Dinosaurs and beyond

 We hiked down to Flatbed from Tumbler Falls and saw dinosaur tracks in the irregular stone along the river... barely distinguishable, unmarked but definite. Somehow the knowledge that this ancient race of being had been here in this great inland and tropical place made me feel good about the evolution of our planet... maybe our carbon will form the energy source for some future coal and shale oil discoverers and maybe they'll make more prudent decisions... time stretches out beyond conception... maybe one of my bigfoot prints will amaze a future being as much as Ankylosaur touched me.

 From Tumbler Ridge we headed down to Monkman Provincial Park to see the Kinuseo Falls and this is the energetic top of that long falls but after that our thoughts turned to the Monkman Falls. We drove past the campground and out of the park to a vast clear cut rimmed by mountains with an endlessly entertaining weather scape above us. (The idea that you can clear cut your way out of pine bark beetle problems is ridiculous... the clear cuts all were ringed by dead trees...perhaps the thought is that by the time these trees mature the beetles will have run out of food source? )

 The elfin glow, the full moon, the glancing morning sun and rain squalls... we spent two days there, not just turning our heads to watch the constantly shifting clouds and shadows, but we hiked 9 km toward the falls (at 17 km-- which would have taken me two days at my old lady pace.) Our turn around was lunch on a glacier scraped rock outcropping looking out to Castle Mtn and the Shark Fins with small lakes below us... good enough, definitely good enough.

 And for that whole long walk and the next day's bike ride up the Imperial Canyon, passed by ATVs (on this Labor Day long weekend)  was the undeniable forest in cycle and browsing on wild blueberries and reading the ancient language like runes on the rocks.