Echolocation

From “The Burgess Shale”

And she has come to the mountains. She has not driven through these passes before. The sight of the slopes and peaks affects her: She is appalled. They are rough, rude, in extremis. Naked rock, they jut and thrust.

When she falls asleep, she dreams that she is driving a pass. She dreams that she must feel along the edge of the highway with her hand while she drives, to make sure that she does not go off the edge, down the side of the mountain.

In the morning, her car will not start. She finds a tow truck, a garage, goes exploring on foot.

It is autumn; the aspens of Banff have turned golden. She walks around the downtown, stopping at a wine store, a soap store that censers patchouli and lemongrass into the mountain air for a full block in every direction. She stops at a rock and mineral store selling fossils. She is tempted by a display case of iridescent ammolites. Fossilized nacre: the colours, red, gold, violet, peacock shimmy across the gems’ surfaces. But what would she do with them? She does not want to accumulate possessions, weight.

She sorts through all of the buckets in the rock store: She has infinite time on her hands. Fossils from the time before these mountains, for sale.

She walks along the Bow, admiring the brilliant and varied colours of the natural shrubbery. She admires the tumbling waterfall. She crosses a bridge and walks through an old cemetery, where elk are grazing unafraid. She sleeps well, after a dinner of pasta, in her hotel room.

The whorled shells, the world. Time all curled up in its shale strata: the day with its night curving back in reflection; the year with its seasons of burgeoning and decline. The river, the mountains, where once was equatorial sea. We do not visit the same river twice. We do not stand still.