one feel part of the scenery. This is how I felt. It certainly isn’t an everyday feeling when living in a big city with a cacophony of sights and sounds everywhere. It was truly surreal.
Even though I wanted to stay and be one with this for a longer time, the usual travel plans and time scheduled to be in other places, took precedence. We had to move on. There was still more of the Rockies to see before this vacation would come to an end.
Was there a name for this feeling I experienced that day? I was doing some reading on the concept of transcendence the other day and it mentioned that some moments and times give us that transcendent feeling. I wonder if that was what I felt when I visited Lake Louise. “In any case, nature’s time is closer than contemporary time to transcendence and eternity. Eternity is not time that goes on forever. If you think about it, that would be a nightmare. Eternity is the suspension of time. We have all had an inkling of it. Our consciousness was totally absorbed in the moment: And so time stopped. This suspension of time is usually felt as a positive event. It is an experience of marvel, relief, and freedom. It is the closest thing there is to perceiving immortality.” (Piero Ferrucci)
You may have had your transcendent moments too or something nearly like it. Hope you like this collage and that it brings good feelings to you. Enjoy Lake Louise!
