When The Earth Became Our Ice Rink

by Aoife Chaney (Ireland)

I didn't expect to find Canada

Inspired by the breathtaking beauty of the Canadian Rockies that dominates our Instagram feeds, we grab a cheap rental car and pace for the peaks. Back in our home country of Ireland, an island that can fit into Canada 118 times over, our highest mountaintop sits at just 3407 feet, leaving us utterly unprepared for the journey up ahead. The Canadian Rockies are known, traveled, and adored for many reasons. One such reason is the presence of glacial-fed lakes, which, when the sunlight reflects off their waters, become an unlikely turquoise color. It’s early November and in the midst of a delayed Alberta winter. The temperature has not quite plummeted to below freezing, so the prospect of witnessing a rare turquoise lake is promising. First on the agenda after a long day of travelling is to check-in to our cozy little lodge in the whimsical village of Banff. Next, we settle into the local Irish pub where we warm our bones with some hearty pumpkin soup and creamy pints of Guinness. You can take the people out of Ireland but you can’t take the Ireland out of the people. We scroll through our Instagram feeds, hashtag #turquoiselake, double tap double tap double tap. Tomorrow we will become the posters of turquoise lakes on Instagram instead of the double-tapping dreamers we are today. A drunken Friday night makes for a hazy Saturday morning. Full of poached eggs and black coffee, we get back on the open road. Beauty continues to surround us in the form of stunning viewpoints and elegant wildlife, and we survey our surroundings as if in a David Attenborough documentary... Up ahead in the distance, a wild herd of powerful but nimble mountain goats, their long beards and thick coats protecting them from the falling snow. To the left, Athabasca Falls, one of the most powerful waterfalls in the Canadian Rockies, standing tall between countless snow-capped pine trees at eighty feet high. Slowly approaching, five Irish travelers, their eyes glued to the windows of their rented SUV, a long way from home and lost in an all-consuming awe. We remain in the present moment as much as we possibly can, all the while nudged by an unshakable excitement for the impending main event. A haven crafted by the hands of Mother Nature with glacial-fed waters and a dreamy backdrop to color our Instagram grids - Lake Louise. With high expectations and back-flipping bellies, we park up, layer up, and head towards the lake, only to find that it is entirely frozen over. There is no turquoise. We do not step into the Instagram pictures we admired only minutes before, and all of the emotions we have experienced in anticipation for this moment turn into a fit of laughter. But the expected beauty is not absent here, only transformed. Beauty comes in many forms, controlled by nature and the eye of the beholder. Beauty is interchangeable. Seasonal. Everywhere. We learned something that day. We learned that sometimes it is better to walk on a lake frozen over by nature’s elements than to post a picture of a turquoise one on Instagram. Social media gives us the nudge we need to get out there and lick the world by its mountaintops, shortens the gap between our small hometowns and the great wonders of the world, but it does not capture the beauty of the moment, the real-life experience. The ice, unable to escape the rising sun’s rays, will always melt to reveal what’s been hiding underneath. The moment, however, is fleeting. In this particular fragment of time and space, the earth became our ice rink. And so we stepped out onto the ice, and we glided.